ASNE - Agent of change moves to St. Louis

An American editor

Cole C. Campbell, an editor at the vanguard of new newsroom techniques and structure in Norfolk, Va., comes to St. Louis with some new ideas, but traditional values

Lots of newspaper editors have experimented with changing newsroom structure. Others are trying public journalism. Still others have changed the design of their newspapers to try to attract at-risk reader groups.

But Cole Campbell is one of the few editors to do all three at once. During his tenure as editor of Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot, the paper became known as a hotbed of new ideas about the way journalism is practiced. Those ideas drew praise for their innovation in some circles and derision as an abandonment of newspaper traditions in others.

Now Campbell brings his ideas to a more traditional newsroom, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he took over as editor on Oct. 7. A native Virginian, Campbell also has worked at the Greensboro News & Record, Tarheel: The Magazine of North Carolina, and the News & Observer in Raleigh. He was editor of the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina. He is a frequent speaker on the subject of newspaper change and has taught seminars at the American Press Institute more times than anybody can count.

Q: You were at the Virginian-Pilot for six years, serving as managing editor and then editor, and you led the paper through major changes - converting to a team-based newsroom, a complete redesign of the newspaper and experimentation with public journalism. You had a lot invested in that newsroom. How hard was it to leave the Pilot for the Post-Dispatch job?

A: It was very hard. But I think that the folks in Norfolk are strong enough and prepared enough and committed enough to keep that paper doing interesting, fascinating journalism. They don't need me anymore.

Q: Of all the things you did in Norfolk - changing to a team-based structure, experimenting with public journalism and with design - what has made the most contribution to the industry?

A: What's drawn the most interest has been our willingness to explore team structures, to see what that does to the journalism, our willingness to experiment with design and presentation to see what that does for the reader, and our willingness to explore new ways of treating our readers as citizens instead of just consumers to see what that does for public discourse.

Those are the three areas that have drawn excitement in some quarters and disparagement in others. What's interesting is that I'm not sure how many on either side have actually read the paper. So you wind up with a reputation based on word of mouth and what's in the trade papers.

Q: Speaking of reputation, what do you think about your reputation in the industry? Do you see yourself being a lightning rod for new ideas? How do you deal with the fact that there are a lot of people out there who vehemently disagree with your views?

A: Within journalism, I think new ideas are a lightning rod and the people who embrace them often get struck by the lightning. I'm much more concerned about the reputation of the newspaper with its readers than I am of the editor's reputation with his peers.

Q. Going into a newsroom restructuring for a second time, how will you approach that? Will you restructure the newsroom in St. Louis into teams?

A. I don't know. I don't think what we did in Norfolk is a template for other newspapers necessarily. I intend to use the same process to analyze what we need to do in St. Louis. That process begins with an intimate and empirical understanding of readers and the community we intend to serve. It moves to a lot of hard thinking about practices and which ones we must sustain because they are true to the values and purpose of the Post-Dispatch and which ones we can discard as less useful.

Q. How did you get to your current views on the need to change newsrooms?

A. I think it grows out of cumulative experience. Every time an editor goes out and talks to the Rotary Club, he hears the same litany: Why is there so much bad news in the paper? Why don't I see the city I live in reflected in the newspaper? Those experiences led me to think about fundamentally what it is we do. Then I read pieces that were really influential. Christopher Lasch had a piece in the early '90s about how newspapers used to be much more vital and dynamic and how as a result public discourse used to be much more vital and dynamic. Bill Kovach gave a speech in '91 about what we termed accountability journalism and how to make sure public institutions are held accountable in real ways, not just kicking them in the shins. Then Buzz Merritt published the People Project in Wichita, which explored treating readers as citizens. I also learned a lot from Richard Harwood of the Harwood Group and Jay Rosen of New York University.

Another major influence was when Landmark Communications, the Pilot's parent company, embraced Total Quality Management, which places a lot of emphasis on making sure the experts in the work, the people who do the work, make decisions about how the work should be done. So that led to a lot of discussion and thought about working in teams, giving people the tools they need to work effectively without a lot of rework and inspection.

Q: Your critics would argue that the Pilot became immersed in "management speak,'' in looking at management theory at the expense of talking about journalism. How would you respond to that?

A: Some management speak is just management speak. But fundamentally, I think journalism is an act of asking questions and finding answers. And journalism can learn to ask new questions and find new answers by tapping the methods of other disciplines. Also, when you're exploring and trying to find new ways of doing things, you have to think in new ways and one way we can express new thoughts is through new language.

Fundamentally, I think the impatience with looking outside the profession to other disciplines and using terms from other disciplines reflects an incorrect assumption that journalism within itself holds all the answers to its problems. I reject the view that journalism should be a closed culture. I think it should be an open culture, open to new ideas, new words, new practices, as long as its central values are preserved. I do think it is creative, but I also think it's analytical. I think it's intuitive but also empirical.

Q: How does the move to team-based newsrooms affect the editor's role in the newsroom? What should that role be?

A: I think editors are primarily responsible for a strategic vision for their newsroom and by extension for their newspapers, because the newsroom is at the heart of the newspaper's economic enterprise. What journalists do is central to the financial success of any newspaper. I also think editors are responsible for building the capacity of the newsroom. By capacity, I mean resources like staff and money and newshole. But I also mean skills and tools and knowledge and systems that help people perform at their highest levels.

Q: Where's the journalism in that?

A: Strategic vision is all about journalism. It's all about how we're going to cover our community, serve our readers and tell our stories. Capacity is all about computer-assisted reporting, digital photography, story-telling techniques and investigative projects.

Q: What are your impressions of St. Louis and the newspaper?

A: The city is a great, dynamic place that faces some large challenges common to many American cities - racial division, great distribution of income and wealth and political tensions over the urban core versus the suburban communities. It's a great place to be a journalist.

The newspaper is probably unusual for American newspapers of this size in that the staff is stable, mature and made up of so many people from St. Louis and southern Illinois. I mean it is unusual in that it has all three of those characteristics. This is a newspaper staff that has a deep investment in and knowledge of and commitment to the state and the region that it covers.

Q: How do you leverage that commitment to make the newspaper better?

A: I think that if people are committed to the success of their community and of their newspaper, they already have the commitment to taking on the hard task of making the paper a vital force. The people here are not careerists, they're not jumping from paper to paper to paper. They are journalists committed to the Post-Dispatch and the people of St. Louis. That's a tremendous asset.

Q: What are you going to work on first?

A: We're going to work on urgency, sense of place and getting the faces and voices of the people of St. Louis in the paper more regularly.

Q: So are those areas that are lacking now?

A: Those are areas that can be improved.

Q: How has the staff received you so far, in your first month on the job?

A: Everyone has been generous and helpful and properly skeptical. After all, this is the Show-Me State, and people are waiting for me to show 'em.

Weaver is managing editor of the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle.