Introduction and Keynote Address by Geneva Overholser

This forum, the 18th session in the Committee of Concerned Journalists' series, was sponsored by the Committee and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication's Minnesota Journalism Center at the University of Minnesota where it was held. It continued the focus taken at the 15th forum in Missouri, where we turned from the journalists' views of their core responsibilities and the current challenges to them to the relationship between journalists and citizens. This session probed further into the various levels of accountability journalists face, particularly those placed upon them by citizens and sources. The day was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Minnesota Journalism Center, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Star Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio, 91.1 FM News, Twin Cities Public Television, KSTP-TV, and the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Geneva Overholser, former ombudsman and current columnist for the Washington Post, described the "concentric circles" of journalistic accountability: the marketplace, which "doesn't necessitate being cowed or even being silenced," the public, our smaller communities, specific readers and the newsroom. In her view, journalists too often fail to be
accountable to each. The need to protect oneself from external pressures is taken too far, leading journalists to immunize themselves of all accountability. "It's hard to separate being responsive from caving, being accountable from being a tool, being sensitive from being weak."

Many of the established methods to help journalists be accountable, such as corrections, do not do the job, she argued. The most valuable method would be to embrace individual accountability: Take each call from a reader seriously; Always ask how we would feel as the subject of a story;"What is it that people need to know to govern themselves effectively? This is our driving force."

Ms. Overholser: ...We [in journalism] are under enormous stress from change. Much of it is change that we should welcome...

The fact is an effort to gather together and ponder where we are today and to think about what we can agree upon as our strengths and our principles so as to give voice to them seems to me to be one of the most important things we can do. I've just handed in a draft, thank God, of one of these American Journalism Review pieces on the state of the American newspaper. The one I did was on the changing role of American editors.

And I was really struck in interviewing editors ... people really want to talk now and there is a strong feeling. I think that the moments of difficulty and even resignation, hopelessness, I think, for some that we've been through, to some degree in recent years, are giving way to a conviction that we ought to speak about what we feel to be the basic fundamental commitments of journalism. That when journalism is threatened whether it's by too much emphasis on the market, too much emphasis on business principles, we need to speak out and say here are the basics. Not in ways that simply carp on the sidelines, but in constructive and collaborative ways. ... And so I urge you all to participate in this discussion...

Anonymous sources, arrogance in the newsroom, failures of fairness, failures of good heartedness, and failures of balance. If you think about all of these like so much else that we do at our worse, these all go on partly because we are not thinking about the many ways day-to-day in which we should feel accountable to others...

Why do we fail so often in journalism at accountability? I don't think it's just moral laxity or self-centeredness or other ethical failings, although far be it from me to let us off the hook on all those counts. But I do think there are some things about journalism that lead us correctly to question to what degree we should be responsive to others in regard to our work. In other words, there are some ways that we have schooled ourselves appropriately to guard against undue pressures, but which may result unfortunately in our failing to attend to some things we ought to attend to. What do I mean by this? Let me give you three examples. We know in the abstract that we ought to be accountable to readers, right? But we also know that readers will often tell us they wish we hadn't said such and such or used this or that fact, or focused on X or Y or butted into something or other, interviewed some poor soul. We all know how often we are blamed as messenger when we did the right thing in bringing an unwelcome message. We have, in other words, schooled ourselves, even steeled ourselves, I would say, to be immune to some criticism some of the time for good reason.

I'll give you a second example. We know, again, in the abstract, that we have responsibilities towards sources, to name them correctly, to quote them accurately, but we also know that there are times when the relationship between journalists and sources of information is necessarily an adversarial one. That is in the interest of readers and in the pursuit of information there will be times when we will appropriately incur the anger of sources.

Finally, take bosses. Be honest now--Have you ever felt that while of course you're accountable to the boss, you may have a better fix on an individual or a braver outlook on a possible story, so that you can pursue it despite advice against it and tell yourself, sometimes with justification, and sometimes even with eventual glory that you are right to ignore the boss? I know I have. And I certainly think most of us as editors these days, in fact, spend considerable amounts of time, if not defying the boss, at least trying hard to soften the impact of dictates, maybe corporate dictates that we don't agree with in the name of better journalism.

All of this is by way of saying that we journalists have grown-up in the bus with an understanding that refusing to listen to others, at least refusing to listen too hard under certain situations can actually be a virtue. And I think that this feeling is part at least of why we go afoul on accountability. It's hard to separate being responsive from caving, being accountable from being a tool, being sensitive from being weak.

Well, that's all I'm going to do to try to understand our pain. Now, I'm going to move on to flogging us for our failures. That's what you expect from a speaker at this early time in the morning. Let me start by going directly to the question that was posed to me in my speaking invitation. What is the ideal standard of accountability? Perhaps I'm inspired by being part of a university with a fine medical school, but I would say the medical commitment, first do no harm, is not a bad one for us to keep in mind as a place to start. If we thought more often about the harm that we can do, indeed that we do do, whether to political figures, to our communities, to our profession, we would be better off and so would all of those folks whom I just mentioned. If we can accept that as a standard, at least to set out with then let us move on to the very tough question, accountable to whom.

Here the answers are numerous... I decided that concentric circles are a good way to go at this. Let's start with the outside first. The marketplace, another phrase that was mentioned in my speech invitation. We have to be accountable to those who own us and to what motivates them. This accountability is a particularly difficult form for some of us because we don't always find the motivation of the marketplace harmonious with journalism, to under state the case. Yet we do have to understand the realities of those who own us and for most of us nowadays that means something about understanding the realities of Wall Street, because ignoring facts won't change anything.

But here we get to an important part of accountability. We are accountable to our newspapers owners, but that doesn't necessitate being cowed or even being silenced. On the contrary, I would argue that we have a responsibility to speak our minds in intelligent constructive ways where we can do so when we see harm to our newspapers...

In the next concentric circle I would place the public, and this is a particularly complex circle, because when I say public, I mean, we are accountable to society, to our democracy, to our civic life. This is a huge responsibility. What we choose to write about, how we write about it, where it's played, all these make an enormous difference to the public. When we over emphasize crime in the interest of attracting readers we harm our fellow citizens. When we leave out portions of the community in our coverage because they=re less desirable demographically we do our society a grave disservice. When we deal endlessly with the problems, whether with Government, with young people, with the net, you name it. When we paint something as hopeless or endlessly corrupt we tear down our civic life.

Pulling in slightly from this notion of public to the next concentric circle, our communities. We are--we as newspapers and we as individuals--citizens in our community. When we confuse detachment with objectivity. When we fail to accept the degree to which we shape the views of our neighbors, affect the outcome of an election, choose which issues will come to the fore of the municipal agenda, the state agenda, even the national agenda, we are failing as citizens. It's worth mentioning here as an aside that newspapers use to be much better citizens in terms of local philanthropy too, but that's another speech. I'd be glad to give that if anyone wants to ask.

The next circle is our readers, but I want to pause for a moment to consider the ground between these two circles, community and readers because I think lately we have been doing something very important and not very welcome here. We are increasingly defining those elements of our community that we will seek out as our readers. We define them when the circulation department decides what neighborhoods it will press, ... when we decide where we will keep vendor boxes, where we'll do home delivery. We define these elements that we will appeal to by covering certain parts of the community and not others, certain interests and not others. And increasingly it is dollar signs and not civic mindedness that are driving these determinations and these definitions.

Now come with me into the newsroom, which of course is where we really live and where we confront the tough choices that we make every day. We are accountable, of course, to certain standards of journalism, to fairness and balance, accuracy and comprehensiveness. We are accountable to our sources, to quote them accurately, to present them fairly. As employers and employees we are accountable to one another. Editors have a responsibility to write candid and forthright performance reviews and not to fool themselves as so often we have into believing that kindness consists of soft peddling the criticisms until the problem becomes so difficult that we come on like a lion. I've seen it happen more than once and, I must say, participated in it.

Editors have a responsibility to pay their employees fairly and give them opportunities commensurate with their talent and effort. And reporters and copy editors and photographers have responsibilities to work hard, to be thorough, to give of themselves and their talents richly. ... In the work place accountability is particularly challenged today, I think, because patterns of work are changing so quickly. With more and more corporate ownership, with increasing involvement in marketing, with better educated but much more itinerant staffs with new ways of organizing, such as teams and pods, we have experienced an enormous amount of change...

