Section 1: Q: Getting back to the budget, too, the
budget in the newsroom, which there was a
lack of, I mean, you had money to spend and
you spent it. Compare that to what today's
business environment is, where everything is
pretty formally budgeted. I mean, for a
newsroom, you wouldn't be able to make
decisions to send people to Vietnam.
A: Yeah, you could, but you have to have a
budget item to account for that. I mean,
sports. You have to have a sports budget
which admits that the teams you're covering
are going to end up in the NCAA. You got to
have money in order to send the photographer
and the reporter there. So you build that
into the budget, too. You never know when
you're going to need some extra pages for a
big story. We used to bring the paper up,
two pages or four pages, even though there
wasn't the advertising to do it, we just
needed it for a big project or something.
But you'd budget for that. There was a
wonderful guy who was an expert budgeter,
Gene Roberts, of the Philadelphia Enquirer.
He was a friend of mine and he taught me a
lot of budget tricks. One is, to always
build into your budget a whole bunch of
newsprint costs, because that lets you go up
eight pages or put together a special tab of
fourteen pages. That lets you do it without
going to anybody, getting the okay. So you
build those things but you can't do that
under some regimes. And I suspect that's
very hard to do, under the Gannett budget.
But you have to build that stuff in.
Q: Because it's so closely watched? Or
what?
A: Well, Gannett is very profit oriented.
Their eye is more on the bottom line, I
suspect, than it is on the news part of it.
They would not conceive that. But when you
get right down to it, that's how they are
evaluated. --
Section 2: Q: Also, about 1980, you had indicated in
your letter, that there was a need for
improvements and changes in the paper. What
was happening then?
A: All through this time, the Tribune
circulation dropped, despite all the things
we did. You know, we did a lot of specials.
We started a metro poll, similar to the Iowa
poll. We had a lot of these new things
floating around. We started a neighborhood
section, to get the paper out and get the
neighborhood news in the paper. But the
circulation was slowed, but it didn't
increase the circulation. And there is a
whole phenomena of how the audience changed,
the lifestyles changed, television got
better, competing newspapers got better and
they got more aggressive. I think that was
the Register's problem, that it was once the
paper in Iowa and set the agenda but all
these other things were going which gradually
nibbled against them and they didn't realize
it. They could have done some things, I
think, but they didn't really realize it.
After Frank Eyerly left, the Register reached
sort of a plateau. And Mills left, you know.
He retired and the Register reached kind of
a plateau when the Tribune was raising hell.
But we couldn't fight all these lifestyle
changes and audience changes and television
and better newspapers. See, the competition,
essentially, in the newspaper business,
competed for readers' time. You got to find
time, you got to give them time to read the
damn thing and it has to be so impressive
that they take the time to read it. But we
really were competing for readers' time.
The two-worker families started and all these
things were going against daily newspapers,
especially afternoon newspapers. I think our
last deadline was on o'clock, when we locked
up. And it would be delivered by, hopefully,
five or six. It was just in the cards. I
realized that, but I didn't know what to do
about it. We did the best we could, almost.
We could have done a lot of other things.
But nobody really realized this. There were
a few papers who would. One of them was St.
Petersburg. St. Petersburg, Florida, had a
marvelous newspaper. They've used color for
a long time and it produces four regional
sections, maybe twelve-page sections. It's
covering neighborhoods around St. Petersburg.
Clearwater to the north and all these
places.
Q: You're talking about the time that the
Tribune was needing some help? About 1980?
A: Yes. The reason I know about the St.
Petersburg Times is because that was one of
my models. I knew Bob Havan, who was the
editor down there. But they had been doing
this for years. They were smarter than
everybody else. They were free-standing
papers with their own staff, their own
advertising staff, and they'd wrap the St.
Petersburg Times, the main paper, would go
out and they'd wrap it inside the earlier
newspaper, like the Clearwater Times. So
first you would get the Clearwater Times and
then inside that, was the St. Petersburg
Times, with all its national and St.
Petersburg news and all its color and that
sort of stuff. They've been successful -
they were successful at that long before
anybody else in the country was. And that's
where I stole the idea to start and try to
get these things going in Des Moines. I had
an awful time doing it, because there was
resistance from in the company to do it,
mainly from the advertising department.
Q: But your idea was to wrap these tabs as
inserts?
A: Well, first of all, we'd get the tab
started. Then, marry them up with the daily
Register, a weekly, on the day. In St.
Petersburg, they are daily. But this was a
weekly with a lot of local news and local
advertising. Marry it up with the Tribune as
it was delivered. I could never get us to be
the wrapper for the whole thing. I had a
hard enough time getting it set up at all,
because there was some resistance internally.
But it wasn't my idea - I stole it from Bob
Havan. And if it was done right, it can be
made to work. But it does cost a little bit
of money. Oddly, this was successful. We
did start some of these things. A couple
years before I retired, I tried to implement
the same principle for the state Register,
the state edition of the Register. That is,
to have four or five stand-alone local
Registers, north and south and east and west
or wherever, to print local news from that
area, sell local advertising from that area
and then marry it up with the Sunday
Register, which was the biggest circulation,
marry that up with the Sunday Register so the
people in that area would no longer get the
Sunday Register - they'd get a local
newspaper, too. And that's very expensive.
And it's really very difficult. We did get
one up and running, up in Mason City. We
called it the North Iowa Tribune, I think.
It was the North Iowa Register or whatever.
And it was like pulling teeth to get anybody
besides the editorial department interested
in that sort of thing.
Q: Meaning they?
A: The advertising department. They
weren't interested in taking somebody and
sending them up there. The first
neighborhood that we started was up in
Ankeny. The way it started was, a member of
the advertising staff in Des Moines was
responsible for selling advertising for this
little Ankeny paper. Well, Christ, they
don't want to go work for that little Ankeny
paper. You don't make enough money, you
don't make that much more money and it's a
pretty tough sell, so why should we do it?
So we got a couple of dogs who were selling
and I finally got mad and told the woman I
hired as editor, go hire another, go hire
some other advertising people. And she hired
a person who was a good advertising salesman
and got an intern to help her and we just
started selling our own advertising. I just
told the advertising department, "Forget it.
I've got a guy up there and we're going to
sell advertising." That's not the way you're
supposed to get something started, because
you've got to have some enthusiasm. But the
advertising department, the advertising guy
at that time, didn't think he could sell any
advertising anymore. Well, we just didn't
believe that. And times told that he was
greatly wrong. Gannett is selling a lot of
advertising in Des Moines now. But looking
back, that sort of an organization for the
Register was twice as difficult. Because you
had to find a place to print it. You had to
find people and you had to find a guy to get
the type set, you know, all in this remote
area. Well, we got one going in northern
Iowa and it was fun. It was pretty good.
Dave ****, with the Gazette, my old alma
mater, gave him tips. Because we could sweep
the cream - we didn't have to worry a lot
about all the little stuff that they did. We
could sweep the cream off. And we had a good
time. Then they - I don't know why they did
this, but they started one in Fort Dodge,
which I didn't have anything to do with. I
could never understand that and I told them,
why do you want to run one in Fort Dodge for?
You got one in Mason City. They are only
about sixty miles apart, for crying out loud.
What about western Iowa? Or eastern Iowa or
someplace? At any rate, when Gannett bought
the paper and they came on board, Gannett
just shut them all down because they were too
expensive. --
Section 3: Q: For the Tribune though, there was a
time where you were talking about not only
the improvements and the changes that you
needed to make because of the circulation
decline, but there was talk early on, about
maybe killing the paper because you couldn't
-
A: The talk wasn't all that early on. The
way it came about was after I got tired and
they named a newer managing editor and I
became managing editor without portfolio and
assistant to the publisher.
Q: What does that mean? Being a managing
editor without portfolio?
A: I was the managing editor but didn't
have any newspaper. But they turned me loose
to do all sorts of things, to come up with
ideas about what the paper should be doing
and how it should do it.
Q: You were a consultant, I guess?
A: Yes, only I was on the payroll.
Actually, it was needed. I called it the
Skunk Works. About that time, some business
consultants came out with a book and I noted
somewhere in that book that really good
corporations have some guys running around in
white coats in an obscure room in some
obscure building thinking about the future
and planning for the future and coming up
with all kinds of wild ideas. And he called
it the Skunk Works. So I named the little
group we formed, namely the publisher and I,
the Skunk Works, to come up with some real
wild thinking, far out, and trying to stretch
as far as we could, of what newspapers should
be doing. And of course, what newspapers
should be doing, we already knew, because
they get the news and they print it without
fear of favor and they are very aggressive
and they set the public agenda and they look
out for crooks and all sorts of things. What
we were really talking about was - and this
is an area that, at the time, many newspapers
became marketing. How do you market a
newspaper? Editors should not have to worry
about marketing. That's not their business.
Their business is to get the best content we
can and the best stories and the most
interesting stories and do all the things
we're supposed to do. And editors should not
have to worry about marketing, because if
they do, then they are going to have to say,
well, you know, 12% of the people in west Des
Moines want this kind of story and 20% want
this kind of story and all that stuff. And
pretty soon, they're going to start editing a
newspaper from polls and from marketing
studies. That's one of the really major
problems with most newspapers today, is that
editors have become so bound up in marketing,
the product (God! I hate that word!). You
know, a newspaper is not a product, like a
tube of toothpaste. I mean, a newspaper is a
living, viable institution. But they started
calling all of the papers products then. And
how can we change the product to get more
circulation? Then again, editors start
thinking that way, then they quit being
newspaper editors. They're half newspaper
editors and half marketers.
