A management title doesn’t make you a leader. And an absence of one doesn’t say you aren’t a leader.
I was reminded of this once again recently when the news arrived that M.W. Newman, or just plain Bill, died at the age of 84.
If you haven’t been in Chicago sometime in the past 55 years and read the late Daily News, the Sun-Times, or the Tribune, you might not recognize the name. You probably have heard of his brother, Edwin, who informed and charmed television viewers for 35 years at NBC.
Bill Newman was a reporter who could write like the angels sing. Or as the late Mike Royko used to say, Bill was “simply the greatest newspaper writer of his time.”
But he also was a wonderful editor, who could teach you without touching any nerves, who always knew what questions to ask, who left you feeling better about yourself.
I first met him when he was editor of the Chicago Daily News’s magazine, Panorama, two years before that great newspaper died. Bill then moved to our sister paper, the Sun-Times, as a reporter, the go-to guy who led then by example.
If you wanted to know how to approach a story, you asked Bill. If you wanted someone to suggest some changes in your story, you asked Bill. If you needed a rewrite person to take calls from dozens of reporters out covering the Pope’s visit and turn the information into a piece of art, you called on Bill.
He didn’t particularly look like a leader, or dress like one, or talk like one. When he and I got together, it was mumble, mumble, mumble all the way. And he was accurately described in one story as dour and gloomy.
“He was an idealist,” a former colleague said, “in a world that rarely lives up to high ideals.” But that was one of the real qualities of his leadership, you always tried to match his standards, even though few if any could.
You learned from him by watching, by listening, by reading what he wrote.
Especially what he wrote.
Let me share a few paragraphs on the blizzard of 1967:
“It came over the plains like a swollen fist, scooped up all of Chicago and casually tangled it in knots. The stricken metropolis lay gasping, barely able to move. The storm swatted it, slugged it, smashed it, crushed it in 75 million tons of snow.
“But in the end the metropolis did not break. Like a dazed giant, it shuddered under the monstrous weight and began stumbling to its knees…then regained its feet.”
Or his lead on the obituary for the Daily News, his beloved newspaper:
“The Chicago Daily News, the writer’s newspaper, ends as it began–a momentous Book of Life. But that story isn’t over, just the Daily News’ part of it. A newspaper dies, but newspapering goes on. Life goes on, the sequel and all the tomorrows after that. We die knowing that we did our job to the utmost and to the very end.”
And as a friend said, Bill Newman did just that.
Or as his wife, Nancy, told the Chicago Tribune, “Bill was incredibly modest about his work. He never felt that he was as good as he was. He was always telling others how great they were, sending off complimentary notes. He never tooted his own horn. That aggravated the hell out of me, but it also made him so lovable.”
Lovable and loved.
M.W. Newman didn’t need a title to make him a leader. We would have followed him anywhere.