We gather tonight not to cheer but to challenge the Poynter Institute.
We will honor our first quarter of a century by concentrating on the needs of the next.
If we had not already intended to do that, we would have been compelled by the events of September 11.
Journalism rose to that occasion . . . and, doing so, dramatized how deeply it had sunk. Before September 11, news in too many places was often soft, sometimes lurid, and increasingly focused on celebrity.
With notable exceptions — exceptions, it’s a pleasure to note, that are represented by people in this room — news organizations were becoming more insular, more purposely oblivious to much of what happened in state and local governments, more prone to judgment by focus group, and more at risk of being irrelevant to all but self-centered, wealthy suburbanites.
Then came September 11.
News mattered again. Distance to the story was no obstacle. Newshole and air time were elastic.
Journalists felt alive again — purposeful, focused, valued.
Audiences feasted on real news.
It is too soon to be optimistic that the re-ascension of news will be durable.
We do not know yet how news companies — which were heroic in their recent commitment of resources — will act in the cold light of a new budget year.
What is certain is that the last few months have shaped Poynter’s next few days . . . and perhaps its next few decades.
It no longer is appropriate to assume that someone – ASNE or RTNDA or SPJ or the Committee of Concerned Journalists — will speak for the journalism.
Bless them if they do.
Poynter must.
I’m preaching to the choir, I do realize.
And what a choir.
There are among you several new stalwarts, and some departing allies.
It is my pleasure to confirm the official business conducted a short while ago by Poynter’s governing bodies — the Members and the Trustees.
The Members formally appointed two new Trustees:
Marty Petty, one of the most enthusiastic early supporters of the Institute’s visual journalism programs as an editor and executive in Kansas City and Hartford, and now the executive vice president of Times Publishing Company here in St. Pete.
Anne Hull, whose stylish and ambitious reporting for The St. Petersburg Times may be exceeded only by her stylish and ambitious work at The Washington Post.
Congratulations.
And while it was not the typical close Florida election, the Trustees formally voted to appoint seven new members of the National Advisory Board:
Dean Baquet, Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Times.
Mei-Mei Chan, Vice President for Circulation of The Seattle Times.
Barbara Cochran, President of RTNDA.
Jennifer 8. Lee, technology reporter for The New York Times.
Ann Marie Lipinski, Editor and Senior Vice President of the Chicago Tribune.
Diana Sugg, health reporter for the Baltimore Sun.
And
Archie Tse, graphics editor for The New York Times.
Later this evening, we’ll pay special attention to three members of the National Advisory Board whose terms are ending. They are:
Callie Crossley, now a commentator for a public television show with the intriguing name, “Beat The Press,”and, after a career as a producer for ABC’s “20/20,” an independent producer based in Boston.
Judy Lichtenberg, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Research Scholar specializing in media ethics and political philosophy at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy.
And
Howell Raines, who five days before September 11 became the Executive Editor of The NewYork Times.
We will also pay fond tribute later to Tom Rawlins, for many years senior editor of The St. Petersburg Times, an early and enduring friend to journalism education, a Trustee of the Institute and now officially and happily retired, mostly, to Colorado.
There are enough new folks in the room that it would be useful to take just another few minutes and for those of you who haven’t yet been introduced please to stand and explain yourself.
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When we first began planning this week’s events, I had imagined these comments being reminiscent, proud. And brief.
Circumstances changed.
I do want to look back ever so succinctly.
At the risk of unduly truncating the proud history of Nelson Poynter’s school, I’ll sum up the accomplishments of the first quarter-century in seven tidy statements:
- Poynter gave very personalized instruction in craft and values to more than 20,000 journalists, journalism professors and students.
- Poynter enriched over 36,000 participants in writing and, more recently, newsroom leadership workshops conducted across America.
- Poynter embraced professionals in broadcast and online by turning – importantly, at the insistence of the National Advisory Board — a newspaper institute into a school for journalists.
- Poynter established a website that enables any journalist in the world to learn from best practices taught in St. Petersburg by an accomplished faculty rich in professional experience.
- Poynter made available to any journalism organization which chooses to use it – as did AEJMC last weekend, and as will ASNE this Sunday — a setting conducive to creative thinking about the work of journalism.
- Poynter earned, with its stress on ethics and values, a reputation for high-mindedness . . . and low tuition.
