An Uneasy Alliance of News and Ads

Journalists have long regarded the formal separation of their news and business departments as essential to their independence and credibility--so much so that they often speak of that separation with a mixture of reverence and trepidation. It’s “The Wall”--or even “the Church/State Wall.”

Many newspapers have traditionally discouraged employees in the advertising, circulation and other business departments from even setting foot in the newsroom. At the Chicago Tribune, elevators that went to the advertising and other business departments were long programmed to bypass the fourth floor, where the news staff worked.

But newspaper readership has been declining for more than 30 years, competition from television, specialty magazines, direct mail and the Internet has been increasing, and major newspaper advertisers have been folding, merging and finding other outlets for their ad dollars. Despite these problems, stockholders and stock analysts have been demanding newspaper profit margins equal to--and in some cases, greater than--those generated in earlier, less turbulent times.

In their search for new ways to increase readership and revenue amid these mounting pressures, newspapers are now lowering, if not obliterating The Wall. When the Chicago Tribune office was remodeled, elevators were programmed to stop at every floor, and “advertising people actually can come onto the fourth floor now and not get bitten or shot,” says Howard Tyner, editor of the Tribune.

Indeed, at the Tribune--and at many other newspapers these days--editors and business-side executives routinely meet to discuss readership, advertising, the creation of sections and a wide range of other problems and initiatives.

This makes many reporters and editors uneasy--and theirs is not just a parochial journalistic concern; it’s an issue that affects every citizen who wants the honest, complete news and information that is necessary to function in a democratic society. If editors and reporters are required to think about advertising concerns and profit margins, critics fear, they will be more likely to avoid assigning, writing or publishing stories that could offend advertisers and reduce profits. Self-censorship and intimidation could replace enterprise and investigation; readers could be left ignorant about issues ranging from price gouging, industrial pollution and discriminatory hiring practices to unsafe cars, airplanes, food and prescription drugs.

An Uneasy Alliance

Some cooperation between the news and advertising departments is necessary in today’s environment, says Robert McGruder, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, “but I’m very concerned about the independence of the editorial side because I know that when the camel gets his nose in the tent, pretty soon the whole camel is in there.”

Do lower departmental barriers necessarily mean lower journalistic standards? Or can reporters and editors continue to function independently, with integrity, in this new climate?

Until news coverage of President Clinton’s alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky prompted the latest round of anxiety and self-examination in the nation’s media, those were the questions being asked in newsrooms across the country. Nowhere were they being asked more vigorously--or more visibly--than at the Los Angeles Times, and when the latest White House sex scandal is over, they will be asked again, at The Times and elsewhere.

Last fall, when Richard T. Schlosberg III suddenly retired as publisher of The Times, Mark Willes, CEO and chairman of the paper’s parent company, Times Mirror, took over as publisher--a great shock to everyone, including Schlosberg. Within three weeks, Shelby Coffey III quit as editor, and Willes announced that he would appoint “general managers” from the business side of the paper to serve as partners with the editors of each section. He also said he wanted profit and loss statements for each section of the paper, and he reiterated earlier statements that he intended to knock down the barrier between the paper’s news department and its advertising, circulation and other business departments.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal wrote stories about Willes’ overhaul and its implications for the paper’s journalistic integrity. Time, Newsweek and the New Yorker did likewise. So did virtually all the publications that monitor the newspaper industry--the Columbia Journalism Review, the American Journalism Review and Editor & Publisher among them.

Willes’ specific plans and the controversy surrounding them will be the subject of detailed examination in tomorrow’s installment in this series. But first it’s necessary to look at the evolution of the tradition he is perceived as threatening.

Most early American newspapers began as outlets for their owners’ political views. Then, around the turn of the century, they began to seek a broader audience, and from 1880 to 1920, daily circulation increased tenfold--five times the rate of increase for the general population. To attract and keep this wider readership, newspapers had to abandon parochial partisanship. In so doing, however, they became more dependent on advertising--which now provides about 80% of the typical newspaper’s revenue. That created a new credibility problem:

How could readers believe that reporters and editors wouldn’t promote and protect the people who paid their salaries--their advertisers?

