Section 1: Q: You've talked a lot about the positives of
working at the Register, were there any
downsides. Did you have ethical dilemmas or
conflicts with personalities or was there a
policy in place that was a problem to you?
A: There never was a day where I had qualms
about what -- I was doing and what we were
doing. The views expressed on the editorial
page are the institution's views. What is
the institution? Who comprises this
institution? We didn't have a system for
really getting the institution's imprint on
our policies except on these endorsement
editorials where the publisher had a role and
the editor had a role. Otherwise we spoke in
the name of the institution, but there was no
mechanism for the institution's view to be
formulated. From my point of view, as the
editorial page editor, that was fabulous. I
had this terrific free hand. Basically, if I
got too far off base, then the publisher and
editor could rein me in. But it's after the
fact. Of course, I was not writing with a
clean slate because there were the good
traditions of the paper. We had stacks and
stacks of envelopes with the old editorials
there. It's rare that a fresh issue would
come up. It's always an aspect of an earlier
issue. In the sense, you had a philosophical
framework that you were working with always.
I probably would have been unhappy if they
had an institutional system for deciding what
the institution was going to say. I didn't
really fret about that. When some of my
students ask me about not having signed
editorials, who in the institution did it?
Well, basically I did it. It is sort of a
disconnect between the theory of what an
editorial is supposed to be and the way it's
actually formulated. Part of this disconnect
is that the person who actually does the leg
work, who actually is working on an issue,
basically formulates the position.
Information is power. That person goes out
and talks to a lot of people, comes back and
writes the editorial. If it makes sense to
you, you put it in the paper. That becomes
the paper's position on that issue. Where's
the institution? It's one person. There's
this disconnect between the practice and the
theory.
Q: What should that mechanism have been?
A: I would rather not have it change. I
enjoyed it, it was tremendous. It's
fortunate we had a family that did not
micro-manage. The publisher kept away, and
not for lack of interest. I know him very
well, and he is extremely interested in all
these issues that we deal with. But, this
was part of the family's practice, the family
tradition. It was not going to nit-pick. --
Section 2: Q: To wrap up, what were the circumstances
under which you left the paper?
A: I'd been there thirty-three years and I
was working very, very hard. We had two
newspapers. The Tribune closed a little bit
after or just about the time I was leaving.
That had nothing to do with my leaving. I
was editorial page editor of both papers.
That's unusual. Most papers where you have a
morning/evening combination you have separate
editors. So, basically I had two jobs. We
had a large Sunday opinion section, and I had
responsibility for it. Although John Bunke
did all the work, I did have responsibility
for books and the arts, whatever else was in
that section. I was working very, very hard.
Some papers have op-ed editors, where the
op-ed editors make the decisions on what goes
on the op-ed page. I made those decisions.
I had strong feelings about what should go on
the page, I selected the material. I dug out
much of the material. Unless you're simply
going to rubber stamp whatever anybody
writes, and we had to do that at times. But,
you felt that you had to be somewhat
knowledgeable about these issues. Somebody
writes on the air controllers strike, well
you ought to know something about that. Or
economics or whatever. I had to know at least
a little bit about everything. The only way
to do that was to read. And also, the
reading served the other purpose of finding
the material to reprint. We would reprint
from a wide variety of sources, including Mad
magazine. I found myself reading Mad
magazine. There was never a holiday. I
would go on vacation, I would have stacks to
read. I go home at night with a briefcase
loaded with stuff. I would stay up until
about midnight reading. I adored public
affairs, so it was all stuff I was interested
in. But, it took a toll after a while. I
was worn down. I had done it. It was going
to be more of the same. Ken Starc at the "J"
School asked if I wanted to be George Gallup
professor, I said, "Not just yet." He held
it open for a year. Then the Register
fortuitously came up with an early retirement
program. My daughter was working as a lawyer
there at the time. She took a look at it and
said, "You know, you can't pass it up. You
can't afford to turn your back on it." I
looked at it closely and decided, OK it's
time to do something different.
Q: This was also about the time that Gannett
had purchased it?
A: No, that was later. I left in 1982 and
Gannett bought it in '84.
Q: Speaking about what the paper is today, if
you want to compare it to what we're seeing
today as to what it was when you were there.
Are the changes only in the ownership or is
it just the nature of what journalism has
become?
A: It's hard to separate it out. Everything
is different. You have a different owner,
you have a different publisher, you have a
different editor, you have different
staffers. How do you unscramble the egg and
decide what caused what? It's pretty
impossible to do that.