And, finally,
- Poynter was blessed with the ability to give journalists low-cost, high-quality training because the St. Petersburg Times company has sent to the school well over $55 million of its previously taxed income.
That includes $8 million used in the last two years to expand these beautiful facilities.
Since 1975, when Modern Media Institute was conceived, Nelson Poynter, his colleagues and their successors have given the craft, the profession, the business more than anyone could have imagined.
But we – you – are not finished building on what Nelson Poynter created.
As Mr. Poynter so often and clearly asserted, journalism is meaningless if it is not in service to community.
The recent history of news companies raises the specter that journalism enterprises can be too much in service to one community — the community of investors.
Our profession, like our corporations, and like our nation, has gone through a phase in which individual well-being could easily take priority over community of purpose.
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Gene Roberts used to say the biggest stories were those that oozed rather than broke, and that consequently went unremarked — like the decades-long migration of Southern blacks to Northern industrial cities.
A case could be made today by a scholar – and I’m not one – that another largely unremarked change was oozing in an America that enjoyed a deceptively-placid era after the tumult of the civil rights revolution, the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, the Pentagon Papers, and Watergate.
Looking back since September 11, it’s as if we had been in some kind of a cultural swoon, unaware or unconcerned that our interests were turning more inward, acquisitive – and personal.
Faster cars, bigger houses, higher salaries, grander portfolios became almost unremarkable. Acquiring the latest gizmo grew so powerful as to accelerate the whole economy, for a while. We fixated on personal finance, personal fitness, personal technology.
The motto of this national phase could have been:
All for one and . . . All for one.
Journalists were not immune from this wave of self-interest.
Personal finance columns were highly read inside newsrooms.
Bonus programs did give senior editors an insidious incentive to put personal profit before principle.
And some of us – I, for one — were beneficiaries of attractive buyouts to accommodate corporate profit goals.
We might now wonder if, from the vantage point of corporate executive suites, a buyout can look more like a sellout, if it has bred the presumption that strong, outspoken editors don’t need to be bowled over if they can be bought.
I’d like to salute Jay Harris for having more clearly understood this issue when he declined to accept a lump-sum muzzle.
But I’m not here to seek – or offer — absolution.
I’m here to challenge you to not let journalism, or the republic it serves, again get so opportunistic and enamored with its own celebrity.
I’m here to reinforce our collective determination to help editors learn how to exert influence in the strategies of their companies.
I’m here tonight to urge that Poynter play a larger role in speaking for news and news values.
We must not let the nature and purpose of American journalism companies be defined without the active and effective leadership of people who are passionate about news.
We must not go back to more diet information, less meaty coverage.
More focus on an IPO, less concern about the PLO.
More news programming, more devices to program news out of our consciousness.
I’m not a Luddite. I’ve got most of the latest toys. But I’ve become more than concerned about their capacity to shield their users from unwanted knowledge.
Like news.
If Edward R. Murrow were here today, of which device would he say:
“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”
Today there are more wires, more lights, more boxes.
It is not clear that there is more illumination.
Tom Brokaw, examining the recent proliferation of information outlets and the fragmentation of national audience, is not persuaded life was better in the days when Huntly-Brinkley and Cronkite epitomized everyone’s news.
He may well be correct about how much we now value the ability to find information where we choose to seek it.
I worry still about whether, when we look, we will find news.
The companies that invested in news coverage since September 11 are deciding now what they will afford in the longer run.
How many news directors and editors are instrumental in those conversations?
It is a matter of fact and thus of concern that in many communities top editors now occupy low rungs of executive committees.
It is a matter of concern that in recent years some media corporations got bigger by demonstrating how efficiently they could make operating properties smaller.
It is a matter of concern that sophisticated news organizations have displayed more determination to calculate quarterly returns than to analyze government budgets.
Rick Edmonds is completing a research project for Poynter. Prompted by the curiousity of Andy Barnes, he looked into the attitude of the major institutional investors who own much of the stock in many news companies.
Rick found that many of the largest holders of stock are “value” investors, in for years at a time. They’re not disinterested in quarterly results, but their focus is longer.
In the course of his research, Rick interviewed the spokesman for one of the nation’s leading media companies this week. The spokesman said, of course, that his company is committed to quality journalism.
He went on to say, for the apparent benefit of those short-term folks on Wall Street, that the company believes it still is overstaffed in its newsrooms.
Of newsroom cuts he said this:
“How deep is too deep? I suppose it’s when you can’t get the paper out. An awful lot of papers that get very thin still sell just fine.”