The answer: The Wall.

Journalistic Tradition

The Wall is supposed to ensure that all decisions on the coverage, writing, editing and placement of stories will be made on journalistic merit--on what the editors think the readers want and need to know, without any concern for whether those stories will attract or repel advertisers.

But advertising in a newspaper isn’t there only to pay the bills. Surveys show that many readers regard advertising as an integral part of a paper’s content--as “news” of a sort, news of new merchandise, product upgrades, sale prices, store hours and locations. Even at the best papers, there have always been certain accommodations--within limits--for advertisers. Newspapers have historically acceded, for example, to the desire of airlines to have their scheduled advertisements removed from the paper on a day when a plane crash is being covered. But no reputable paper would tolerate an advertising executive who urged editors to remove or tone down the crash story so they could publish the airline ad.

In fact, apart from joint meetings that are essential to strategic planning--which were generally conducted only at the highest levels--people from the advertising departments did not even speak to people in the news departments at most metropolitan dailies in the course of the normal business day. (At smaller papers, relations between the news and business departments have often been much closer, in part because journalistic standards have not always been as strictly adhered to at such publications and in part because smaller staffs in smaller offices are more likely to work in close proximity to employees from other departments.)

Bill Kovach says that when he was deputy national editor and Washington bureau chief at the New York Times in the 1970s and ‘80s, “the idea that I would be involved in or be concerned about any conversation with anybody outside the newsroom, or even inside the newsroom, about advertising or circulation or the business operation of the newspaper or even the newsroom budget--how much it cost to do the job we were doing--was nonexistent.” Kovach, now curator of the Neiman Foundation, which provides fellowships at Harvard University for mid-career journalists, says the news department saw its job as putting out “the best news report we could, and the circulation and the advertising department would have to live with that product.”

Newspapers are ultimately published for their readers. If a company invests enough resources to publish a quality paper, it will attract readers, and advertisers will buy space to reach those readers. That has long been the theory at the better big-city papers.

But changing economic conditions threaten to alter that equation.

“I hear many complaints from editors of large chain newspapers about being leeched of the resources they need to put out a good paper in order to . . . meet business-side profit demands,” says Leonard Downie, executive editor of the Washington Post.

This demand for profits is not unique to newspapers. It’s a reflection of a seismic shift in our culture.

“In all ways, life has gotten more market-driven,” says Kurt Andersen, former editor of New York magazine and now a columnist for the New Yorker.

It’s not just that we live in a highly evolved, increasingly market-driven, capitalist economy; we also live in a society in which virtually all lines appear to be blurring--news and advertising, news and entertainment, entertainment and advertising, fiction and nonfiction.

David Brinkley, a model of journalistic rectitude on NBC and ABC for half a century, appears on television doing commercials for Archer Daniels Midland. CBS newsmen appear on-camera at the Winter Olympics wearing jackets bearing the logo of Nike, a paying sponsor of the network’s Olympics coverage. Mainstream newspapers and network news programs increasingly devote time and space to the kinds of stories--O.J., Princess Di, Monica Lewinsky--once thought fit only for the tabloids. A series of Nike television commercials becomes a feature film, “Space Jam.” More than a dozen CNN reporters appear in another movie, “Contact.”

Conflict of Global Interests

The tendency of media companies to form ever-larger multimedia conglomerates has increased both the blurring of lines and the drive for greater profits almost everywhere--as evidenced anew when it was disclosed last month that Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, HarperCollins, had canceled a book written by Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, because the book is critical of the Chinese government, upon whose largess several of Murdoch’s other media companies depend heavily in that huge market. Four years ago, when Chinese authorities criticized BBC reporting on their country, another of Murdoch’s companies, Star TV, stopped providing the BBC service there in order to protect his burgeoning business interests. A few years ago, TV Guide and the New York Post, both owned by yet another Murdoch company, News Corp., promoted “Party of Five,” a television program produced by the Fox Network, which is also owned by News Corp.

Murdoch is the classic example of the conflicts of interest inherent in global, multimedia conglomerates, but he is by no means alone. The Walt Disney Co., for example, owns ABC, which now uses its news programs to promote Disney movies, Disney television shows and Disney World.

Many newspapers--including the Los Angeles Times--are also part of multimedia conglomerates, and that has helped them survive difficult economic times. In fact, although newspaper publishers have been publicly worrying for years about the survival of their industry, last year was actually very good for newspapers--as it was for the economy as a whole. Newspaper advertising revenue increased an estimated 8.3% and is expected to go up an additional 6.7% this year, according to Miles Groves, chief economist for the Newspaper Assn. of America.

This has led many traditionalists in journalism to argue that newspaper publishers are reacting prematurely in their insistence that barriers between their news and business departments must be lowered to enhance revenue-producing capabilities.

Publishers and their corporate bosses remember the deep profit cuts they suffered during the last recession, though, and they say they must implement new strategies now so they won’t be vulnerable in another recession--and so they can afford higher newsprint prices and forestall further incursions by other media.

Although many reporters and editors are sympathetic to these concerns, they are also deeply worried that the interdepartmental cooperation involved in these new strategies--and the growing preoccupation with the bottom line that they represent--will lead to a subtle and incremental erosion of editorial independence that could ultimately compromise their papers’ integrity. Many newspaper executives now speak of “a line,” rather than “The Wall,” separating proper and improper relations between their news and business departments. But there is a difference. A wall is impregnable and immovable--at least in theory; a line can be breached much more easily, moved so gradually that no one knows it’s actually been moved until it’s too late, and principles have been irrevocably compromised.

This is especially true in newspaper feature sections (entertainment, health, travel, real estate)--where lines are often blurry anyway--in part because those sections don’t generally cover “hard news,” in part because they often do cover the very institutions that provide their advertising and in part because many of them produce significant revenue at relatively modest editorial cost.

Innovation at Tribune Co.

Newspaper advertising departments like to know in advance what subjects will be featured in such sections so they can sell advertising accordingly, for example, and some editors are increasingly complying with their requests. But other editors worry that this is the first step down a slippery ethical slope. There may be no harm in a travel editor telling her ad department that her cover story three months hence will be on, say, Hawaii; then the ad salespeople can try to sell ads to airlines, hotels, cruise ships and others that serve Hawaii. But suppose the travel editor says she’s doing a cover story on China, and the ad department says they can’t sell many ads related to travel in China. Might the travel editor be tempted--or persuaded--to skip the China story, even if she thinks her readers would be interested in it? Or suppose the ad salespeople suggest a story on the Caribbean because they think they can sell ads to Caribbean concerns. Might the travel editor be tempted to assign a Caribbean cover story, even if she knows her readers aren’t much interested in that area?

Whether a newspaper travel section covers Hawaii or China or the Caribbean is not crucial to the health of the republic. But many journalists worry that if these compromises are made--and prove financially successful--publishers will try similar strategies in their news sections.

To avoid such compromises anywhere in the paper, says Jack Fuller, president of Tribune Publishing Co., the top people in a news organization must be clear about where the line is and why it can’t be moved or crossed. Everyone in the organization must understand that journalistic integrity is paramount and that the editor’s decision will be final on all journalistic questions. Just such a “very deeply held, shared understanding” exists at the Chicago Tribune, Fuller says.

With much less fanfare than the Los Angeles Times, Tribune Co. has been a pioneer in breaking down traditional barriers of all kinds. The company is a leader in online media, combining the resources of its newspaper, television and radio stations, and Tribune reporters routinely appear on the company’s cable TV station, which has had a permanent camera position in the Tribune newsroom since 1993. For the past several months, the Tribune has been operating out of a new multimedia newsroom, which includes a TV production studio and has representatives of the cable TV station and the online paper sitting alongside Tribune editors on the paper’s assignment desk.