Q: You talked about the greatness of the Des
Moines Register, do you think it's as great
as it was?
A: No, I don't think it is. But, I think
newspapers in general are not as good as they
once were. I think the general overall
complaint is that newspapers have dumbed
down. I think there's a lot of truth to it.
They're looking more for cosmetics and in
news content there is more interest in
entertainment, celebrity news, that type of
thing.
Q: The idea, of course, is to get more
readers, but it seems they're losing readers.
A: Yeah, it doesn't seem to work.
Q: All right, any final thoughts about your
time at the Register?
A: Are we going to talk some more?
Q: No, we're finished.
A: No, but I mean are we going to talk some
more another time?
Q: I would like to.
A: Ok, then I'll hold that off. --
Section 3: Q: Today we're talking to Gil Cranberg again
at the Seashore Hall. Today is December 7.
It is the second installment of the interview
that we started back in November. At
Seashore Hall, University of Iowa campus in
Iowa City. Gil, I just wanted to pick up a
few things. We will get to some of the
things that you raised about the fact that
the Register was one of the first papers to
really tackle the McCarthy hearings and
really follow through on it and the
accusations he was making against the
Communism in our culture. First, I wanted to
pick up with the environment at the Register
with regard to personnel. I'm wondering
during the time that you were both a writer
and an editor on the editorial pages, were
there any women or minorities who were
editorial page writers?
A: When I first came there, this was in the
very end of 1949 which would make it this
month fifty years, there was a woman
editorial writer there at the time. She was
one of the very, very few on any newspaper.
Subsequently, when I became editor, I made a
concerted effort to hire women on the
editorial page. I did hire several, a couple
of them from the journalism school here.
Probably my most notable hire was Geneva
Overholser, who later became editor of the
whole paper. She has made a big name for
herself in journalism.
Q: Was it a concern for editors before you
that there were no minorities?
(phone rings)
Q: I was going to follow up your answer. Was
it a concern back then, I guess those were
the days before there was an awareness that
we did need to be sensitive to minorities and
women's issues.
A: Correct. I never heard it discussed.
After a while, the woman that we did have
left. She went out to California. We did
not replace her with a woman, there was no
concerted effort to do that. I never heard
it discussed that we should be on the lookout
to try to find a person who might be able to
provide some kind of a diversity in
viewpoint. It was an all white, male staff.
That was pretty much the rule in newspapers
around the country at that time. Then came a
time when there was concern about the
one-sided character of the paper. So, I made
a concerted effort to hire women. I
practically just ruled out men for some of
the vacancies that we had. I did the same in
terms of trying to hire people from minority
groups. I was much less successful with
that. I hired one and it didn't work out. I
think during my time there we had one
minority woman and two or three white women
on the staff.
Q: In lieu of having minorities or women on
the staff, would you solicit guest editorials
or guest opinions from other segments of
society?
A: We were conscious of the need to have
different viewpoints. For example, we would
have columns by William Raspberry, who is a
black columnist. We tried to do something
about the imbalance that way.
Q: Moving on to another subject, you said in
the last interview that the Register was a
progressive paper and a real source for good,
as far as you were concerned. There were
plenty of Register haters out there, I can
imagine. What were the issues that were both
divisive or who were the people who were
giving you the flack?
A: In general, I would think it's fair to say
the paper is more liberal than the
readership. Probably the most contentious
issue was abortion. You could count that if
you had an editorial about abortion, you were
going to be inundated with mail. Probably
the second most contentious issue was gun
control. I once suggested to one of our
editorial writers that he write an editorial
that covered both abortion and gun control
because that would keep us supplied with
letters for the rest of the year. He tried
his hand at it, but it didn't work out too
well. We never ran it, as I recall. --
Section 4: Q: I have several questions about the
division between the newsroom and the
editorial page staff. You said earlier that
one of the purposes of an editorial was to
correct the stories. When that correction
with an editorial, was the reporter who
originally wrote the story involved at all or
was the pretty much a real wall there?
A: It would not run as a correction as such.
You say, "Correction: Yesterday in the news
columns, such and such was said and some of
that was in error." We didn't do that. But,
now and then there would be a misimpression
created by a news story. When we would learn
that, in the course of following up the story
in order to write an editorial about it, the
impression the story gave wasn't really quite
right. We would come to rectify that with an
editorial that put the issue, whatever the
issue was, in what we felt was the proper
context. I think that's an important
function of an editorial page to straighten
out the news stories.
