How Journalists Can Maintain Their Influence

H.L. Mencken

Since the days of H.L. Mencken, journalists have voiced dismay that owners and top managers of news organizations don't accept the legitimacy of journalistic values. We like to think that those values include a deep respect for reporting the facts, for sorting out what is true and not true, for acting as a check and balance against institutional abuses of power and for essentially getting the right story told the right way in a timely manner.

Three recent reshufflings in the media world, however, continue a trend of promoting people who don't necessarily understand what quality journalism is:

• Time Inc. named Laura Lang to run the largest magazine publisher in the United States. She came from the digital advertising agency Digitas. There's no question that all media organizations need to adapt to the digital era, but don't they also need some exposure to the fundamental craft of journalism?
• NPR, the venerable radio empire based in Washington, hired Gary E. Knell as president and chief executive. He was formerly chief executive at Sesame Workshop, the producer of "Sesame Street," was managing director of Manager Media International a print and multimedia publishing company based in Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and displayed skills in multimedia programming. He has never worked in a newsroom.
• And ThomsonReuters said farewell to Chief Executive Thomas Glocer, who was not a journalist but was known for being sympathetic to the cause. Which is one reason he was not seen as "financially disciplined." Glocer was replaced by Chief Operating Officer James Smith, who started his career as a journalist at smaller papers but turned to number crunching in Thomson's professional division. This move was part of the Thomson family's takeover of Reuters, but the message was that cost accountability is going to be more important than spending money on quality journalism.

The implications of these moves are obvious. If the people at the top have scant exposure to journalism, much less respect for it, then they are going to look at seasoned, experienced journalists as mere assets to be moved around the chessboard, and eliminated when they become expensive. They are going to see the world through digital and financial prisms.

What can we do? For insight, I called old friend Jim O'Shea, a former member of the board of the OPC and the former managing editor of both the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. He wrote the book, The Deal From Hell, which described how Chicago property magnate Sam Zell essentially raped some of America's finest newspapers. "It's in vogue today," says O'Shea, "to hire people from outside the media because 'the journalists just don't get it'. But in the same breath, they talk about the need for credibility. Credibility is as old-fashioned as journalists are. We know that getting it right is important. The urge is to get people who are more savvy on the Internet and the digital world. But that risks a loss of attention to accuracy. It's 'get it out there first'. That doesn't necessarily lead to credibility."

Rather than just beating our breasts and commiserating about the fate of quality journalism, O'Shea says, and I agree, that journalists need to develop greater sophistication in helping media organizations adapt to the digital era and actually make money. We need to move beyond purism. "Journalists themselves have to get more involved in the business side of things and look at themselves more as journalistic entrepreneurs and not the high priests of journalism who can't get their fingers dirty making money," O'Shea says.

That obviously is not easy and I cannot claim any entrepreneurial genius because I worked for news organizations that ultimately failed or nearly failed — United Press International, Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, Business 2.0 and Chief Executive magazine. But I think we have to spend more time and talent understanding the business models of the news organizations we work for and trying to help them chart paths that uphold the best journalistic values at the same time that they adapt to the digital world and fundamental disruptions in the advertising world. If we could do that, more journalists would be actually managing media organizations, not just serving at the whim of their masters.