The Tribune has been at the forefront of interdepartmental cooperation.

“We’ve had a pretty strong relationship between the troika of marketing, advertising and editorial for as long as I’ve been an editor, which is now 12 years,” Editor Howard Tyner says, and the result has been “an improved advertising situation without a loss of either editorial independence or integrity. You can focus everybody’s attention on creating a newspaper that serves peoples’ needs better if everybody has a deeper understanding of what the other guy is up against.”

Yes, but. . . .

Last fall, the Tribune entered into a marketing partnership with Starbucks Coffee that included Starbucks’ agreement to sell the paper in 90 of its outlets. The day after the Tribune boasted of this promotional arrangement in its internal employee publication (“The Starbucks agreement is an example of what happens when different departments within the Chicago Tribune work together . . . “), a flattering story on the CEO of Starbucks was splashed across the top of a feature section of the Tribune (headline: “The Starbucking of America”).

Tribune editors say this was a coincidence, and the reporter who wrote the story says he did so on his own initiative, without even knowing about the marketing agreement. But skeptical eyebrows were raised. Where integrity is concerned, appearances can often be as important as reality, and many reporters worry about their credibility being undermined by just such inter-jurisdictional ventures, even if they are conceived and executed in good faith.

Reporters at the Tribune’s cross-town rival, the Sun Times, have been especially concerned the last few years about the credibility of their paper; top editors there have instituted a policy that rewards firms that advertise in the paper and punishes those that don’t.

On what he calls “discretionary” stories--which department store Santa to picture in the paper, for example--Larry Green, executive editor of the Sun Times, says the paper uses advertisers rather than non-advertisers, “just like airlines created frequent flier programs to take care of their best customers. . . . We have to be conscious of who pays our mortgages and who makes our car payments and who puts our kids through school.

“But I don’t think at any time the editorial product has been compromised,” Green says. “Legitimate stories get covered and played.”

Yes, but. . . .

Last summer, when Gianni Versace, the Italian fashion designer, was murdered, the Sun Times assigned reporter Stephanie Zimmerman to write about the impact of his death on local sales of the designer clothing and other merchandise that carries his name.

Zimmerman wrote that Versace’s death was “bringing . . . shoppers into the stores,” and she mentioned several of those stores--including, according to other reporters at the paper, Neiman Marcus, the city’s largest purveyor of Versace clothing.

But when Zimmerman’s story appeared, it contained no mention of Neiman Marcus.

The apparent reason: Neiman Marcus doesn’t advertise in the Sun Times.

Zimmerman declines to discuss the incident other than to say that Neiman Marcus was not originally in the first paragraph of her story, and Green says he never heard about it at all until a Los Angeles Times reporter queried him. Green’s boss, Nigel Wade, editor of the Sun Times, says he too, was unaware of the incident, and he insists that if Neiman Marcus was excised from Zimmerman’s story, it was done “in the normal editing process, not as a matter of policy.”

But other reporters at the paper remember discussions about Neiman Marcus not being an advertiser--and Zimmerman’s complaints about the deletion of the store from her story--and they say it’s the sort of thing that happens frequently at their paper.

Green, who spent three years in the Sun Times advertising department in the early 1990s after a long career as a reporter, says it’s possible that some lower-level editors at the Sun Times might overreact to his strong statements on “discretionary” stories and wrongly keep non-advertisers out of news stories as well. That may be what happened on the Versace story. But Green makes no apologies for his policy, the unhappiness of many on his staff notwithstanding.

“We are the second player in a very competitive market,” he says, and he knows that scores of papers in exactly that position--the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Washington Star, Dallas Times Herald and Philadelphia Bulletin among them--have long since gone out of business.

Marketing and Coverage

Even the editors and publishers of newspapers that dominate their markets worry now about survival, though, and that’s why they are breaking down walls and looking for new sources of income.

“You can’t get the level of revenue you need unless the whole newspaper team commits to working together on that,” says Jay Harris, publisher of the San Jose Mercury News. “If you care about quality journalism, you have to care about ways to make the company and its revenue grow.”