Q: Were there times that the editorial page
staff and the news reporters would ever to
work together?
A: There was a pretty strong line of
separation. I wouldn't call it a wall
because we would talk to each other. Mainly
the way it worked is that when we would come
across situations that we felt would make a
good news story, that maybe should be
developed first as a news story that we could
then later comment on, we wouldn't hesitate
to talk to the reporters. We would say that
we found out this and this and they might
want to follow it up. It was never taken by
them as an order because we couldn't order
them to do anything. I might mention this to
the editor of the paper or the executive
editor or the person who was over on the news
side and say that this might be an
interesting news story. But they had their
prerogative to do it or not do it as they saw
fit. That was basically it. One time I was
really carrying on a campaign about the stock
ownership by members of the Supreme Court. I
did suggest that somebody on the news side
examine the stock ownership of other federal
judges, on the courts of appeals and district
courts. A reporter did do that and did a
fine job and uncovered a lot of interesting
material. I think, offhand, that's the
extent of it. We pretty much set our own
agenda and the news side had it's own agenda.
Now and then they coincided, but it was not
a concerted effort to do that.
Q: Was there a hierarchy there where there
were people who were reporters and copy
editors who were striving to get on the
editorial page staff and maybe you were above
them in some political way?
A: Whether they strove to get onto the
editorial page, it's hard to tell because
they would never say that. In general,
though, you could say that people were
promoted from the news side to the editorial
page. It was generally regarded as a step
up. I think that if somebody did move from
the news side to the editorial page, it was
considered a feather in that person's cap. --
Section 5: Q: I don't want to belabor the mundane, but
could you give us a feel for what the
physical configuration of the fourth floor
was? You had both the newsroom and the
editorial page staff on that floor?
A: Yes.
Q: When you're looking at the floor plan, you
can kind of get an idea of how the division
of labor was.
A: It wasn't static. We moved around quite a
bit. They would reconfigure the fourth floor
a lot. When I first came there, we were off
in a corner of the newsroom separated from
the rest of the newsroom by filing cabinets.
Then later they moved us to a somewhat
different position on the newsroom floor.
Still later, we were in separate corners on
the fourth floor in a separate wing of the
fourth floor. Today, that 's pretty much the
same. It's on the fourth floor, but it's
somewhat physically separated from the
newsroom. I think it's maybe symbolic of the
separation, although I don't think that's the
reason for it. I think it's just the way
space happened to be available. I think it's
probably a good idea to have that physical
separation as a symbolic reminder that they
do different things.
Q: I'm still trying to get a feel for how
stories were selected. You said you had
lists of things that you would come into
staff meetings with that people would pick.
Inevitably, they would pick some of the
subjects that you had on your lists, but if
they didn't want to and you thought it was
something of key importance, then you would
assign it, which was less than ideal.
A: We would have the daily conference. We
would go around the room and I would have
this list in front of me. I wouldn't
disclose what's on the list, I would simply
go around and say, "What do you want to work
on today?" Usually, by the time we had
completed the circuit most, if not all, of
the subjects on my list had been spoken for.
Those that weren't spoken for that were
dispensable and weren't all that important, I
would just forget about. If there was
something on the list that nobody has spoken
for that I felt that we really had to write
an editorial about, then I would ask who
wanted to write about it. Usually somebody
would volunteer. If they wouldn't volunteer,
I would do it. As a last resort, I would
say, "So and so, you sort of wrote on a
related subject, do you want to do this?"
The person is free to say no because one of
the rules, and this is a rule not just at the
Register but it's in the code of ethics of
the National Conference of Editorial Writers,
you never write anything that you don't agree
with. If the writer knew the position we
were going to take on the subject and the
writer didn't care to express that position,
he would just say, "I can't write about
that." There came a time when we were going
to endorse some local candidates and the
consensus of the people on the page was that
we should endorse a particular candidate. I
thought there was no way we were going to
endorse this person and I was ultimately
responsible. Nobody was willing to write an
endorsement of the one I felt we should, so I
did it. I can't recall a time when I or
anybody else, for that matter, expressed an
opinion that we disagreed with.
Q: As for your list that you compiled, how
did you make decisions on what the subjects
were that needed to be written about?
A: You read the paper.
Q: You read your paper?
A: My paper, other papers. The New York
Times and other material, magazine articles
or whatever. I think earlier when I
discussed what might be the subject of an
editorial I said it was an essay and an essay
can be on anything. One of them would be to
call attention to something that the news
side missed that people should know about.
Another really important function of it is to
sum up a continuing story. You get a really
complicated situation, whether in economics
or some civil conflict some place and it goes
on incrementally for weeks and weeks and
weeks. People are having a difficult time
piecing it all together. That's what we
would do. We would sum up a continuing
event, a complicated event, and bring people
up to date on it.
Q: Did you ever have it in the back of your
mind that you would be categorizing kinds of
stories as international issues and domestic
issues?
A: Definitely. You wanted to have a mix of
subjects. The Register was internationalist
in outlook, so we wanted to have a fair
amount of commentary on foreign affairs.
But, we also didn't want to slight state or
local issues. The local editorials, I
thought, were very important but they were
the toughest to write and it was hard to get
people to volunteer to write on local issues.
Why? On a national subject or international
subject, you could read up on it. It's in
Congressional Quarterly or your own paper or
the New York Times. All you had to do was
spend some time looking at the clips, reading
up on it. For most of the local issues, you
had to do the original reporting for it. You
had to find out about some zoning dispute.
The paper might have had some coverage of it,
but it might not be adequate. You had to
really dig in and spend a hell of a lot of
time researching that. And moreover, you had
better be darn careful about the facts
because you have these local officials who
knew these subjects backwards and forwards
and if you get some piddly little fact wrong,
they're going to let you know about it. You
want to be especially careful writing on
local subjects. It's real tough. I
mentioned that one of the people I hired who
later became editor of the paper, Geneva
Overholser, what really impressed me and
anybody who I told this to, was that the
first week she was on the staff she was
volunteering for and writing local
editorials. That was quite remarkable. For
one thing, she didn't know the community. It
meant that she had to really dig in and
learn, because that's a wonderful way to
learn about a community very quickly. They
are tough to do and the people that do them
deserve a lot of credit.
Q: And you're your own checks and balance.
There's nobody else you can go to in the
paper, well you could double check it with a
reporter, but you're the ultimate end to say
before it goes to print.
A: Yes, from the point of view that we take,
right. Well, a reporter can be helpful in
that respect too. I don't remember doing
this very much, but you might want to bounce
a point of view off a reporter to see if they
think it's too wild.
Q: Was there ever an occasion where you
really got it wrong and made an error that
really needed a retraction or an apology
because of inaccurate information?
A: I'm sure we got things wrong. There was
one time I was really mortified about the
situation. This was a very veteran editorial
writer and I was really surprised it
happened. He took a strong pot shot at a
state official, I think it was an attorney
general. I took it for granted that he had
talked to him about this situation before
landing on him the way he did. The official
came back at us and took issue with the facts
and it became evident that this person had
not talked to him. I was really put out with
that. I mean, that's elementary. If you're
going to be criticizing somebody for
something, you touch base with that person.
I don't mean that you tell them what you plan
to say, but just give the person an
opportunity to tell his or her side of the
story. I was really put out with this person
that he should have known better.
Q: Do you remember the story?
A: I don't remember the issue. The issue
itself wasn't all that important, but it was
the principle that I was very disappointed
with this person. --
Section 6: Q: To go onto another subject, editorial
cartoons were very important on the editorial
page. Did you see them as important in
making a statement?
A: I didn't particularly emphasize it. I
regarded it simply as a way to break up the
type. There were some cartoonists that I
particularly favored. Mike Peters was a real
favorite of mine. I think he was very good.
Frank Miller's work was excellent but it
wasn't on the editorial page, it was on the
front page. He was very pointed and very
good. As for the others, some were better
than others, but in general, I was more
interested in the written material rather
than the drawn material.
Q: Do you think there's value in getting a
point across in that way?
A: There is. The only drawback to the
cartoons is that by their very nature, they
oversimplify things. Also, they are almost
invariably negative. They attack people or
concepts. I once discussed this with Paul
Conrad, and he agreed. He said, "That's our
mission to be on the attack." The art form
lends itself to that and traditionally that's
what it is. But people do some good things
and if you foreclose from pointing that
out...how do you laud somebody in a cartoon?
It's pretty darn hard. Maybe they ought to
attempt to be more creative and find ways to
do that. --
Section 7: Q: Let's talk about what you brought to me
about the fact that the Register was one of
the few papers in the United States that
really followed through on the Joseph
McCarthy hearings and the attacks that he
made on various people in society. That
started in the 1950s and you have the first
editorial that you wrote about. Why is this
important to the Register?
A: Unless you lived through that period, it's
very hard to appreciate the impact that
McCarthy had. It was sort of a period of
very strong anti-Communist feeling in the
country, which is not too much exaggeration
to call it bordering on hysteria. McCarthy
very shrewdly fed on that. It started with a
speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on
February 9, in which he said that he held in
his hand a list of 205 members of the
Communist Party who were in the state
department. That's quite remarkable. Members
of the party working in the state department.
He followed that up with variations on that
theme, sort of backing a little bit away from
it. "Well, they were associated with the
Communist Party, this or that." In any case,
this went on and there was a drumbeat from
him. It resonated with the public. There
was a palpable feeling that the government
was riddled with Communist infiltrators. I
know when you have retrospectives on the
press treatment of various issues, invariably
they'll bring up how the press rolled over
and played dead when it came to dealing with
Joseph McCarthy. That was emphatically not
the case with the Register. I have yet to
see any reference to the very strong position
that the Register took on McCarthy
practically from day one. I started working
on the Register at the very end of December
of '49. McCarthy, as I said, gave his first
speech on February 9, so it was shortly
thereafter. I was pretty green, but I could
see that this was a sensational accusation.
It sounded pretty reckless to me especially
since in subsequent speeches, he would modify
what he was saying. I wrote the first
editorial on McCarthy on February 14th. It
was very critical of him, very skeptical of
what he was saying. This went on for four
years, what he was doing, creating havoc in
the government over his allegations. The
common thread is that we're being
infiltrated, we're being undermined,
Communists are boring throughout the
government. Basically, our readership fed on
this. The readership believed what McCarthy
was saying. So we were sort of a voice in
the wilderness. We were saying, "This is a
bunch of nonsense." Because I had written
the first one, what typically happens is that
the person who first deals with a subject
then deals with the subsequent developments
on that subject. I found myself writing just
about everything that we wrote about McCarthy
in those days. I must say we were unsparing
in our criticism of him, practically from day
one, and it went on for four years. The
Register, to my knowledge, has never gotten
the credit it deserves for not bowing to this
hysteria, for bucking public opinion on this
and sticking to its guns. Even the Supreme
Court caved in and it showed definite signs
of bowing to the hysteria when it came to
loyalty oath rulings and registration of
subversives. It pretty much rubber-stamped
whatever was being done. That period wasn't
the Supreme Court's finest moment, but it
might well have been among the Register's
finest moments.
Q: Obviously, you've done a lot of research
on the subject so you knew what you were
talking about in the sense that the was
modifying what he saying and so on. What
were the other papers doing to roll over,
what were they saying?
A: I can't say that I've done a definitive
study of it, but most of the criticism of the
press is that, "These are serious
allegations and we've got to pay attention to
what he's saying and this and that." They
were much less skeptical, much less critical,
by and large, I would say. The better
newspapers like the New York Times or the
Washington Post, I'm sure didn't. I think a
lot of the press was really too timid in
dealing with McCarthy because they were
mindful that what he was saying had a lot of
support out there.
Q: And later we found out that, in fact, he
was...
A: He was a windbag, he was a demagogue.
Basically, he was a demagogue.
Q: In the time that you were writing these
editorials, you had a readership that was
gullible. Were you getting flack from them?
A: Yes, readers were saying we were a bunch
of Commie sympathizers and that kind of
business. No question about it.
Q: Was there ever an inclination to soften
your approach?
A: Not to my knowledge. I was never told
that we'd been too hard on McCarthy. I think
the editor and everybody else was of one mind
about him. We saw him from the word go as a
demagogue, an irresponsible person who was
just somebody who had to be called to
account. --
Section 8: Q: What kinds of editorial issues interested
you during the time that you were there?
A: I had done a lot of travel abroad and had
written before coming to the Register and I
was very interested in foreign issues. I had
studied abroad and so when I first came here,
I was writing a lot of stuff about
international issues. I think I said earlier
that you start out writing on a whole variety
of subjects and the complexity of issues
forces you to narrow down. I found myself
narrowing down and I wrote a lot about
welfare. I got interested in welfare and
sort of learned a lot about the welfare laws
and the way they were working. I wrote a
lot about welfare, a lot about criminal
justice. I got interested in corrections and
the way the parole system worked, the way the
bail system worked. I really dug into bail.
