Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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How to best handle (or not handle) editorial romances
and their consequences
You see it start: The knowing glances. The across-the-room smiles that
last too long. The whispered conversations. Another newsroom romance has
begun.
“As soon as the second date, everybody in the whole place knows about
it,” said Ben Bradlee, vice president and former executive editor of The
Washington Post. And he is a guy who should know; his love affair with
wife Sally Quinn began in the Post newsroom. “After a while, you can tell.
Everybody’s looks change.”
Bill Ketter, journalism department chairman at Boston University and
former editor of The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., said: “For some reason,
the dynamic of a newsroom creates the spark of love.”
This is a story about those sparks and how they affect the newsroom,
where romance can bloom just as in any work environment. According to Dr.
Lee Blackwell, a psychiatrist and former co-director of the University
of California Los Angeles Human Sexuality Clinic, his experience has led
him to believe that about 33 percent to 40 percent of working Americans
have had a sexual encounter at work. “People who are prone to that are
in exciting professions that have drama and power,” Blackwell said. “It
can provide a kind of hormonal dump in the bloodstream.”
Examples in this story were provided by editors around the country,
generally on the condition that neither they, their newspapers nor the
romantically involved be named.
One editor remembered a male reporter nicknamed “the Conqueror” because
he dated one female reporter after another. Everyone involved was single,
and no one appeared upset about the romances. “I was waiting for a grenade
to go off, but it never did,” the editor said. “I had people confide in
me that it was going on, not to complain, just to share interesting gossip.
So I didn’t feel a need to get involved.”
Blackwell said the editor acted appropriately. Ignoring newsroom romances
is the right strategy until they becomes a distraction for the staff, he
said. “There’s no reason to acknowledge it unless it interferes with work.”
There was the case of a city editor who was dating a reporter on his
staff while that reporter dated another metro reporter, a situation that
soon became the talk of the newsroom. Eventually management stepped in
to end the editor’s supervisory role over the female reporter.
“Keep the priority on the task at hand,” Blackwell said. “If whatever
they’re doing interferes with that, that’s when the manager has to step
in. The worst thing is to ignore it. If you ignore it, then everyone gets
irritable. Probably the biggest mistake editors make is to think if they
ignore it, it will go away.”
Editors I interviewed universally agreed that you must act quickly when
the romance involves a staffer and a supervising editor. But the line between
a casual date or two and a relationship isn’t always easy to determine.
Bob Keane, executive editor for administration at Newsday, said editors
probably don’t know all of the casual relationships going on in the newsroom,
but that those involved usually know when it’s time to alert their bosses
and generally do so.
Gene Roberts, former editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and former
managing editor of The New York Times, said the Inquirer policy worked
pretty well. “We asked people to let us know when it was more than a casual
relationship. And if they didn’t, you could be reasonably sure someone
else would,” said Roberts, now a journalism professor at the University
of Maryland.
Blackwell acknowledged that it often is difficult to assess the proper
time to act, which can lead to a temptation to create rules. “Unfortunately,
rules are straight lines and the world is more complicated,” he said. “It
requires setting some boundaries. The people who are having the relationship
need to understand” what is allowed at work. Particularly difficult is
determining a newspaper’s obligation when the relationship simply involves
two reporters.
Step in “if a situation crosses the line,” advised Caesar Andrews, editor
of Gannett News Service in Arlington, Va. But he acknowledged that one
of the difficulties is that the line moves. “It almost does us a favor
if it’s something illegal. At least it has some definite edge to it. I
tread softly on the entire issue. I have an innate dislike of delving into
this type of issue. The point at which I go against my own grain is when
it’s disruptive in the newsroom in a way that is unhealthy, corrosive or
there is the specter of harassment,” Andrews said.
However, Jonathan Segal, a labor lawyer with the firm of Wolk, Block,
Schorr and Solis-Cohen in Philadelphia, said a newsroom disrupted by gossip
may cause a different sort of problem. “There is an argument that employees
gossiping about a relationship can create a hostile work environment (for
those in the relationship),” Segal said. “If the relationship is consensual,
an employer may have an obligation to tell the gossipers that, ‘Your discussing
of (the affair) may create a hostile work environment for them, and that
speculation needs to stop.’ If it’s not the employer’s business, it’s sure
not the co-workers’.” Complaints that a couple is being “sexually expressive”
on the job are legitimate, but comments that their relationship is somehow
immoral, are not, he said.
“If something is kept discreet, you have deniability — a wonderful thing,”
said Pat Colander, managing editor of The Times in Munster, Ind. “When
the relationship is of the cheating-spouse variety, for whatever reason,
all of a sudden everyone thinks it’s office business instead of personal
business and it brings out the Linda Tripp in people. Maybe I’ve lost my
nose for news, but I would much rather not know when somebody is really
screwing up their own or other people’s lives.”