In this climate, some editors have not only learned to care about making their companies grow, they actually listen to editorial ideas from their business counterparts.

The Arizona Republic decided to shift its primary coverage of personal finance and gardening to the Saturday paper last year, for example, after learning from research by their advertising department that Saturday was the day when people worry about their “cocoon”--their house and garden, their family and their future.

Saturday papers are traditionally weak financially, but the increased advertising that accompanies the revamped editorial coverage in the Republic on Saturday has made the paper more profitable on that day than on any other day but Sunday, says John Oppedahl, publisher and CEO of Phoenix Newspapers Inc.

At the same time, however, some present and former Republic reporters say the paper’s attempts to leverage the news to maximize profits has made it reluctant to cover major advertisers aggressively. The charges gained added impetus last year when Phoenix Newspapers Inc. closed the Republic’s sister paper, the Phoenix Gazette, and dismissed many longtime reporters from the papers’ combined newsroom; one of those dismissed was Ed Foster, whose critical stories a year earlier about America West Airlines, a major advertiser, had prompted a letter of complaint from the chairman of the airline. Phoenix Newspapers executives deny there was any connection between the complaint and the dismissal; they largely defended Foster in their reply to the American West letter, and they insist they have not become timid in their coverage.

But there is no question that as newspaper editors are asked to think more about marketing and advertising and leveraging editorial content, the potential for compromise--and the appearance of compromise--will grow.

“My view of all this is pessimistic,” says Robert Kaiser, managing editor of the Washington Post. Kaiser dismisses the concept of interdepartmental cooperation as largely a matter of “gimmickry designed to avoid the painfully simple reality . . . that it isn’t possible for newspapers to become much more successful in the marketplace without becoming much better journalistically. The way to thrive is to become ever more important in the lives of our readers--smarter about issues, more fun to read, tougher on people abusing power.”

Nonetheless, even Kaiser concedes that at newspapers like the Post, with “top-flight [business] people, respectful of editorial,” cooperation between the news and business departments can sometimes provide mutual benefits--as in the case of the Post’s popular Fast Forward, a weekly feature on consumer electronics.

“It was entirely the idea of a business guy,” Kaiser says.

Editorial ideas proposed by “a business guy” would have been frowned on, if not automatically rejected, at most reputable papers in years gone by, but business-side employees--like their journalistic counterparts--are generally better educated and more sophisticated than their predecessors.

Economics Force Detente

This change may mitigate against the long-standing distrust between the two sides.

For most of this century, reporters and editors have tended to look on their own work as a special “mission,” while looking down on their business-side colleagues as philistines who lacked their talent and their sense of high purpose.

“This morning we were talking about circulation numbers,” says Editor Howard Tyner of the Chicago Tribune, “and one of the editors was talking about our work as being ‘God’s work.’ ”

Indeed, Tyner says, for many years, “There was an attitude around here that said, ‘I produce the world’s greatest newspaper, and if you idiots in circulation can’t sell it, that’s your problem.’ ”

Similar attitudes long prevailed at most other major newspapers.

No longer.

“Senior editors, for a newspaper to exist, have to engage the business needs of the enterprise they’re at the heart of,” says Joseph Lelyveld, executive editor of the New York Times. They must realize that “great newspapering is not possible on an unprofitable newspaper.”

Newspapers differ, however, on just how--and at what level--news and business departments should engage.

The New York Times limits contacts between its news and business departments to mid- and high-level editors--those listed on the paper’s masthead. Those editors are thought to have the experience, confidence and authority that junior editors might lack, especially when it comes to questions of journalistic integrity. Lower and mid-level editors at any newspaper might edit by anticipation, trying to ingratiate themselves with their superiors by making compromises that they mistakenly think their superiors want.

Others argue, however, that the more people at every level who are involved in interdepartmental discussions, the more good ideas will emerge, the more people will learn about how the paper actually functions, the more companywide cooperation is likely to ensue and the better prepared the next generation of leaders will be.

