Q & A : RICK ARTHUR: It’s All News to Him

It’s been three months since longtime Herald Examiner sports and news editor Rick Arthur tossed his future into the evolving stew that is Fox Television news at KTTV in Los Angeles. The Long Beach native made the jump from newspapers to television about a month after the Herald Examiner folded late last fall.

Sharon Bernstein interviewed Arthur about his new job as managing editor at KTTV, the flagship of what will be the Fox news network, and about the transition from newsprint to videotape.

Tell me about your journalism background.

I rather fell into it at the age of 16. I grew up in Long Beach, and my brother-in-law was working in the sports department of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Like every high school kid, I needed a part-time job, and he got me an introduction and an interview, where I became the sports correspondent in my high school.

In 1974-75, I made that transition from sports to news and really loved it. News became my preference. In 1980, I came over to the Herald Examiner as assistant news editor, and (after serving as news editor and, finally, sports editor), I worked for the Herald Examiner until its demise.

How do you like television?

I like the competition. I like the successes, and there are daily successes on one level or another.

I always liked the immediacy of the product. I liked that in print, where you’d work a night shift putting the product out, and at 1 or 2 in the morning here it would come rolling off the presses, and you’d look at your section or your page or your story, and you’d know whether you did a good or a bad job, and in either case, tomorrow is brand new. That was always one of my joys.

And it continues in TV. It’s the same thing. You work through the day, and into the evening, and here’s your show.

Is it different from newspapers?

Not as different as I expected going in and not as different as I think lay people would expect. The biggest difference is the inability to devote more than a few minutes concentration to any one subject (during the day while gathering the news). Because you’re going to hear something on the scanner, or there’s going to be a bulletin on the wire, or you’re going to see something on one of the countless monitors in the newsroom, and there’s going to be a fire or a wreck or a disaster or a human interest story that you must roll on immediately.

The medium dictates that you have to act first and ask questions later. And in print, the story was going to be there. You could always get the cop or the robber or the victim or the survivors after the event had occurred. But, by God, we have to go get pictures of the event as it’s happening, or you’re going to be left only with the aftermath, which simply doesn’t suffice.

Does the top of the newscast change more than the front page used to change?

Yes. That’s again what is exciting about this medium, more exciting than print can be. Print deadlines dictate and technology dictates that you can’t rip up that front page as often as you would like. But you sure can change the top of your newscast by rushing a reporter and a photographer in a microvan or a satellite truck to a news story, and the whole appearance of your “front page” changes dramatically.

Has your print background helped?

Yes. It sure seems apparent to me that print reporters and editors can make the transition to TV much more readily than vice versa, because (there are) basic reporting skills that are the nature of the beast in newspapers and the career progression that is the nature of the beast in newspapers.

Are there certain areas you stay away from, certain areas where you’re still learning?

I’m constantly learning on the technical end and wish I had more time or could divorce myself from the daily newscast just to observe and learn and learn by osmosis. But instead, it’s sort of pick it up as you go along. I’ve felt this strongly a couple of times. This is the first time in 15 or more years in which I haven’t done every job in the newsroom.

Looking at the Herald Examiner as a news organization and Fox News as a news organization, would you compare the two?

The comparison is the underdog, is the little guy up against the big guys, which is exciting, and which was part of the appeal.

This is a network in its infancy. This is a network taking shape. There are no promises or guarantees for anyone on any level.

On the local level, we have just our 10 p.m. local newscast right now, and we’re all hoping that as weeks and months and years go by, we’ll have an afternoon show and a morning show and an early evening show and news magazines and documentaries and specials. So it’s a real ground-floor opportunity, and it’s fairly comparable to the appeal for me in 1980 of coming to the Herald Examiner.

Have you met any frustrations coming over from print to TV?

Just the personal frustration of not knowing some technical things, how to accomplish a particular task or if indeed a particular goal is achievable.

One other frustration does come to mind, of which there are fairly regular examples. In editing a print story, the reporter could turn in a story, and he or she and I could then be side by side at my computer and read it through together and work on any suggested changes together. That does happen here-it’s standard procedure that the reporters go over their scripts with me, and there is editing to large and small extents involved, but the process is so much more time-consuming. So the ideal just can’t happen, which would be that I as editor look at all their raw tapes with them, decide on which sound bites to use, which pictures to use, then work on the script with them and be more deeply involved in the entire editing process.

There has been criticism about television’s limitations in terms of depth of reporting. Has that been a frustration?

No. We’re moving ahead and already do fairly regular special reports, and clearly it seems that more of those will come. The sometimes daily frustration in not being able to do more in-depth stories is offset by greater opportunities to do them.

Did you have an attitude change about television once you came in?

I haven’t really changed my attitude. I knew coming in that anyone’s newscast-whether it’s one of the independents, whether it’s network or not-does not and should not serve as Joe Sixpack’s source of news. It should not stand up on its own as filling the viewer in on what happened in his or her world that day. It’s abominable that it does. But IUm not alone in the realization that we’re not U.”. News and World Report here, and no one should expect us to be.