Relationships can, however, affect work in myriad ways that editors
simply must work around. “It does restrict the free flow of discussion,”
said Ketter of Boston University. “You can’t talk about one’s work in front
of the other. And, if there’s a problem with one (of the pair), there’s
automatically a problem with both.” Gannett’s Andrews agreed that disciplining
one half of the couple could upset the other half, which can be a problem
if the couple is comprised of a star reporter and a marginal performer.
Editors said they didn’t want to get involved in advising staffers about
their relationships. And they shouldn’t, said Blackwell. But sometimes
involvement may be unavoidable, like the editor confronted with a female
reporter who’d just learned she was pregnant by a male reporter. They wanted
to get married, but had no vacation time left so they had to explain their
situation to the editor, who gave them the extra time.
And sometimes learning of a romance can be downright embarrassing, as
one editor found when he walked into a room and found two staffers in flagrante
delicto.
Just as the signs of a romance can be seen, so can the signs of a break-up.
One editor recalled the discomfort in the newsroom when a couple broke
up, but noted there was nothing management could, or should, do unless
it became a performance issue — for instance, not getting to work on time.
Bob Unger, executive editor of the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press, said
when he hired a reporter who was dating someone already on his staff, he
suggested to them that they realize that it could be difficult for them
to work together if their relationship ended. “If it does go bad, don’t
bring it into the newsroom,” he told them.
A few papers still have nepotism policies to help reduce the problems
associated with newsroom romances. Gene Roberts said the Inquirer’s policy
— spouses or significant others of newsroom staff cannot be hired, but
employees who marry after they’re hired can stay — was created because
so many people in the newsroom were in relationships that it became difficult
to ensure no one was reporting to a love interest.
“There were 75 or 80 people on a staff of what was then about 300 who
had relationships. At the New York Times, I favored hiring couples, but
in Philadelphia the numbers were too great. You reach a point where the
organization is strangled, where you’re constantly having to monitor who’s
reporting to whom.” In addition, newsroom relationships can cause other
staffers to perceive favoritism in assignments, he said. “People do look
around to see if people are being treated with more favoritism and, if
there’s a relationship, they may imagine it when it’s not there.”
Gene Foreman, who was managing editor of the Inquirer during Roberts’
tenure, said the policy also helped managers avoid the temptation to hire
a spouse who otherwise might not have been hired simply because it was
the only way to get the other, sought-after spouse.
Foreman and Bradlee, whose Washington Post has the same nepotism policy,
said they have had to pass up some hires they really wanted because they
couldn’t hire the spouse.
“There are times when it just drove me crazy,” Bradlee said. “It’s cost
us people. On the other hand, it has kept us from hiring some real dogs.”
At the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, the nepotism policy was even stricter:
No hiring of spouses and if two staffers married, one had to leave. Senior
Editor Tom Rawlins said the policy was relaxed in the early 1980s to allow
staff members to stay if they married; the rest of the policy was scrapped
officially last year. Rawlins said a lot of the couples simply lived together
without marrying when the policy was in effect so the problems of newsroom
relationships were with the paper regardless of the policy.
Blackwell, the psychiatrist, said nepotism policies simply result in
people hiding their relationships rather than ending them.
Bill Hawkins, executive editor of The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., said
an anti-nepotism policy would hurt his ability to hire reporters. He hired
a female reporter who mentioned that her boyfriend was also a reporter.
After reviewing his work, Hawkins hired him, too. “I don’t worry about
their relationship as long as it doesn’t affect their work,” he said. “In
our market, (allowing relationships) helps us keep good people.”
Andrews of Gannett also said that having couples in the newsroom now
is an asset because they’re less likely to leave.
“If a couple of newsroom people team up at home, we might have a better
chance of keeping them both and getting them to make a life in our community,”
agreed Colander.
Wanda Lloyd, managing editor/features, administration and planning of
The Greenville (S.C) News, said she has experienced the other side of that
coin. “What I most fear, quite frankly, is if they get married and one
gets a job elsewhere, I lose both,” she said.
Frank Denton, editor of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, said
he has four married couples in his newsroom of 90 and several dating relationships.
“In my 13 years, there’s been no tension,” he said. Many editors would
agree with the sentiment, but there does lurk a fear for some that an unhappy
situation lies in wait.
“I’d rather any day deal with delicate journalism calls. That’s easy
compared to a messy personal situation in the newsroom,’’ said Deborah
Howell, editor and Washington bureau chief of Newhouse News Service.
The number of reporter romances isn’t likely to drop in the future.
Editors agree that journalists are drawn to each other because they work
the same hours, have the same interests and, at least early in their careers,
are single.
“You set up a petri dish, so don’t be surprised at what develops,” said
Richard Aregood, editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.
A number of editors had legendary stories to tell about strange experiences
with newsroom romances. My favorite was the one about a romance that literally
stopped the presses. According to the tale, the female police reporter
and a male employee at the paper were in the throes of passion in an electrical
closet when they fell against the switches and turned off all power to
the presses.