Bill Woo, the former editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, many of you know, I'm sure, is now teaching at Stanford and he was telling me the other day something interesting about the kind of research that he is doing. He is doing research on something called the organizational theory of accidents, I think it was, and as I understand it, this is the notion that the way an organization and entity is set up may in fact actually lead to an accident like Bhopal or Three Mile Island or Value Jet. And he thinks that in this era when we're all concentrating so much on management in the newsroom there may be some link to the fact that we have been plagued with our own Bhopal's or New Republics, or Boston Globes. And that maybe part of the problem is that the accountability isn't strong enough. ... I can't help but think that maybe Bill is onto something. But, okay, how can we make the accountability link clearer, how can we strengthen it. Let's consider that question as I take up the final, going for the final stride here and we think about what we already do attempt to do. The most obvious answer to how do we now hold ourselves accountable is corrections, right? And how well do we do. Well, I would be hard pressed to give us better than a D. I mean, really, think about it. We brag about putting corrections in one location, we're anchoring them, we say, so that readers can be sure they will know where to find them. And that usually means we're kind of stuffing them down at the bottom of page two.

It also means that when it pleases us we'll put the correction where else we want to. In sports ... or in the book review or in the health tab or, you know, whatever seems right at the moment. So it turns out that our commitment to consistency is strongest when used as a defense against the request to put corrections on the front page. You know, the demand, make the omission errors as prominent as the story was. And we say, no, sorry we must anchor the corrections, not that corrections really are an omission of error.

Which brings me to the next complaint about them, the form. Yuck. Is it any wonder that corrections so often make their way into joke anthologies. You haven't a clue what was wrong when you read the typical correction, you know, "The number was wrong." Well, tell me, did you state it too big so I'll remember what misimpression got into my head? Was it too small? I mean, give me a clue here. The motto seems to be admit as little as possible, say as little possible, take as little space as possible, and hope no one notices.

But here comes best part. Just try getting a correction into most papers. You think the reporter is going to push for it? Come on... That correction may show up on his or her performance review and same for the supervising editor. And by the time it gets to the top the editor thinks, well, if this really were needed it would have been taken care of lower down ..., that's wrong. The public knows all this and so do sources.

I have to say, I gained new steam on this one as ombudsman at The Washington Post. I had been there maybe six months when I got a call from the First Lady's office. It's a staffer, he says, do you realize that the speech that the First Lady made in China, this was widely billed as her most important foreign policy speech, it was what, three years ago, I guess, now at a women's conference in Beijing. Big speech, State Department called it a big speech. The Post ran it on the front page, lead story, and then ran significant excerpts from it. But the excerpts were actually from a different very minor speech she had given to the WHO, World Health Organization that morning.

And, you know, to tell you the truth, I hadn't read the excerpts. So I went back and read them, it's just amazing, you read the very fine reporting from our Bureau Chief, from The Post Bureau Chief in Beijing. Then you read the excerpts and you think, what the hell? The speech didn't bear any relation to the excerpts. So the First Lady's office called and points this out. And I said, well, did you call the Foreign Desk, yes we did. And I said, what did they say? Well, didn't she give both speeches. I said, you're kidding, honest to goodness? And I started into a hassle with the Foreign Desk that you would have thought I was a harpy flying in with no reason at all. ...They kept saying to me, well, she gave it, and she gave it the same day and, you know, they both elude in one point to abortion or something. ... After two days of this they finally wrote this thing, they refused to call it a correction, they called it a clarification. And they didn't run different excerpts. And, I'm telling you, The Post is not alone in this. The public gets this. We are terrible on corrections. Maybe it's F, I think I'll move it to F. So much for corrections.

Now we come to ombudsmen. I think they are a good idea now that I have been one. Of course, when I was an editor, like most editors, I didn't think they were a good idea. I thought, you know, if I've got a slot here 'll have another cops reporter. Plus it's my responsibility, I wear the mantle and I get the pay. Well, that's fine. But two things, one no editor has time really to be a good ombudsman, you just don't have time to take all the calls, to take them thoughtfully. To give readers the kind of time and attention that they want. And even more important, you don't have the right perspective.

It is amazing when you're not responsible for something, how much more ready you are to really think, you know, maybe we blew it. Even the most dedicated editor trying hard not to be defensive wants in his or her heart to justify, to explain, to help you understand, well, let me help you understand what we did, the reader doesn't want that. The reader wants to say, boy, did you blow this. And, you know, that just sets most journalists off big time, whereas the ombudsman sits there and thinks, well, you know, this could be fodder for my columns. So there is a big difference.