“I quit the Providence Journal in 1986 when I was metro editor because the executive editor was the only one [in the news department] who talked to the ad people,” says Joel Rawson. “I wanted to be a top editor, and I figured I’d never learn enough about the business side to do the job right.”

Rawson went to the Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader, “learned all about the business” and is now back in Providence as the paper’s executive editor.

“I encourage the editors below me to talk to people on the business side as much as they can,” he says.

Knight Ridder--publisher of the Lexington paper, as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News and Detroit Free Press, among others--has been a pioneer in interdepartmental cooperation and innovation. Today, reporters and editors at Knight Ridder newspapers routinely receive periodic reports on advertising, circulation and other business-side developments that were once distributed only within their business departments.

Gannett and Tribune Co. newspapers have also been in the vanguard in breaking down walls, but in recent years, many other newspapers--large and small--have institutionalized interdepartmental conversations and communication.

The most innovative of these programs is at the Dallas Morning News, where for the last two years, the paper has conducted two-day “Understanding Journalistic Excellence” workshops in which top editors explain to executives and other employees from various business departments at the paper how the news department functions.

With the help of Jeff Cowart of the American Press Institute in Reston, Va., Morning News editors talk about how stories are conceived, assigned, edited and placed in the paper, and they discuss competitive pressures, serious versus tabloid journalism and why “bad news” so often takes precedence over “good news.” They also give business employees an opportunity for hands-on journalistic experience, asking them to plan their own front pages on deadline and challenging them to resolve various ethical dilemmas that journalists routinely confront.

Most important of all, top editors from the Morning News and executives from its parent company, A.H. Belo Corp., try to hammer home the message that an independent, journalistically sound newspaper is a valuable corporate asset--that “editorial quality is profitable. . . . Our prosperity has increased parallel to our editorial excellence,” as Bob Mong, executive vice president of the Belo publishing division, put it in one of the closing sessions of the 1997 Morning News workshops.

Last week, the Morning News reversed its proceedings and asked representatives of its advertising, marketing and other business departments of the paper to explain to reporters and editors (and everyone else at the paper) how their departments function. The program was spread over three consecutive mornings.

The ‘Editor as Marketer’

More typically, many newspapers--large and small--have begun conducting in-house education sessions under the “business literacy in the newsroom” program created by the Associated Press Managing Editors. The idea is to teach journalists about the business departments of the paper in hopes of replacing barriers, stereotypes and ignorance with mutual trust, knowledge and understanding. This approach has proved particularly useful to editors making major decisions on budgets and staffing.

“If they can become sophisticated about business, they can more persuasively make the case to their corporate bosses that a larger investment in news coverage can be translated to shareholder value through credibility and protecting the franchise,” says Robert Giles, former executive editor of the Detroit News and now executive director of the Media Studies Center in New York.

Janet Leach, editor of the Akron Beacon-Journal, was in charge of the APME newsroom management committee when the business literacy project was launched in 1996, and she describes the objective of the project much as a business executive might. The “editor as marketer” must learn how “all the different divisions of the paper come together to put out your product,” she says. “We make news. That’s a product. That’s what we sell.”

But other editors wince at such language. They prefer to see the press as a quasi-public utility, and they worry that if news is perceived as just another commercial product, it could lose both its constitutional protection and its special standing.

This concern reflects a larger debate within the journalistic community: Is a newspaper essentially a consumer product, like a new car or a box of cereal, in which case survival depends on giving the customer what he wants? Or is it a professional service, like medical care or classroom instruction, in which case the provider--journalist, doctor or teacher--should offer what his experience and expertise suggests is necessary, regardless of what the reader/patient/student says he wants? After all, as Barry Glassner, a USC sociologist who takes the latter view, puts it, “We would all criticize a dentist who told a patient, ‘Sure, I understand you don’t want me to pull those bad teeth and you’d rather have candy, so, here, have a handful of chocolates.’ ”

In reality, a newspaper is a consumer product and a professional service, so it tries to provide both what’s wanted and what’s needed--much like an honest politician, who tries to balance his need to please voters and his support for necessary, if unpopular programs and principles.

