A touching tribute, a call for continued quality in the face of shrinking resources and an eloquent defense of free speech marked the opening breakfast of the ASNE's annual convention.

About 500 attended the keynote breakfast, the opening convention event.

The breakfast was highlighted by:

• A heartfelt remembrance of the late James K. Batten, who rose from reporter to become chairman of Knight-Ridder, by his friend and colleague, David Lawrence Jr., publisher of the Miami Herald. Batten died June 25, 1995, after a long battle with brain cancer.
• The report of outgoing ASNE President William B. Ketter, editor of the Patriot-Ledger of Quincy, Mass., about the state of the industry and new intiatives by the organizations.
• And an entertaining and forceful defense of free speech and condemnation of censorship by a man who knows something about the subject, author Salman Rushdie who was marked for death in 1989 by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for his book, "The Satanic Verses." Rushdie lived in hiding for seven years and is still guarded. His new novel is "The Moor's Last Sigh."

Following are some highlights:

David Lawrence Jr.

When Batten and he were together, Lawrence recalled, "We'd spend most of our time talking about readers and what sorts of newspapers they really need. Not a second would be spent on all this woe-is-us talk you hear so much in our craft today. Jim had a firm fix on the inevitability of change, and he faced up to the future with optimism and energy."

Batten, whose widow Jean was present for the tribute, had a unique way of touching those who knew him, Lawrence said.

"In the presence of Jim Batten, you knew you were with a man of luminous integrity. Who cared about you and what you do ... Who knew the soul of this business is journalism ... Who was at heart a superb reporter and who, as an executive, was able to ask the wisest questions. Who saw compassion and decency as fully consistent with aggressive journalism."

To Batten, Lawrence said, there was a "crucial connection" between newspapers and democracy.

"Finally, and first, Jim Batten was a journalist. A visionary who believed to his core that journalism mattered, that if we could just get people connected, to use his phrase, just make them aware, just get them somehow to read the paper, that they would care, too, and the world would surely benefit."

William B. Ketter

In his president's report, Ketter said that he is, "becoming increasingly disturbed with the doomsday mindset we are inciting about newspapers. We are needlessly scaring ourselves into a state of panic."

Ketter conceded that as an industry, "we face big problems, problems that go to the very bone of our business."

But he said reducing newshole and other cost-cutting measures that impact quality news gathering "makes no strategic sense to me. Newspapers are still purchased primarily for their news value, and if you depreciate that value over time, the enterprise will wither."

Ketter said he was pleased with a new ASNE initiative, the Journalism Values Institute, which brought journalists and readers together to talk about their expectations of newspapers, their core values and their role in democracy.

And he said an ASNE study indicated that young readers could be attracted, "if we will only change the way we treat these young people throughout the paper ... They don't want us to generalize about them. They don't want us to talk down to them."

Salman Rushdie

Rushdie, in a speech pocked with humor, had a strong message for editors.

While he praised editors' roles in maintaining a free press, he added, "It seems to me, however, that we live in an increasingly censorious age. By this I mean that the broad, indeed international acceptance of First Amendment principles is being steadily eroded."

"Many special interest groups, claiming the moral high ground, now demand the protection of the censor. Political correctness and the rise of the religious right provide the pro-censorship lobby with further cohorts."

Now, Rushdie said, disagreement equates with disrespect.

But, he argued, that democracies "do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around their fellow-citizens' opinions ... There must be argument, and it must be impassioned and untrammelled."

Free societies, he noted, are full of disagreements. "Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked; and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most important contribution to the free world."

Rodriguez is Managing Editor of the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee.