Newspaper Editors Convene, and Are Torn by Doubts

The nation’s newspaper editors, gathering here for their annual convention, seemed racked by collective anxiety about nearly everything.

In their formal panel discussions and their less formal gatherings around hotel bars and lobbies, participants at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting expressed uncertainty about the content of their papers, about cost-cutting pressures from publishers, and about readers’ opinions of the press. At a well-attended session on political correctness in the newsroom, they heard themselves criticized for being at once too liberal and too conservative--too mean and too cowardly.

“I think everyone is searching for what is the next path, the next door, for the industry, said Maggie Balough, of the Austin (Tex.) American-Statesman. “The answers used to be more readily on people’s tongues and some of these old, quick solutions don’t seem so helpful.”

In a panel entitled “Are Newspapers on the Right Track?” Eugene C. Patterson, the former editor of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times had harsh words for the very things editors have emphasized at these gatherings for a decade--namely color graphics and short writing.

“The newspapers on the wrong track have a certain set of characteristics: They are trying to mimic their electronic competitors. . . . They are given to short takes instead of explanation of complex issues. . . . They tend to be too spooked by the electronic superhighway and fail to look at our strengths and their weaknesses,” Patterson said.

What then, the panel moderator asked, should editors say to publishers who suggest that people--especially young people--are increasingly pressed for time and no longer read long articles.

“One of the best arguments is to look at history,” argued Eugene L. Roberts, the newly appointed managing editor of the New York Times, who has criticized the industry’s drift away from writing and content. “There was a big movement toward tight writing and an abhorrence of stories that jumped pages in the 1950s and 1960s,” and it passed, he said.

The day President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, the Dallas Morning News had a rule that no story could jump, he pointed out. “One of the most important stories of this century occurred in their city, and they didn’t jump the goddamn story!”

In addition to the editorial direction of their papers, the editors expressed uncertainty about the tone of their political coverage. Even the president of the group, William A. Hilliard, the retiring editor of the Portland Oregonian, warned the editors about “a cancer of mean-spiritedness.”

What is mean and what is not, however, is unclear, as epitomized by the reactions to an encounter between one member and President Clinton on Wednesday. The editor asked whether the President’s sometimes faltering answers to questions about the Whitewater land deal sounded like a child who made excuses for failing to do her homework.

“That is the perfect question,” whispered one editor at a nearby table. Surprised, the editor next to him turned and said angrily: “That is an obnoxious question.”

In another expression of their concern over the role of newspapers, editors invited as speakers two prominent public figures who recently charged that press malice and laziness drive good people from public service.

C. Lani Guinier, the University of Pennsylvania law professor who was nominated to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, attacked the reporters who covered her for being ignorant and unwilling to learn her real views. Bobby Ray Inman, who withdrew his name as nominee for defense secretary earlier this year, recounted what he called inaccuracies and knowing disregard of the truth in the coverage of him.

The editors also expressed uncertainty over issues involving the use of language and photographs. In a session on political correctness, editors were told about a newspaper that refused to report in a headline that former Lakers star Magic Johnson had vowed he would “beat” AIDS. The reason? Some staff members feared it would give people with AIDS false hope.

Scholar Elizabeth Fox-Genovese said that the press is “giving in to threats” from the left and accused the media of failing to adequately cover conservative views in the black community and anti-abortion sentiment in the nation. She also complained that coverage of feminism too often is limited to the views of the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Many editors seemed to agree. Bob Haiman, the president of the Poynter Institute in Florida, said that he had written to 55 editors he knew asking whether they thought political correctness was “killing open debate in their newsrooms.” Of the 41 respondents, 38 said yes.