Q: Although you're giving the readers what
they want, you're measuring 12% wants this -
is that what a newspaper should be doing?
Giving the readers what they want?
A: Partly they should be doing that, but
you don't need a marketing man to tell you
that. But a newspaper also gives people
things that they don't know that they want.
Much of a newspaper should be telling a
person what the news is. They don't know
whether they want this news or not. They
don't know whether they want to know that the
speaker of the House of Representatives is
sleeping with his secretary or that sort of
thing. So you can't edit a newspaper by
that. I mean, you are abandoning part of
your principles if you do that. Because most
of the things you do, people don't know that
they want them until they see it in the
newspaper.
Q: You are abandoning your principle, your
principle being what?
A: Of gathering the news, the tough stuff
and the routine stuff. I mean, you've got to
have obits and that sort of thing. I don't
mean abandoning that. I don't mean
abandoning minor car accidents and getting
names in the paper and all the routine, the
fluvial that you get. But an editor has to
worry about what kind of stories his news
department is getting and what the people
really need, even though they may not realize
it. I think marketing is making editors
puppeteers. It was a big, big mistake. I
think there ought to be a wall between the
newsroom and the business office and the
advertising office and the circulation
department and all that sort of stuff. See,
that's what happened at the Los Angeles
Times. When they hired this cereal maker to
become president of the Los Angeles Times, he
tried to - the wall was there and he vowed
from the beginning that he was going to tear
it down. For a while, he had guys,
marketeers, from the advertising and
circulation department, sitting down with
specific editors about how we're going to
play this and this is going to go on page -
and all that. It was just terrible. And it
caused them a lot of grief. The staff morale
and all that sort of thing. Now, of course,
they made this huge mistake of sharing
profits with the - I guess it's with some
kind of arena that started it, and you shared
it and had a big tab on it and share the
profits with this outfit, fifty-fifty without
telling anybody in the newsroom about it.
Q: I don't want to press you too hard on
this -
A: Please do!
Q: I asked everybody this, especially when
it comes up, why is that wall necessary? I
mean, it seems evident to you and I, but
these days, in the environment, the business
environment that we have, the economic
environment that we have, the sales area
ought to be working cooperatively with what
is coming out. In the case of a newspaper,
the paper and the sales department, why do
you have to have that wall?
A: I don't want to answer your question by
asking another one, but I'll ask it
rhetorically. Why do they have to be aware
of that?
Q: As a business, the newspaper business
wants every part of that business to be
successful.
A: Well, yeah, you do. But it's not an
editor's job to do what the advertising
department wants you to do. See, people in
an advertising department are not news
people. They're not newsmen. They don't
have the sense of cause that really good
newspaper people have. Their only interest
is selling more ads and circulation people
selling more papers. They don't really care
how they get that. So, if they can get
something in the paper that's going to make
an advertiser happy and make him buy more
ads, they'd be perfectly happy to do that,
even though the story is tainted because it
is not news anymore. It's a carrot to
advertisers. A cooperative with advertisers.
And pretty soon, you start doing that often
enough, then the word gets around and your
credibility starts to go. People see
something in the paper and say, "Wait a
minute now. Why do you suppose they ran that
story about a mechanic that stole six cars
and got away with it? Why do you suppose
they are running that?" They ran it because
old Joe, who advertises a lot in the paper,
your credibility starts to go. That was a
big concern in Los Angeles. That's a big
concern in the newsroom is that their
credibility was going to falter. And the
newspaper has nothing better, nothing can be
better than to have credibility in your
community and with your leaders. You have to
protect that. You can't take any suspicion
that you are printing something because an
advertiser wanted it or to make the
advertising manager happy or to make the
publisher's friends happy. One of the
questions that we mentioned earlier, was:
"Are there any sacred cows?" I don't know of
any sacred cow in my time at the Register or
Tribune. There was no time that anybody was
ever called off a story. There was no time
where we ever hesitated or became skittish
because of a story that we were running.
They tell the story down there that we don't
have any sacred cows because we printed all
three of Mike Cowle's divorces on page one.
[laughter]. That's not a very good answer,
but we don't have. Frank Eyerly, when Silent
Spring1 came out, Frank Eyerly printed
excerpts of that in the Register and despite
the idea that a lot of chemical companies
advertise in the Register. The Register had
a good farm tab, run by J.S. Russell and it
was a very important part of the paper, and
chemical companies bought advertising in it.
I bet Eyerly didn't even think about it. But
he was one of the early ones to spot Silent
Spring for what it really was.
Q: Silent Spring, again, the environmental
book that was written in the early sixties.
A: Right. Rachel Carson. And what it did
was, it raised the red flag about all the
environmental dangers of chemicals that we
were using, willy-nilly, on farm land and
that sort of stuff. And it was killing a lot
of other stuff, and to a degree, we're still
doing it. But Silent Spring is the one that
really started that whole environmental
movement. The chemical companies went to
great lengths to disprove and to belittle
that book and her findings. There is another
book. I've got it right down there. A book
about how the chemical companies reacted and
what they did to belittle and to draw
attention away from Silent Spring. But they
couldn't do it. They never did. To this
day, they haven't done it. But if Eyerly had
gone up and said to the advertising director
of the farm tab, I'm going to run these six
chapters, the advertising guy from the farm
tab would blanche because he knows what is
going to happen. There are very good reasons
for that wall. And there was also very good
reasons why a paper should have no sacred
cows which a lot of papers do. Maybe the
Register has now, I don't know. One smart
thing the business community did, was when
Barbara Henry came on as publisher. Soon
after she got here, she was on the board of
directors of the Chamber of Commerce. I
would consider that a conflict of interest
and the publisher of the newspaper should not
be that involved. But I think they
cooperated with the business community. I've
never asked her about although I know her
pretty well from the days when she was in
Rochester. I've never asked her about it.
But publishers should not do that. Some of
the stories that the Register runs now, I
mean, it's obvious to me that the Register
wants to be part of the business
establishment in Des Moines and Iowa. That's
the motivation for many of the stories, some
of the stories anyway, that you now see in
the paper. Not always on page one, but there
is always a question that pops up. We're
part of the establishment. Now, where did
this story come from? Why did they write it
that way and why didn't they ask us questions
and that sort of thing. The credibility is
really the only thing that a newspaper has to
sell. --
Section 4: Q: Somebody else brought up the fact that
Younkers did exhibit some pressure on the
editorial staff - and I can't remember what
the issue was, but I'm wondering if you
remember at a time when Younkers -
A: Yeah, they pulled their advertising. I
don't remember what the story was either, but
Jim MacDonald said, "Okay. They'll be back."
And in less than a month, they were back.
Those chemical companies pulled advertising
after they ran Silent Spring. Some people in
the building are very touchy about that, even
the little things. One of the things the
Tribune did, we had a restaurant review. We
had to hire a guy by the name of Joe Mossman
who was sort of a rural A.J. Leibering. He
was a big guy and he really liked to eat and
he was a gourmet and he retired from a
Detroit paper to come out and live with his
sister. We hired him on and we called him
the Grumpy Gourmet. Joe was the first Grumpy
Gourmet. There were some later, but he would
go around and after a while, he wasn't hard
to spot. The restaurants knew what was up.
But he wrote a review, reviewed Younkers Tea
Room one time. You know, that's a venerable
organization and it's a longtime part of
Younkers. They were very proud of it. It
really is an institution in itself.
Q: It has been there forever.
A: Right, yes. It was through the
downtown store. People go there for lunch.
Well, Joe went there for lunch and he
commented on it and one thing he said was
that he didn't like was they served him
coleslaw in a paper cup and the paper cup got
squishy and all this sort of thing. The
review wasn't all that good anyway, but the
thing Younkers yelled about was the fact that
we said they served coleslaw in a paper cup.
And I said, "Who cares?" It was a side. It
was just a piece of color and besides,
Mossman said it was in a paper cup. They say
it was in a ceramic cup. I'm sure this
happened - they called our marketing manager
over it.
Tape Two Side One
Q: Okay, the guy's name was Mossberg?
A: Mossman, Joe Mossman. He looked like
he was a cousin to A.J. Liebering, the great
gourmet guy and great writer for the New
Yorker. And Mossman went to Younkers and
reviewed the tea room and one of his minor
league complaints was they served coleslaw in
a paper cup. They really got mad at that. A
couple days later, the marketing guy, who
obviously had been talking to the Younkers
people -
Q: at the Register?
A: At the Register, the marketing guy for
the Register was over to talking to the
Younkers executives and he came traipsing
through the newsroom, obviously in a hurry.
I always kept a desk in the newsroom because
that's where I liked to work. And he walked
up to my desk and he went Wham! And threw
this ceramic container on my desk and said,
"That's what they serve coleslaw in at
Younkers!" And turned on his heel and walked
away. [laughter].
Q: He wanted to correct it.
A: I don't know! It's just amazing the
sort of thing that people get mad at
newspapers about. --
Section 5: Q: You said there was never a time where
you were, where there was a sacred cow at the
Register, as far as you were concerned.
A: I honestly don't remember one. I've
handled a lot of touchy, sensitive stories.
But you treat them as sensitive stories
because you know they're sensitive. But
that's what you do. I mean, you're there to
run the story. I don't ever remember being
called off a story. I don't remember anybody
on the Register ever being called off a
story, told to angle it this way, when the
obvious direction is the to be more hard
hitting instead of soft. I just don't
remember any of that. I think even Gardner
Cowles, in the old days, when John Cowles and
Gardner were down here. They may have had
some sacred cows. Like Wendell Wilkie or
something like that with world government,
and it if did happen, it would stick in my
memory because it would be such an unusual
thing. I'm sure there were some times
editors swallowed hard and ran the story,
knowing what the reaction might be. There
used to be a lieutenant governor in Iowa,
Roger Jepson. He got himself elected to the
senate. Incidentally, [Senator Barry]
Goldwater once described Roger Jepson as
being dumber than a stump.