But in response to focus groups and in an effort to compete with television and the tabloids (print and electronic), newspapers have increasingly been publishing what they think readers want. Some of this has been useful--health tips, more complete entertainment listings and stories that focus on individual impact rather than institutional action. Too much, however, has been fluff. From 1977 to 1997, feature stories--those involving celebrities, scandals and what’s generally called “human interest”--increased from 15% to 43% of the total coverage provided by the three nightly network news programs, weekly newsmagazine covers and major newspaper front pages, according to a recent study of almost 4,000 stories by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a media research and watchdog organization financed by the Pew Charitable Trust.

Editors Face Distractions

Many editors are reluctant to criticize this shift--and the newspaper-as-product approach--to their corporate bosses, though.

“When I first became an editor at Knight Ridder, the editors were lions, they were rambunctious,” says John Carroll, now editor at the Baltimore Sun, which is owned by Times Mirror. “When they had their annual editors meetings, the corporate brass would speak to the editors and the editors would definitely speak back. There was no trepidation. . . . You don’t find as many editors who behave that way now. The culture doesn’t seem to encourage it. I think that it has been made clear to most editors, particularly during the last recession . . . that they are part of a business team, rather than independent leaders of journalists appended to a business organization.”

Carroll says he also worries that in this climate, editors are forced to spend so much time on business issues that they are “distracted from their editorial mission.” They don’t have time to edit or discuss stories, to evaluate and talk with reporters and subeditors, to critique the previous day’s paper and think and talk about what the paper should be doing next week, next month, next year.

Editors across the country echo this complaint.

Editors are “overdue” to learn about the business side of their papers, says Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of the Portland Oregonian and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, but “to the extent that this trend has made editors into full-time marketers, it’s bad. . . . By having editors spend so much time on those marketing-related activities, they are not spending the same amount of time, energy and passion leading their newsrooms in journalistic values.”

Jacci Cenacveira of The Times’ editorial library assisted with the research for this series.

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Newspaper Lifelines

CIRCULATION

1964: 80.8%

1997: 58.3%

Daily newspaper readership among U.S. adults has been declining for more than 30 years, triggering widespread anxiety and pessimism among publishers.

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Newspapers are losing readers amid increased competition from television, specialty magazines, the Internet and a wide range of leisure activities, not to mention the sheer pressure that many people feel-- “too little time, too much to do.”

Source: Nielsen Media Service, W.R. Simmons & Associates Research Inc.

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ADVERTISING

Newspapers throughout the country are trying to increase their revenue by publishing special sections designed to attract advertisers. Most are focused on a single subject --cars, golf, technology-- while others may look at a broad spectrum of local community life.

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Understanding Each Other’s Roles

In an effort to overcome years of suspicion and mistrust, many newspapers are asking representatives of their advertising and other business departments to explain their jobs to their colleagues in the news departments. The Dallas Morning News has also reversed this process, conducting workshops in which top editors tell their business-side colleagues how the news department functions and why a high-quality newspaper is a valuable corporate asset.

“We all work together for the same enterprise. Do we have to be hostile neighbors in feudal kingdoms or can we show them [in the business department] how writing and editing the news and building circulation and selling different kinds of advertising and marketing the paper all ties in together?” --Ralph Langer, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, Dallas Morning News

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“The Texas economy was collapsing in 1986... a near depression in some sectors. We could have made a lot more money by cutting into the muscle and bone of our newspaper. We didn’t, and after the recession, we were stronger than ever... Quality is profitable... Our prosperity has increased parallel to our editorial excellence.” -- Bob Mong, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, Publishing division, A.H. Belo Corp., parent company of Dallas Morning News

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“I don’t think anyone can do his job as well as he could and should at our papers if he doesn’t have a well-grounded understanding of the journalistic piece of what we do. Without that, we’re nothing.” --Burl Osborne, PUBLISHER, Dallas Morning News