Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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On journalism
A newspaper editor’s craft is more significant than
journalistic fads, management jargon and the fool’s gold of the stock price,
but it takes faith and leadership to succeed
This is adapted from remarks Carroll made upon accepting the Editor
of the Year Award from the National Press Foundation.
My father, Wallace Carroll, now in his 90s, worked for many years at
the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal and Sentinel, first as editor and later
as publisher. In between those two jobs, he spent eight years here in Washington
with The New York Times, working with James Reston, Ned Kenworthy, Russell
Baker and others who practiced their craft with passion and high spirits.
During that period, I was a paperboy for The Washington Post. I wasn’t
much of a reader back then — I was in it for the money — but I often started
my day with the Herblock cartoon. So, from an early age, I witnessed journalism
as a daily adventure, not just something to be trudged through on the way
to a gold watch.
That belief was reinforced in the 1970s, when I became an apprentice
editor under Gene Roberts, trying to drag The Philadelphia Inquirer into
respectability. Unlike many papers then, the Inquirer did actually have
an investigative reporter. Unfortunately, he was in the state penitentiary,
serving time for extortion. Gene taught me, among other things, that it’s
a lot more satisfying to fix, and to build, a newspaper than merely to
maintain one.
From such inspirations, I couldn’t help but develop notions about what’s
important in this business, and what’s ephemeral. And in the 1990s, it
seems to me, a keen sense of the ephemeral is an editor’s best friend.
If you were to visit The Sun’s newsroom in Baltimore today, you might
be surprised as much by what we’re not doing as by what we do.
We have, for example, no self-improvement programs. You won’t find re-engineering,
or Quality Circles, or News 2000. You won’t encounter editors brandishing
MBAs, nor will you hear journalists being exhorted to get out of their
silos. No one is being put through months and months of meetings, leading
eventually to the formation of teams. Nobody believes that the way to compete
with television is to become more like television.
On your visit to the Sun, you might also note an absence of hand-wringing
about television and the Internet. Our staff knows that a newspaper can
have far more influence in a community than all its electronic competitors
combined, and that only a newspaper can seriously aspire to be the conscience,
and the goad, of a city, or of a state.
In short, we see more opportunities than threats, and we’re not wasting
our time pining for the days of yore, or casting about for gimmicks.
Today, if you read the regional and local press — the papers that
reach most Americans — you’ll sense something missing. That crucial ingredient
is faith — a widespread confidence that what we do matters. Today’s journalists
are constantly being reminded that they are functionaries of business,
yet they know in their hearts that the stock price is a hollow god. They
believe — perhaps quixotically, under some owners — that they work for
the entire community, not just the stockholders. They sense that newspaper
work can, and should be, a wonderfully satisfying and entertaining way
to engage the world, and that in a free society there is no mightier sword
than the written word.
This is the legacy of the Wally Carrolls, the Ned Kenworthys, the Scotty
Restons. The sword is there. The question is whether we’re willing to wield
it.
Carroll, co-chair of The American Editor Committee, is editor of
The Sun, Baltimore.