Then there are reader advisory groups. I think they are a good idea. They get real people into the newspaper=s consciousness. Invite a cross section of readers to ponder the newspaper with you and its just amazing what you'll hear. Smaller versions of this concept are useful and used by many newspapers inviting people into the editorial sessions, into news meetings, et cetera. Then there are editor's columns. I think these can be an extremely strong tool as long as they're not self-justifications. I must say, I do not find that they are distinguished as an art form by candor and forthrightness. How many editors, for example, explained during the news print crisis a few years ago that they were having to cut this or that feature or shrink the news hole a bit in order to keep the profit margin from going from 21 to 18 say, instead just going 21 to 20. I mean, how many when the crisis was over mentioned news print price decreases as prominently as they had increases?

Then there is journalism criticism and I think this one of the most hopeful trends on the horizon. Content magazine ... it's onto something when you hear the howls that I heard, at least, from the Washington press corps. ... And the conversations, the kind of conversations that we are here participating in today, very useful I believe.

In the end, though, I'd say that the real accountability is individual accountability and for those of you who are going into journalism, I really hope that you will think hard about this. Because this craft has enormous power, yet it operates in a climate virtually free of agreed upon rules and an atmosphere of incredible freedom. And we are our own worst enemies in this atmosphere, inviting constraints on that freedom and courting reductions in our influence-- declining readership for oneBwhen we forget to hold ourselves accountable as institutions and as individuals.

Holding ourselves accountable means thinking with every phone call we get that that reader just might be right. ... It means really thinking what is this reader is saying that I need to hear? It also means keeping in mind those we will never hear from who will never call us. Those with little power, and little status, and little reason to read the newspaper, the little hope that they will see themselves, or their worries in the newspapers. It means asking ourselves with every article we write and publish, no matter how small, how we would feel if we were the subject of it. It means keeping our thoughts on the impact on all of our work, being fair, showing negativity. It means thinking about our responsibility to a Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. What is it that the people need to know to govern themselves effectively? This is our driving force. It means thinking about our responsibility to our profession which is so privileged yet very fragile. And keeping always in mind that every individual failure becomes a blot on the reputations of every one of us. You know, this, you've heard people say again and again, oh, no, I'm not going to talk to a reporter, I've been burned. That one burn has repercussions that go on and on for all of us. And then they will be the person who is wrong in most of our professional opinion to feel burned, but somebody needed to respond in ways that we fail to respond to have that be the lasting impression.

Finally, being accountable means bearing always in mind that remarkable gift, the first amendment and the grand vision of those idealists who made all of our work possible by writing it. But remembering always that it is not our gift, it's the public's gift. Keeping all these things in mind, it will at least be harder, I think, to be arrogant. And if I had to nominate one great enemy of accountability that would be it. Guard against it with everything you've got for your sake and for the sake of all the rest of us.

Mr. Babcock: Could you elaborate on the anonymous sources policies and confidential sources policies of The Washington Post?

Ms. Overholser: ... Boy, you're ringing my bells here. I, you know, I'm going to back into that by saying, people have sometimes said, do you think an ombudsman really makes any difference and I think that I could set a whole number of ways in which I think that my three years at The Post made a difference, but boy when it comes to the thing I was most worried about it would not be Exhibit A. I mean, The Washington Post is operating, of course, in a climate, Washington, the Federal Government, the International Diplomatic community which is absolutely, absolutely saturated with anonymity and has been for years. But something bigger than that lies at the root of The Post involvement with anonymous sources. I think it is a huge issue for The Post. And if you think about it it's particularly interesting because anonymity lies at the heart of both The Post's most glorious moment and it's most horrible moment. Watergate of course in the first instance, and Janet Cook in the second. And there is an enormous disconnect between what the official policy of The Post is. You read the style book, it says all the right thing.

It costs some credibility every time we use an anonymous source. We must set the barrier high enough against them... We should have two sources if we're going to use them. They should be run by higher ups, et cetera. It's just, it just doesn't happen. The Post, my favorite [example] that I remember was one beautiful day that a reporter had gone out to National Airport and was talking about the weather and somebody said, isn't it a gorgeous day, said so and so, who asked not to be identified. You know, there has got to be a good reason to use an anonymous source and that ain't it. I mean, several people have pointed out that the New York Times is actually just a lot more clever because they just don't say the part about who asked not to be identified...

Finally I wrote a column that took one article, an important article that had, I think it was 27 "sources said," it wasn't even that long an article. ... It wasn't "someone who works for the prosecutor." It was sources said, a source said, two sources said, 27 of these, you know, and I just ran them like this in my column, and damn if it wasn't effective. ...Then at the end I put the style book. And people came in and, you know, yelled at me and Bob Woodward, Lord, you know, came in don't you get that we've got to do this sometime and I agree with you generally, but he doesn't agree with me. I mean, look at Woodward's books, they are nothing but anonymous, and it makes a difference. ...