Q: That's Goldwater.
A: That's Goldwater! But anyway, one time
I was in the newsroom on Saturday morning for
some reason. I was working in an office
doing something. And Roger Jepson - I think
he was not in the senate at the time, or it
was toward the end of it. But he came
wandering in and he looked like he had the
biggest hangover in the world. And that's
exactly what he did have. They picked up a
couple of tomatoes, he and his buddy -
Q: Tomatoes?
A: Women. They were in a motel. They
were having a good time and something
happened. I forget - the women lost a ring
or somebody took something from a car parked
outside or whatever, but the cops got
involved in it and did their usual street
investigation. He came staggering in - he
looked like God's wrath and he's usually a
pretty dapper guy - he wanted to know how he
was going to keep - does this have to be in
the newspaper? What he didn't know was it
may have been such a minor incident that we
wouldn't have put in the newspaper at all
except that if Roger Jepson hadn't called our
attention to it. So I told him, "No, Roger,
we don't do things like that." And he ambled
away. And the first thing I did was call the
police reporter and say, "You got to get this
and get it in the paper." So, people all the
time want to keep things out of the paper.
You know, I mean - remember the time? I
think Jepson was involved in this one, too,
along with some other prominent politicians
about the police who raided a massage parlor?
It was a little bit more than a massage
parlor.
Q: That came up in a campaign?
A: Yes, it did. But the dumb bunnies used
credit cards. I mean, can you imagine
anybody going to a house of prostitution and
paying with a credit card? I mean, these
guys are supposed to be smarter. And so the
cops gathered up all these credit card
receipts and we ran them in the newspaper,
especially the prominent ones. I don't know
how many calls that spawned to me, but there
were three or four. And all of them saying,
you know, "If my name is in that story, my
marriage is going to fall apart." And I
heard all kinds of stuff. And I said,
"Well," and I finally said this, "Well, if
you're not smart enough not to use a credit
card in a place like that, then you deserve
it." [laughter]. Jepson was one of those
and I think the state financial guy was one
of them also. Not the auditor but the
bureaucrat that runs all the money stuff,
Marvin Selvin. I think he was involved in
that also. --
Section 6: Q: Getting back to the papers here, there
was a time where you actually did make the
decision to close the Tribune?
A: Yes.
Q: And you were instrumental with that?
A: I was part of the study group, part of
the Skunk Team that came to that decision.
Q: You also talked about that there were
options. Maybe you could describe what your
options were?
A: We didn't know what options, but when
we started it, we said, "Let's sit down and
do all the research necessary and gather up
all the history we can to see if it makes any
sense at all, to go to one once a day
newspaper." And that's the way we started.
We didn't start out and say, "Let's build a
case to kill the Tribune." So, we spent
months doing this process. We called in some
help from some other people. And we had a
huge stack of exhibits. The reading that
came out was that, yes, we'd be better to
have one good newspaper, we'd better serve
the state and the town, especially the area,
with one really good newspaper. If the
Register would be expanded to pick up and
take up some of the flags that the Tribune
was running and some of not only its
features, but some of its ideas and some of
its courage and some of its enterprise, and
if we put all that in one paper, it would be
a hell of a newspaper. We didn't start out
to say that, but that's what we talked about.
For example, why should - we were literally
forcing people in Des Moines to get a whole
picture of what was going on in Des Moines,
we were forcing them to buy two newspapers.
We had been doing that for years. We made a
lot of money off of it because the obits were
different, the record stuff was different.
Good stories were not picked up from one
paper to the other. So we forced people to
buy two newspapers. They began to get pretty
wise to that and that's part of the problem
with circulations, because they weren't going
to do that anymore. So we came to the
conclusion to expand the morning Register and
kill the Tribune. I'm not overly proud of my
role in that. It was a big role and I made
all the arguments and then argued myself out.
What I forgot was the intangible of a
readers' respect for a newspaper that is on
his door every afternoon at 5:30 or 6:00. We
didn't factor any of that in. But anyway, we
did the change and it was very traumatic. It
was very traumatic to me because I had a lot
of my career wound up in that newspaper. And
the Tribune people were proud of it and
rightly so, because we raised the standards
and raised the coverage. We made it a
really, really good newspaper. But we killed
it.
Q: The idea was...?
A: The idea of having the Register pick up
some of the things, like the Tribune would
do, and I'm not talking about comics or
columns, but I'm talking about coverage and
the way we used to cover things and the
enterprise that we used and how aggressive we
were. If they'd make good use of that, then
it would work. The problem is, the Register
didn't ever do that. Once we sliced the
Tribune, then the Register - I don't think it
even went up, the number of pages it went up.
Maybe it went a couple pages. But pretty
soon, there was no sign of the Tribune in it
at all. There was no symbol, no nothing.
And the Register went on its merry way. I
can build a case - I really do regret that I
didn't, that I wasn't smart enough to foresee
what might happen. It was that we just
simply killed a newspaper, pretty much blown
off the face of the earth and just doesn't
exist anymore.
Q: What did you envision? What would you
have liked to see the Register do?
A: I think what we should have done, what
we probably should have kept the Tribune and
made it a city newspaper. The Des Moines
suburbs. That's it, right there.
Concentrate all our efforts on that. Because
the Register had never done a very good job
of covering the city. I mean, they weren't
complete. They ignored stuff. They still
ignore stuff. But we should have made the
Tribune, just tailored it down and made it a
core city newspaper, not pretend to be
anything else. And give the Register
everything else. Central Iowa, the Golden
Circle, the whole state and all that stuff,
so they could concentrate on that. That
would probably have been the smart thing to
do. And even that might not have worked, I
don't know. But I would have felt more
comfortable in hindsight, doing that than
killing the newspaper all by itself.
Q: But if the idea had been that - I mean,
you did make the decision that the Register
would pick up a lot of what the Tribune had
become. I mean, the best stuff, the good
stuff from the Tribune and it didn't happen,
what did you envision that being? What would
the Register have looked like with the
Tribune stuff, if in fact, they followed
through.?
A: It would have more news hold. It would
have better photographs, because the part of
the Tribune's charm was, before television,
was the really - we worried a lot about
photography, good photography. I mean,
photography is an art, in my book and just a
tangent, one of the reasons why I was so
successful, was I brought the photographers
in to the photo editing process. In the old
days, photographers would go take pictures
and he would pick out maybe his best one, and
come out and give you one picture. And they
were shocked when I said, "Is this the only
picture you took?" "Well, no." I said,
"Well, bring me the rest of them." We sit
there and we'd get the photographer involved
in this process, looking over content with a
magnifying glass and talking about it and
sometimes arguing about it. So the
photographers really, really became part of
the editing process, which is the way it
should be. So anyway, we worried a lot about
photography in the Tribune. That didn't show
up in the Register. The Register should have
done a lot more city coverage, but probably
did pick up all the obits and everything, but
they should have been more aggressive on the
coverage of the city and the expansion. See,
all these things that the Tribune was doing,
these marvelous special projects, sending
Gammack to Vietnam, the Manila story, we
profiled one of the POW's from Iowa with a
six-part series on what it was really like.
We did a tab on what we called "The Lean
Years," using photographs from the Farm
Service Administration, from the Library of
Congress in Washington, going back and
getting those old photographs shot by those
really great photographers. And taking those
photographs and sending the photographer and
the reporter out to re-photograph the area
now as it was then and to find some of the
people, if they could, that were in those
pictures. Kids that had grown up. All that
stuff should have really been in the
Register. I mean, when I was writing
politics, and I was on a roll and I was doing
good stuff, the Register used to run my
political stories, many of them, in the state
editions of the Register. They'd pick them
up and they would re-run them. And that was
happening more frequently and more
frequently, so a lot of the stuff that I was
doing should have really gone to the
Register. But nobody was about to tell me
that. Nobody was going to take those things
away from the Tribune and say this should be
in the Register. I wasn't about to give all
these things to the Register because I wanted
the Tribune to be a stand-alone, a really
good newspaper. So, what the Register should
have done was realize things like that. And
use some of the techniques that the Tribune
was using, including the metro poll and all
that stuff, to beef up their own. But they
didn't do anything like that. They didn't do
anything. They just went on being
themselves. And the Register - they were
really kind of flat. I mean, after Mills
retired and Eyerly retired and they fired a
couple of news editors and some good writers
had left, the Register was really kind of
flat and the Tribune was being very
aggressive and making a lot of waves and
drawing a lot of attention and all that sort
of thing. But all, really in hindsight, what
the Register should have been doing. And
they had the chance, when we killed the
Tribune. They had a chance to do it. But it
just wasn't in them to do it. The managing
editor was not very aggressive. The city
editor was - John Zug, he was a good city
editor. But they just didn't have that
interest. And that's one of the reasons why
the Register today is not what it was back
then. Even with all the changes, the tribute
to the Register is problems.
Q: Then these things started happening
under Cowles. I mean, that's part of it.
