Gilbert Cranberg: Timidity at Work
Posted at 10:56 am, October 19th, 2006
When Jay Harris quit in 2001 as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News rather than make cuts he believed would harm the paper, he was invited to speak to the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where he received an enthusiastic standing ovation. When the LA Times publisher and editor recently balked at cuts for the same reason, ASNE was silent. Nor have the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors or National Conference of Editorial Writers been heard from.
The Times publisher, Jeffrey Johnson, is now the former publisher, having been ousted. It isn’t clear what the future holds for Dean Baquet, the editor. Evidently, Tribune company executives and other like-minded corporate cost-cutters can proceed without fretting about reaction from the organized journalism community.
Why the timidity?
David Zeeck, editor of the Tacoma News Tribune and president of ASNE, told me that the organization’s leadership opted unanimously to stay on the sidelines because “we see our mission generally as supporting issues, not individuals” and that “picking sides at this point isn’t something ASNE should do.”
SPJ President Christine Tatum, an editor at the Denver Post, said her organization considers it best “not to engage in ‘personnel and labor matters’….The bottom line: We haven’t issued any formal statements concerning the Trib/LAT affair because it hasn’t been easy to know where the dividing line is between newsroom disagreements/blow-ups and over-the-top cost-cutting.”
APME will be a platform for Baquet when he speaks to its annual meeting Oct. 26 in New Orleans. He had been invited earlier. Baquet is expected to speak about the situation at the Times although APME won’t.
As for NCEW, the organization of opinion writers seldom ventures an opinion.
While it and the others are holding their respective tongues, LA Times staffers by the hundreds have expressed their backing for Johnson and Baquet in petitions.
It took spine for Johnson and Baquet to confront their superiors, and courage in its own way for eye-strained wretches who may be living paycheck-to-paycheck to go on record to support them. Organizations, by contrast, face no peril.
Certainly, it would be inappropriate for journalism groups to meddle in the business affairs of news organizations. The productivity of staffers, for instance, is so variable it would be presumptuous and irresponsible for ASNE or any other group to stick its collective nose into a personnel thicket.
But courage in journalism, like hard-core pornography, is something you know when you see it. It ought to be possible for editors to fashion a collective salute to the fortitude of publishers and editors, when they deserve it, without taking sides on the pros and cons of particulars.
Journalism groups aren’t bashful about speaking up when important journalism issues are at stake. Needed now is a redefinition of journalism issues so that they encompass not just what happens in courtrooms but in boardrooms. The threats to access to the information the public must have in a democracy often come nowadays from the elevation of profits over staffing, newshole and the other measures of quality.
When publishers and editors stand up for readers and staff, they ought to be celebrated, not ignored.
October 19th, 2006 at 6:17 pm |
SPJ, APNE and various other acronyms have long been more important for the writing awards they dole out than as a supporter of, or even support for journalists. (most of their pubs and seminars are aimed at journalists with about a year of experience) There are few shield laws and there isn’t a federal shield law for instance. Shouldn’t that be a high priority? I don’t see a rally the troops from any of these orgs. And there has not been any effective campaign, or even attempted campaign that I have seen, against the current rape and pillage mentality going on in newsrooms across the country in the face of the internet revolution, despite the fact that newspapers have a very healthy and above average 20 percent return. Where have those orgs been on the FCC removing barriers that allowed market domination? “we see our mission generally as supporting issues, not individuals.” “picking sides at this point isn’t something ASNE should do.” “not to engage in ‘personnel and labor matters.’ it hasn’t been easy to know where the dividing line is between newsroom disagreements/blow-ups and over-the-top cost-cutting.” Well soon blogs will replace newspapers and these worthless orgs will have no reporters or editors to represent. News is now a commmodity.
October 19th, 2006 at 6:46 pm |
I wholeheartedly agree with Gil Cranberg and “Eddie” above. Journalism is undergoing a change as radical as when business first took over operation of the American press from political parties in the 1840s, the era of the Penny Press.
Those who care about the kind of news that builds citizenship had better form alliances, within their own newsroom, across newsrooms, in academia and in the community if socially responsible journalism is to survive.
Economic rationalism — treating news simply as a commodity — had advanced far enough to vaporize Knight Ridder in eight months and allow unprecedented concentration of media ownership by Dean Singleton’s MediaNews corporation in places like the San Francisco Bay Area. Newsrooms from coast to coast are pushing out their most experienced reporters and lowering wages for their young replacements. Where once three or four reporters representing different newspapers competed to cover a story best, now a single reporter’s byline appears on the same story under a half dozen mastheads.
October 19th, 2006 at 9:09 pm |
When I was about to finish journalism school many years ago, I was invited to join the SPJ. I refused because A) I had never heard of the organization and, because of that, B) I figured it must be just another feel-good outfit that basically has nothing critical or constructive to say about the profession. I hadn’t given it much thought in the years since, but the SPJ’s conspicuous silence on the Tribune/LAT issue–which has become absolutely pivotal for the profession itself–proves I was right.
October 20th, 2006 at 10:56 am |
October 20:
If the leaders of ASNE and other journalism organizations can’t truly understand the importance of what’s happening at the LAT and its impact on journalism’s future maybe it’s better they stay on the sidelines until they figure out amid the struggle over great issues are some gutsy individuals willing to take significant risks for the greater good. And for that they deserve better than politically correct nonsense.