So the fact is I think I managed to elicit a lot of discussion. And I think by the time the Lewinsky scandal broke and it was so clear that we were so ready, I think, to allow ourselves to be used as all but tools of the independent counsel... Susan Schmidt, one of the prime reporters came in, and just, you know, you don't get it. I mean, what do you want me to do out my sources. I said, no, but I mean don't use them unless you can characterize them. I think The Post, I mean, I don't know what's going to make the difference.

But one thing that the Committee has done is to really put specific numbers on these things. And I think The Post was more embarrassed by the Committee's survey that first said, worst by far on [the] use of unnamed sources in the Lewinsky scandal story was The Washington Post.

Mr. Babcock: One of the senior editors [at the Post] told of one of her reporters who begins every phone conversation with Hi, such and such, of course everything we're going to say from now on is off the record... If you are an editor there ... how would you handle that situation yourself?

Ms. Overholser: I'd kill myself before I become editor of The Washington Post... I don't think that what The Post wants to do is handle it. I think The Post editors, too many of them, want to go on pretending that they are doing the right thing and let it happen the way it is. Some of them are cowed by some of the big shot reporters, as is actually true, I think in newspapers across the country in many ways...

I think if you want to it's clear what you do. You say, we aren't going to use them unless they are approved by the managing editor.

Question: I'm with School of Journalism. And I'm wondering how some media can ever escape the entanglements and the prerogatives of ownership because they are so systematic...

Ms. Overholser: [N]ot just the corporatization but the increasing emphasis on market driven principles is affecting us all far more then we are really talking about. And I'm not just talking here about standing up and railing against big finance or something. I think the only answer is to be thinking, and this is one reason I am so proud to be part of what the committee is doing. Really be thinking about the specific ways and lack of adequate resources, if that's true [or] a kind of loss of autonomy locally.

I really do think that one of the problems I had with Gannett's ownership was that increasingly, with every good intention, they were attempting to bring their newspapers up by requiring a standardized kind of assessment we cannot afford to become so homogenized. We can't be responsive to our communities when editors [are] being required to move all the time and not get to know their community. So no wonder we come up with these desperate hopes like civic journalism. It's a great goal, but how about just live in the community for a while, it works better. I think we have got to talk about [the effects]. And the main piece that has been missing so far is we've got to let the readers know about it. We are terrible on reporting on ourselves. We've got to report on ourselves in terms of the ways our practices are changing. The reader is out there clueless.

Question: My name is Judy Borger and I'm a reporter for the Pioneer Press. Could you please address the question or the issue of arrogance in the newsroom and how it grew and how concerned journalists can avoid it?

Ms. Overholser: You know, I appreciate your asking that. I'm kind of two minds about this. I mean, I don't really know exactly. I do think there [are] some appropriate reasons why we say to ourselves, I can't listen too much, I've got to keep my eye on the goal which is to tell the truth. I feel like a number of values we have morphed into something bad. Another one is the detachment thing. [I]n Washington you go on the tube with a handy little sign identifying you and carry on about, you know, Al Gore and what an idiot he is and then the next morning they will see your byline about a news story about Al Gore and the public is going, huh, wait a minute, how are we suppose to trust this person. I think, I think that, again, we've got to name this issue.

My problem is we have, but we're so ineffectual . I don't know, because I also don't want us to be little wimps. You know, so I'm totally clueless on this. I wonder if you have an answer.

Ms. Borger: I think that sometimes we grow in arrogance after you've done this sort of thing for a few years and you, after a while [T]heir attitude is that my question is more important than whatever the answer might be. And I think that the public can see that subtlety sometimes and it creeps into the news print.

Ms. Overholser: Just to complicate the matter further, sometimes it isn't the experienced ones who were the most arrogant. [I]n The Post newsroom, I must say people like Walter Pinkus and David Broder are the most thoughtful. And it's the kind of, you know, new, hey, hey, I'm really hot shit to be here at The Washington Post who are the most obnoxious. I don't know what it is. I really do think that part of it is that we are in a culture that has rewarded people who share some of those characteristics.