A: Well, the Cowles didn't have anything
to do with it. But yeah, it was part of the
Cowles tradition. When I retired, they had a
coffee out in the newsroom, when they gave me
a check for $100 or something toward a new
desk. But I made a little speech and one of
the things I said was, "Don't forget the
traditions that formed the soul of these
newspapers and don't forget your
responsibility because if you do, then you'll
become just another Peoria." That was the
gist of it and nobody said anything, except
Flansberg and Geneva Overholser thought that
was so good that they had me go back and
re-type it. Then they printed it on the
editorial page. But that's what happened. I
mean, the Register now is not much different
than Peoria or hundreds of other Peorias. I
mean, the newspaper is great and it looks
very good and I admire the changes that they
made in the way the paper is put together.
But that will be forgotten after a while and
content will still be the same. --
Section 7: Q: I think you mentioned it before, I
mean, you've already talked about it. I
don't know how much more you can say, but
what did make the Register so good? Was it
the fact that you had all these Pulitzer
Prize winners?
A: No. They had a sense of cause. And
they had a sense of one of their
responsibilities was to set the agenda. And
they had all the tools in place and they knew
how to use them. I mean, they had a
Washington Bureau. They had Dick Wilson,
Fletcher Knable, Clark Mollenhoff. Later on,
they had Jim Risser, who won two Pulitzer
Prizes. Nick Kotz, who won a Pulitzer Prize.
Mollenhoff, of course. But the reason why
those guys won Pulitzer Prizes is because
they had the freedom to follow their
instincts. And Dick Wilson, who was the
Washington Bureau chief for years, told me
one time, that that's how he ran the bureau.
He didn't run the bureau by saying, "Okay,
we're going to cover - you're going to cover
Congress, you're going to cover the
Department of Agriculture. He said, "They
waited until a guy who was just there
discovered really what he was interested in".
And where his instincts led him and they
turned him loose and let him go. That's the
only reason why Risser got dirty grain
stories and Mollenhoff got involved in the
Teamsters stuff, because they had the freedom
to do it. How did I get into that? And the
other parts were of course, things that they
were well known for. The Big Peach. In
those days, The Big Peach was using an
airplane to fly photographers out there and
back. It was really a wonderful operation.
When I was a kid, a kid reporter, I used to
be a spotter on The Big Peach crew. They
used to have three or four crews that would
load up the cameras and we'd fly off to hell
and gone, you know. And we'd stay sometimes
only fifteen minutes, getting pictures
because we had to get back in order to make
the deadline. They had these huge cameras.
It was like a canon. It's called the
Howitzer. And it takes single pictures. And
they had a machine gun camera, just like a
movie camera, that took quick pictures. And
they had a guy on the sidelines and they had
all this stuff and they'd go to a football
game and they'd package it - three or four
football games into the Sunday Big Peach. It
was a hell of an accomplishment, because God,
you've got guys spread all over the Midwest
taking pictures and you got to have a system
to get them back in time and get them in the
newspaper quickly. They had that. They had
a Washington Bureau. They had an editorial
page that was not only very readable but was
it was very sensible and very principled.
And it was respected and it was a power.
They had all these things going for it. It
was a newspaper for those times. It was
before television. It was before two-worker
families. J.S. Russell ran a great farm tab
but the number of farmers decreased every
year. And eventually, the farm tab was
folded into another section of the paper and
it was abandoned. This gradually, over the
years, these things happened to them, but
they didn't do too much about it. They kind
of rolled with the punches. And I would like
to think and maybe it wouldn't happen if Mike
Cowles were still here. But somewhere along
the line, it just began getting diminished.
It tends to be a little bit arrogant.
Q: Now or at that time?
A: Now. And by that, I mean, and I don't
understand it, because one of the jobs is to
set the state's agenda. They're not doing a
very good job of it if there is a lot of
stuff that never gets in the newspaper. I
mean, I'm astounded sometimes. I used to
watch the AP report when I was in Ames with
the Tribune. I used to watch the AP report
and it was far more complete about the
legislature, for example. There were stories
that the Register simply ignored. And it
used to be that that's the first thing people
who were interested in politics looked for
was what is the Register saying about this?
Or what is the Register doing about this? Or
even in the better days of the Tribune, what
is the Tribune doing about this? Or what
kind of story did Mabry write about this? Or
George Anthony. Or whatever. That doesn't
happen now. Jepson is the spearhead. And I
suppose they're interested in what he is
doing, but I can't for the life of me figure
out what happens when they just simply ignore
things that are going on in the legislature.
If one of our functions is to keep the
citizens informed, you don't wait until after
the fact to inform them. You try to keep them
and tell them before the fact so they can
avoid or put pressure or make democracy work
or something. But they have to be informed
before the fact, before the legislature
passes it. And somehow, that seems to escape
the Register. I don't want to be harsh on
the Register because it's not a great
newspaper but neither is it a bad newspaper.
It's just sort of in the middle there which
is a comedown from what it was. It also had
an airplane. They had several airplanes.
Q: It flew to Arizona.