I had some success in getting that modified.
Our system for dealing with the mentally ill
prisoners, I think I might have mentioned
that last time. That was atrocious and we
spent a lot of time with that. I found
myself reading just about every Supreme Court
decision. I don't know if I mentioned that
last time. Then I got interested in the
Supreme Court and we subscribed to a service
and wrote a lot of commentary about Supreme
Court decisions. I got interested also in
the Iowa Supreme Court, how that operated.
You tend to think of these justices sitting
around a table and deliberating these cases.
It didn't work like that at all. They would
come together once a month or so and then
scatter to their homes. They didn't
deliberate at all, basically one person made
the decision and the others usually signed on
with very little dissent. That was
disillusioning to find out how that court
worked, but I learned a lot. I learned that
you just can't assume you know how it works,
you have to get into the mechanics of what
they actually do. That was an eye-opener to
me. I think my interests tended to center
around civil liberties. I wrote a lot about
civil liberties, civil rights. We were
getting a lot of Warren court decisions, the
desegregation decisions. All about the
protest movement in the south, the passage of
Civil Rights legislation. I got really
steeped in that and wrote a lot about that.
I think you can get the picture of what I was
interested in. The wonderful thing about the
job is that you had a latitude to get into
whatever you wanted to get into. It was a
dream job. Somebody once said, "Oh, you're
getting paid to think." We were not just
paid to think, but paid to dig into something
that really interested you.
Q: It sounds like the job today wouldn't be
up to par as far as you're concerned. The
things they're writing about today are the
accusations against President Clinton a year
ago and whether George Bush Jr. took drugs 25
years ago. It seems they're focusing more on
the superficial issues than the kinds of
things you would dig into back then. And you
wouldn't have the latitude, either. It seems
to me that's what they're talking about.
A: I think there's maybe a more fundamental
difference. That is, staff and time. We
were very well staffed and we had the time
and the ability to really dig into these
subjects. It's a much smaller staff now and
you see it in the amount of space that's
devoted to editorials. We used to run a lot
of editorials and now maybe they'll run one
or two and maybe there's some kind of filler
to fill out the rest of the column. It's a
function of staff. Having the staff enabled
us to really dig up interesting material to
reprint, too. A staff is essential. It's
essential to putting out a good editorial
page. But, numbers alone don't tell the
story. You can say, "Well, you've got eight
people and somebody else has got three
people." What counts is the productivity of
the people. It's not just a head count. We
had some people who would agonize over an
editorial a whole day long. They had
difficulty producing one editorial a day.
Other people would write four or five in that
same period of time. But we had productive
people, by and large, and we had a large
number of them. I don't know if I mentioned
before, but we also had people in Washington.
We had two editorial writers in Washington.
Q: Who were they?
A: One was named William Symonds and the
other was named Richard Foster. We would
have a conference everyday and we would have
a speakerphone on the desk and they would
participate in the conference. Why were they
in Washington? One of them wrote a lot on
Agriculture. If you want to write about how
to farm, then you should be in Iowa. But, if
you want to write about agricultural
economics, agricultural policy, that's where
it's made and that's where you want to be.
Same with foreign policy. Dick Foster wrote
about foreign policy. It's not made in Iowa.
It's made in Congress and it's made in the
state department, it's made in the White
House. If you have somebody in Washington
who can attend the briefings and talk to the
policy makers or the people who have their
ear to the policy makers, that's where you
should be. Moreover, you're in a position to
talk to your congressman and say, "What are
you going to do about the foreign aid bill or
this bill or that bill?" They would get a
lot of that. We were very well served by the
people in Washington.
Q: Not only the editorial writers, but the
reporters too.
A: These two people only worked for the
editorial page. They wrote signed pieces and
they wrote editorials. That was an excellent
investment in them.
Q: Would that be unusual?
A: Yes, it was very unusual. --
Section 9: Q: We were talking about the difference
between today's paper and the paper when you
were there. You still have quality writers
today, but perhaps not the staff or not the
subject matter that maybe should be focused
on. Could you talk about what you're seeing
on the editorial pages today with regard to
the balance of the issues or the actual
writing?
A: Much less attention to international
affairs. In fact, the editor recently had a
column in which he said, "We're not going to
spend much time on international affairs."
They do write now and then, but there is much
less attention to it because the feeling is
that readers aren't so interested in it.