My name is Dina Swain-Schuster, I work for a television news organization here in the Twin Cities. I'm doing some research on my own about accountability in broadcast journalists [I]t's infrequent and it's usually only when it's really glaring and it's a liability for the station You will almost never see a TV station retract small little mistakes because they're small. And I wonder if you could comment on that.

Ms. Overholser: I do know that broadcast typically has not done corrections, partly because of the understanding that the viewer won't necessarily be watching after having seen it in one instance. National broadcasts, however, are definitely very much involved in the kind of judgments being made in Washington now about the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and that's one thing I feel is hopeful. The networks have been and some of the cable news reporters have been so important and powerful in shaping these stories

It seems to me there is actually more scrutiny about broadcast coverage right now then there has typically been. So maybe that wave will be helpful

Question: My name is Phyllis Williams-Thompson, I work for the March of Dimes Foundation and I was wondering what suggestions can you give to the source or reader when inaccurate information is reported? How should you go about giving your criticism to the journalists? And even more importantly if they don't respond what are the next steps?

Ms. Overholser: [F]irst is to go to the very closest link, the reporter who actually did the story. I think that is absolutely the best place to go because you want to have a relationship with that reporter that continues to be honest. And too many people really do say I'm just going to let it lie. But that's not effective for your organization, for the public's knowledge, or for the reporter because the reporter won't ever learn what he or she did wrong if they did do something.

[I]t's hard not to be angry when you call, but I know from being on the receiving end of angry phone calls that some people wait so long to call the newspaper that they are just so furious.

[I]f you can possibly call and say something like I'm really am delighted that, you know, that we have the conversation. I was pleased to see the story today. The one thing I wanted to mention kind of thing, unless they have just totally screwed up and then don't mealy mouth around.

Question: I'm Chuck Lechesky from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. What do you make of the case in Cincinnati with the Chiquita Banana? And the rush apparently by the editors to distance themselves from a story that they were responsible for and that their reporter was responsible for?

Ms. Overholser: [T]he Enquirer reported on this huge business in Cincinnati, Chiquita Bananas [brand] . that talked about all sorts of illegal activities in Central America. And that is clearly a scary case of the corporation just getting in contact with corporate owners. And because this very difficult question of the reporter having used apparently illegal means to gather the information by tapping into the voice mail system of the corporation. The bad stuff there is that it just looks to me like, I mean, you know, [The Enquirer] paid how many millions, 10 and somebody said it might even 12 now or something. And then the Enquirer wrote this very puzzling retraction. You can't tell, did they really think nothing in it was true? It's pretty clear they think parts of it were true and yet they retracted everything, and now the guy is in court.

It's a terrible situation I've got to say, I think all of us should quake in our boots that if this is what it takes, you know, some big bucks guy walks in and lays money on the table and then the next day you apologize to your readers.

Question: Hi, I'm Ron Meador from the Star Tribune. It seems to me that 20-some years ago when I started in this business we had some very effective safeguards against inaccuracy and ethical lapses and arrogance and we called them editors. I wonder if you could give us maybe a preview of your AJR piece and discuss the changing role of editors and how that changing role might relate to some of the issues we've been talking about this morning.

Ms. Overholser: [O]ne of the biggest conclusions that I've reached after interviewing 50 editors from papers large and small all across the country and all different ownership is that editors increasingly, (a) feel less autonomy; and (b) are in the newsroom much less. Many told me they spend less than 50 percent of their time on actually news related items.

In many ways I think the managing editor's job has become far more compelling and far more interesting and editors view it that way because they are on the operating committee and they are in the marketing committee, and they are trying to figure out what new products to launch, and who are the great target markets. [W]hen the person at the top is not visibly there and clearly daily, hourly ready to make tough calls. [Y]ou sort of like to believe that the really brave thing the editor does is to put something in the newspaper that's by God going to make people mad. Forget it. The really brave thing the editor does is not to put something in the newspaper that's going to make the reporter mad. We don't have nearly enough editors who are willing to do this.

And I think it's astonishing to see the degree of change among editors. For one thing, editors are amazingly well paid. I mean, wait until you see my chart, it's astonishing how much editors' pay has gone up compared to other top people in the newsroom. An increasing amount of their pay is tied to NBO's, bonuses which are directly tied to the financial performance their newspaper. I don't think my friends and colleagues are sitting there saying, oh, well, today if I sell the newspaper down the, you know, the river to the tune of 8,000 dollars, of course not.

But your day-to-day environment has very much changed and what you are rewarded for has changed and how you succeed and move on has changed. And I think editors are very concerned about this.