A: That's what we used to do. There are
several things - I'm going to tell you a
George Yates story later that just occurred
to me, but there are several things that the
Register has not done that would have been
have been done in under the old sense of
cause. One of them is gambling. When
gambling started in this state, it was
covered but nobody really bothered to make
gambling their thing. Like covering
anti-poverty stories, my thing. Or I made
the Interstate my thing. I knew more about
it than anybody else in the state. They
didn't do that with gambling. They should
have. They had an expert - the guy that
knows more about gambling in Iowa than
anybody is probably Buck Turnbull in the
sports department. Nobody ever went to
Turnbull and said, "Buck, what do you think
about this?" And really find out what is
going on, what the impact is going to be,
what the problems are going to be. Visit
other states. They never did that. Even
with the hog lots. That's a Register
natural. It's got a farm department. It's
got a good tradition behind it. But they
didn't pursue that story. Raleigh, North
Carolina, pursued that story and won the
Pulitzer. Same situation, the same kind of
thing. And the Register sat back here just
kind of nibbling at it.
Q: Again, the hog lots was the story about
the run-off and the county and all that?
A: Yes, and the inspections. When I was
covering the Highway Commission, I spent one
raw winter day with a crew that literally
walked the route of the Interstate before
they built it. And I picked the wrong day
because we up hill and down hill and through
gullies. But I just think they wanted to get
a feel for how they planned an Interstate or
what they went through. And the crew
literally walked everywhere the Interstate
was to go, they walked somebody walked it.
Well, they should have done that with the
inspectors, the state inspectors in the hog
lots. How safe is an urban hog lot? I loved
the thing - they called them lagoons. Hog
lagoons, as if that is going to help them.
What they are is sewer pits. It's full of
manure and urine. But they call them
lagoons. But how safe are the earthen
lagoons? How expensive are above-ground
lagoons, the ones that are liable to be more
safe? How many of these farmers are raising
pigs for another, essentially a corporation?
Well, most of them are. There are about four
hundred farmers in Iowa raising pigs for
somebody else, these big hog operations.
Q: Probably out of state.
A: Many of them were. That's another
story that has got its arms around that. In
the old days, I mean, somebody would have
been all over that story. And they would
have owned that story like nobody else in the
state. You had to get the true picture from
the Register. Well, they didn't do that.
Right now, there is this big, big hassle
about genetic modified corn and soybeans.
The big push is over in Europe and England
where they refuse to accept them. This has a
hell of an impact on Iowa farmers because
nobody knows, there has never been any
research done to prove that these things are
either safe or unsafe. But there is an awful
lot of rhetoric going on. I think what I
would do, because it has such an impact on
Iowa farmers, I'd send a reporter over there
to England. And I'd say, "Talk to these
people. Why are they so against modified
corn?" They won't even buy it. I'd want to
find out. The New York Times has had several
stories on that. But nobody from Iowa ever
has. They've run some stories but
second-hand stuff. Why not go? It doesn't
cost much money to fly somebody to England
for a week, for God's sake. It's the sort of
story that somebody should jump on and simply
own it.
Q: Particularly from Iowa.
A: Particularly from Iowa, yes,
particularly Iowa, because farmers don't know
whether to buy genetically modified corn or
soybeans or what. We don't even know how
much, what kind of corn they are going to
plant next year or this year. Presumably,
there is not much difference. Are the
chemical companies telling these guys that
the agri-business community telling these
guys, "Well go ahead and plant it. Go ahead
and buy genetically modified. We'll buy it
from you." Well, you know, is that true? I
mean, will they? Some of the big processors
refuse to buy genetically modified corn.
Last year, Gerber Baby Food is not going to
buy it, Frito Lay is not buying it. We just
don't have our arms around that is the
problem. And it's very important, it's very,
very important. What's going on at Iowa
State? Little Ames Tribune - we've had a
couple stories on that, of research at Iowa
State, which goes very slow. But really,
what is going on? And I'm really disturbed
by that sort of attitude. Because that's
what newspapers do best. Television can't do
it. There is nobody else going to do it for
us and those are the kind of stories that
you've got to look for. And those are the
kind of stories that are going to be the
salvation of good investigative newspapering.
Q: Sometimes you wonder how much the
readership cares about it. Maybe the
readership isn't being informed enough,
therefore, they don't know that they should
be caring about it.
A: Part of the responsibility is to tell
them why they should care about it. In Iowa,
it's a farm economy. People keep saying
there are only 2% of Iowans that live on the
farm and actually farm. That's true. But
agriculture is more than 22% of Iowa's gross
product every year. So agriculture is a
quarter of our output and that makes it a
pretty big business. And that makes it very
important. It just astounds me. You've got
a guy sitting out there in Houston, Story
County. Maybe bring down the family farm or
the century farm, been there a hundred years,
and the poor guy is sitting there, "Geez,
should I buy gene-modified corn? Or should I
buy just the regular kind?"
Q: We're about done with the audio tape.