October 25th, 2006 at 10:17 pm |
I never thought of journalism as a profession, as in SBJ. It is a craft. We reporters are employees, workers and we have neglected acting as workers and dealing with management as bosses.We hoped somehow that we reporters could throw the First Amendment and the paper’s responsibilities, but as the Great God Liebling pointed out, “freedom of the press belongs to he who owns one.” The point is that bosses always saw the botton line more important than the first amendment. The SPJ was never a factor in good jounalism; and too many J schools were supported by publishers. I was a member of a good union because I always thought that unions are where workers belonged. That’s where workers in journalism still belong. But alas, too many reporters, especially those making big bucks, have been fooled into bekieving their professionalism will protect them from job cuts and the disappearance of the presses they thought were free.
October 25th, 2006 at 11:52 pm |
[...] Meanwhile, another NewsBiz observer, Gilbert Cranbert at the Poynter Institute, laments that none of the big professional organizations of journalists stood up for the Times’ publisher and editor Dean Baquet in their face-off with the corporation: When Jay Harris quit in 2001 as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News rather than make cuts he believed would harm the paper, he was invited to speak to the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where he received an enthusiastic standing ovation. When the LA Times publisher and editor recently balked at cuts for the same reason, ASNE was silent. Nor have the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors or National Conference of Editorial Writers been heard from. [...]
October 26th, 2006 at 9:20 pm |
It would have been nice in criticizing Tatum that you linked to her post. It’s simply a blogging courtesy. Her post is at http://spj.org/blog/blogs/president/archive/2006/10/10/197.aspx
October 27th, 2006 at 2:22 am |
I want to set the record straight on some of the comments made about the Society of Professional Journalists:
1. “Eddie” clearly has missed SPJ’s prominent role in the fight for a federal shield law. In the past year alone, our members have raised more than $30,000 to wage this battle. Our online resources aim to help educate everyone about the issue:
http://www.spj.org/shieldlaw.asp. The most recent annual report summarizing SPJ’s legal advocacy work is impressive: http://www.spj.org/bh.asp
2. SPJ has criticized sharply the cost-cutting measures endured by newsrooms nationwide. Columns have appeared in SPJ publications and in many newspapers. Want copies? We’re happy to send them. Please contact our headquarters. Cost-cutting and how to address/deal with it also has been the subject of dozens of SPJ events attended by hundreds of mid-career journalists seeking encouragement, guidance and new opportunities.
3. Contrary to “Joan’s” belief, SPJ has, for nearly 100 years, aided American journalism by offering constructive criticism. For example, the Society’s journalism code of ethics
(http://www.spj.org/ethics.asp?) is respected worldwide and has provided the foundation on which many newsroom ethics codes are based. Our members field hundreds of phone calls each year from journalists seeking advice about ethical dilemmas.
4. Mr. Saul Friedman states SPJ has never been a factor in good journalism. The organization’s nearly 10,000 members would beg to differ. But don’t take our word for it. Consider speaking with a recipient of one of our Legal Defense Fund grants
(http://www.spj.org/ldf.asp?) The Society recently paid more than half of the legal expenses incurred by blogger Josh Wolf, who is on track to spend more time in a federal prison than any journalist in American history. SPJ’s support for Mr. Wolf is a sign of its awareness of journalism’s changing dynamics and willingness to face them head on. Consider joining us.
Christine Tatum, National President
October 28th, 2006 at 12:21 am |
I love John McManus’s line: “Newsrooms from coast to coast are pushing out their most experienced reporters and lowering wages for their young replacements.”
How utterly, wonderfully rich!
As a working journalist for the better side of 20 years in Southern California, I have watched reporters, editors and editorial writers essentially look the other way as blue collar, working class citizens across a wide array of labor-intensive jobs have been replaced by illegal immigrants by employers seeking to jack-up their profits and cutback their overhead.
I am not talking about farm workers or field hands, but rather citizens knocked out of the box at construction sites, auto-body shops, warehouses, landscaping and manufacturing work, to name a few.
While it has been acceptable in our profession to aggressively cover net job losses and wage depression in general terms, the fact that the workers used to replace millions of American workers often had no legal right to even be in the nation was utterly verbotten in newsrooms for many, many years.
The newsroom staff and the editorial writers at the Los Angeles Times have been in the vanguard of this politically correct snow job; at once bemoaning the loss of skilled and unskilled jobs in the region while deftly refusing to acknowledge (until quite recently) the elephant in the living room: illegal immigrants and the employers who use them as replacement workers.
How interesting that when the working class gets replaced at the job site, it’s an unfortunate ‘market correction’ that is inevitible in today’s global economy; yet when educated, tie-wearing, white collar scribes at a major metro daily see their bylines transitioned into the unemployment line, it’s a sure sign of Armageddon.
I may have ink in my veins, but I see some fine karma at work here.
And speaking of work, soon-to-be former Times staffers shouldn’t have a problem finding some around here, presuming they speak Spanish.
Mark Cromer
SPJ, LA Chapter
May 8th, 2009 at 3:58 am |
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