A Closer Look at Newhouse - CJR, January/February 2000

'A Major Influence'
Jim Willse, the editor of The Star-Ledger, declined to be interviewed on the record for this story. But it is clear from talking to observers of the New Jersey media scene, as well as current Star-Ledger staffers, that Willse has used his Newhouse freedom to invigorate a paper long considered dull, a classic underachiever. He added color, put some bite in the editorial page, and introduced the concept of narrative journalism. He hired more than fifty reporters and editors, beefed up coverage in the bureaus, and sent reporters to Portugal, India, Mexico, and elsewhere for stories with local ties. He reined in the paper's incredibly detailed, process-oriented statehouse coverage and refocused it on explanatory and analytical stories. He replaced the antiquated electronic library with a first-rate, Web-based information system and virtual library. "It [the Newhouse Way] provides the ability to get the job done," says M.J. Crowley, the paper's information editor who Willse brought in from Philadelphia Newspapers, where she worked for both the Inquirer and the Daily News. "I don't run into brick walls here. I don't deal with time-consuming bureaucracy. That's a great feeling."

There have been no Pulitzers in Newark yet, but the paper's 1998 coverage of racial profiling by the New Jersey state police won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and the National Association of Black Journalists. Willse was named editor of the year last year by the National Press Foundation, an award Jim Amoss won in 1997. "I think there is a legitimate question whether The Star-Ledger would have driven the coverage of racial profiling five years ago," says Mark J. Magyar, editor of New Jersey Reporter, a public policy journal. "They took on the attorney general's office, the state police. This was a real campaign by The Star-Ledger. I think Willse has had a major influence."

It's hard to find someone who doesn't think the paper has improved under Willse, but it hasn't been all good news. Circulation is down from where it was in the early '90s, but not drastically so. And there was the letter, sent anonymously last September to Donald Newhouse and Martin Bartner, the since-deceased publisher. The letter said it was sent by twenty-seven staffers but they have never been identified. The three-page vent took Willse and other editors to task for, among other things, treating reporters like "easily replaceable cogs on an assembly line," replacing the news with "childish drivel," and "slowly destroying the morale" of the staff. Guy Baehr, a reporter at the paper since 1976, says he did not sign the letter, but that he understands the frustrations that prompted it. "Willse has made many needed improvements, but he's also introduced an embarrassing tabloid sensibility," he says. "I'm not sure he has made the most of the abundant resources he's been given."

'Use Your Head'
Back in Cleveland, Doug Clifton understands -- like all these freewheeling Newhouse editors -- that the freedom comes with a price. He was hired to cure a paper that has been described as suffering from a culture of mediocrity. It won't be easy. His predecessor, David Hall, came with high expectations in 1992 and exited last year amid reports that he and publisher Alex Machaskee clashed over the tone of city hall coverage. "I think it has been an underachieving newspaper," says Clifton of The Plain Dealer, "and I need to inject energy into the place and make it clear that this is a culture where good enough isn't good enough. I do detect a great appetite for that," he says.

Toward that end, Clifton is hiring a writing coach and redesigning the paper. He hired a Sunday editor -- something the paper didn't have -- and restored a second op-ed page on Saturdays. An early memo to the staff suspended a number of odd "rules" he had encountered in his first month: no obits on people seventy or younger without a cause of death, for example. No stories on lottery winners. Clifton replaced them with this rule: Use your head. He sends his auto writer "all over the country." Both television reporters went to Los Angeles to cover the fall-season previews. His fashion writers went to Paris and Milan. "I don't know if it made sense, but we did it," he says.

Clifton seems to be getting the hang of this Newhouse thing. "It's not that they aren't interested in making money," he says of his new bosses. "It's just that they understand the horizon is more distant than the next earnings report."

'Decade of Redemption'
When Sandy Rowe came to The Oregonian in 1993, after ten years as executive editor of The Virginian-Pilot, the paper was still reeling from being scooped a year earlier on one of the biggest political stories to come out of Oregon -- the sexual harassment scandal that toppled Senator Bob Packwood. "The perception in the industry that they missed that story shook the paper to its core," says John Schrag, news editor at the Willamette Week, a weekly paper in Portland. "This has been a decade of redemption, and the paper has gotten better." Six years after Rowe took over, the newspaper won a Pulitzer last year for explanatory journalism with Rich Read's french fry story, which used the potato industry to illustrate the local impact of the Asian economic crisis. It was The Oregonian's first Pulitzer since 1957. The redemption was complete.

The Newhouse Way gave Rowe the resources and freedom to take risks that made Read's story possible. "It opens up your creativity because you are not worrying about corporate mandates," Rowe says. "But the other thing that goes with this freedom is an incredible responsibility. If we don't achieve excellence, there is no one else to blame."

Rowe also used her freedom to add about sixty-five reporters and editors, launch a weekly Homes & Gardens tab that brought in 200 new advertisers, and expand the weekend entertainment tab. In addition to the '99 Pulitzer, The Oregonian has been a finalist for three others, and it won two Overseas Press Club awards last year for business and human rights reporting. Through it all, circulation has held relatively steady.

Despite the praise for Rowe, the paper, and the Newhouse Way, the reviews aren't all sweet. There is a sense, among some observers both outside the paper and on the staff, that The Oregonian under Rowe has focused on winning awards at the expense of day-to-day coverage. "When they tackle an issue, they do a good job," says Schrag. "But they're lazy. They will marshal their forces for the three-part series, and I wish they would put that same effort into covering city hall." Rowe says she and other Oregonian editors wrestle this local-coverage demon regularly. "The work we do on the big projects grows out of and informs our day-to-day coverage," she says.

Steve Duin, a columnist who has worked at The Oregonian for nineteen years, credits Rowe for bringing structure, accountability, and ambition to the paper, but says the paper still has a way to go: "We are no longer a local paper and we want to be more of a regional paper. With all we have to offer -- good salaries, editorial freedom, we're spending money on good ideas, Portland is a great place to live -- you would think we would dominate our region. We're not doing that yet."

'I'm Not Constrained'
In New Orleans, the seeds of change at The Times-Picayune may have been planted in the '80s under former editor Charles Ferguson, but it was Jim Amoss -- he replaced Ferguson in 1990 -- who gets credit for providing the "visionary leadership" that Poynter's Keith Woods mentioned. Under Amoss -- who passed on a Nieman Fellowship to become editor -- the paper won two Pulitzers in 1997 and has been a finalist for three others. "I tie the changes at the paper to his ascent to the editor's office," says Woods of his former boss. "He took the chains off some of his best people, opened things up. It is clear the Newhouses and the publisher wanted Jim to be editor. Jim was always more open [than Ferguson] to greater possibilities."

For his part, Amoss says he has known nothing but the Newhouse Way, having come to The Times-Picayune from the States-Item when Newhouse merged the two papers in 1980. "I guess the real difference is that if I decide in mid-December there is an important story that matters to our readers and it involves traveling to Cuba, I'm not constrained by how much money we've already spent on travel that year," he says. So it came as no surprise to Amoss that he was able to send reporters and photographers to shrimp farms in Thailand, to Tokyo, and South America in pursuit of a Pulitzer-winning series on the world's fisheries. "I don't mean to suggest the publisher wasn't aware we were doing all this," he says, "but I don't recall asking permission."