That begs the question, if it's important,
shouldn't you deal with it and maybe
shouldn't you get the readers interested in
it? And signal to the readers why they
should be interested it. Probably back when I
was there, there was no such thing as a focus
group. We had readership surveys, but that
consisted of pollsters taking a copy of the
paper and saying, "If you read the paper,
what did you read?" They would go through
what was read. People lie sometimes about
what they were reading. We learned, for
example, that they were reading the
editorials more than they were reading the
sports page. That was a fact I found hard to
believe. But, there was never such a thing a
focus group. We never had a group of people
where we asked them, "What should we put in
the paper? What would you be interested in
reading in the paper?" That is not the case
today. I'm not just talking about the
Register. In general, newspapers have sort
of become slaves to focus groups, even though
they are highly questionable
methodologically. How reliable they are.
Q: That's a huge issue, though, the fact that
what's the mission of the paper, to inform or
to cater to what people want.
A: Do you follow or do you lead? Right, that
is a big issue.
Q: That's completely turned around,
apparently.
A: It's much more focused on what the reader
wants. Those are the values of the
entertainment industry. When they put out
rotten movies and they're called to account
for it, they say, "Well, that's what the
customer wants." If you have newspapers
saying, "That's what the readers want, how
are you different from the movie business or
any other entertainment business?" You've
got a different mission, that's the answer.
You are supposed to provide people not only
with information they would like to have, but
the information they ought to have.
Q: What specifically did that change?
A: A lot of it is a circulation decline.
When I came there, the Register's circulation
was about five hundred and twenty thousand on
Sunday. It's now below three hundred
thousand on Sunday. Daily circulation is
down too, and this is true all across the
country. There's the feeling that we're
doing something wrong. We had better satisfy
the readers. It might be that what they're
doing wrong is that they're dumbing down the
papers, trivializing the papers and maybe if
they provided a bigger news hole and more
hard news, better local reporting, more
enterprise reporting, that might be a way to
get circulation up. It seems to be the case
that the better papers, papers that invest
more in the products seem to be doing a
little better on circulation.
Q: On a completely different topic and
wrapping up here pretty soon, you saw the
change from linotype machines and typewriters
to computers.
Tape Two, Side Two
Q: Was that a smooth transition? I guess it
would have happened more in the late sixties
and early seventies.
A: It was starting when I was there. There
were glitches. Basically what happened is
that things that used to be done in the
composing room, mechanical things, were
shifted up to the newsroom and to the
editorial page. We would set the type, for
example. It used to be that you would put
the story in a tube and somebody would set it
with hard type. We would then put the story
in by a computer and press a button and a
photographic image of the story would appear.
That would then be pasted up. At the end of
the day, we would make the corrections. It
used to be that they would make the
corrections down at the composing room. We
were doing more mechanical things.
Initially, we were doing only creative
things. We were writing, laying out the
pages, which is somewhat mechanical but also
creative. It ended up that it became more of
a mix, creative but also mechanical. Unless
you add staff, then the mechanical stuff is
taking away the time you have to do the
creative things. The Register did have
staff. When we went to the system of making
the corrections, reading the proofs at the
end of the day and putting in the corrections
ourselves, instead of having the composing
room do it, I kept track how much additional
time it took. I think it added up to about
one and a half people or something like that.
I told the management that we needed more
help because of this. They said, "We
anticipated that we would have to hire more
people." And they gave me more help. Of
course, that's the way it should be. What
has been happening today is not that. They
invest a lot of money in this mechanical
pagination, for example, and if they have to
hire more people, well that cuts down on the
economic benefit of the pagination. I just
had some students do a study of fifty papers
that had paginated. Only a minority had
added staff. As a result of that, they had
less time to edit copy, they report more
errors getting in the paper. That type of
thing. Pagination, to stick with one
example, is, I am told, a better way to
produce the paper. But, unless you are
willing to take into account what it does to
manpower, what it does to the obligation to
make sure that the stuff that gets in the
paper is accurate, unless you make provision
for that and add staff, then it's a very poor
investment. The bottom line will look good
but the product will not be as good. I think
that's the main thing that's happened. The
technological changes have been all for the
good. When I first came there and went down
to the composing room, I was shocked. That
place was jam-packed with people carrying
trays of type. You couldn't turn around
without bumping into somebody. I said, "This
is a medieval way to put out a newspaper.
This is ridiculous." Then over time that
changed.