Journalism needs news leaders who have passion, intelligence, an understanding of the marketplace and the capacity to work with corporate officers on strengthening news coverage, not slowing its diminution.
So what are the answers?
We have only some.
As we’ll show in the next couple of days, the Institute is willing to play a more energetic role in fostering dialogue about how to define the value and values of news.
The conversation among invited news leaders on Saturday is titled exactly that: The Value and Values of News.
On Saturday afternoon, the Trustees and Faculty will guide a discussion about whether our profession can or should adopt any benchmarks documenting the journalism capacity of individual news organizations.
This may be – indeed, Brokaw for one maintains it is – a fool’s errand.
There could be any number of good reasons no one ever has developed a measurement over time of the capacity to do news.
But we decided to be bold enough to try, lest the only independent and accurate barometer of the value of news continue to be quarterly profit statements.
On Sunday, Bob Steele and Gregory Favre and many of the rest of the Institute – including Andy Barnes – will conduct our inaugural program on Journalism and Business Values for teams of business and news executives of eight newspaper companies.
On February 10, we’ll begin a new series of programs called Executive Excellence, for senior newsroom editors and a faculty that includes Mary Kay Blake, Rick Rodriguez and Gene Roberts.
We cannot afford to indefinitely charge nothing for training at Poynter. But the Trustees adopted today a budget that includes increased numbers of scholarships for professional courses.
We’re starting Partners With Poynter to offer incentives to newsrooms whose managers continue to invest in training – send a certain number of staff members to Poynter this year and an additional staff member comes at no fee. Send a certain number of staff members to Poynter this year and the newsroom gets one of our permanent faculty for a day of mutually-designed training in the newsroom.
And I’m especially pleased to report that even in our own constrained budget climate, we did not refrain from two ventures into research and experimentation.
Howard Finberg, one of the most creative thinkers about technology and its effect on news, will spend six to eight months with us exploring how the tools can be used to good end by journalists.
And I hope Jay Harris does not object if I say, slightly prematurely but among friends, that Poynter is on the verge of defining a role in which Jay will design a new program in executive development.
This venture stems from Jay’s own reaction the first time he came to Poynter, looked around at its deliberately nurturing environment, and said how valuable it would be as a leader to spend time at a place like this to think — about the business, its challenges, its opportunities.
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Our mission statement reads as follows:
“Poynter is a school dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders. It promotes excellence and integrity in the practice of craft and in the practical leadership of successful businesses. It stands for a journalism that informs citizens and enlightens public discourse. It carries forward Nelson Poynter’s belief in the value of independent journalism.”
How to interpret that language, how to define the character of The Poynter Institute in the next 25 years, will be influenced or decided by the people in this room. By you.
I’m leaving.
Well, not just yet. You’re not getting rid of me that soon or easily.
But you should know by now that Andy Barnes and Paul Tash have asked Butch Ward – he’s right here, for those of you who haven’t yet met him — to invite you to tell Poynter what kinds of qualifications my successor should have.
Let’s not be coy: I’ll turn 64 in August.
I’m obliged to leave before reaching 66.
No date has been set or, so far, sought.
But Poynter is too valuable – and its moral suasion will be too important — to let a succession be a matter of accident or sudden choice.
Butch Ward has been involved with Poynter since he attended its very first ethics seminar, on Central Avenue.
I’d trust him with my life.
Or my life’s workplace.
His inquiries on behalf of Andy and Paul are into what kinds of qualifications the next president should possess.
These are not idle questions. For the last several years, Poynter has been growing faster than the company whose profits enable the school to pursue its mission.
We are close to the limit of budget growth without some significant change in finances.
It’s possible a future leader of this place might need to be equipped – as I am not – to raise money.
It could be that a real president should be more comfortable using the Institute’s bully pulpit.
In helping frame the choices for the next president you will of necessity be reflecting as much on the nature of Poynter as on the identities of candidates for the job.
To those of you who think this sounds a bit like a strategic planning process without the baggage that outside, non-journalist consultants can bring to such a venture, I plead guilty.
There’s no date for a handover of responsibilities. I’m in no rush. I would relish the opportunity for a relaxed transition over a period of time.
And I trust it’s obvious I like being here.
This really is a special place.
I’d like, in closing, to tell you how special it was for one guest.
Cheryl Carpenter is a senior editor at The Charlotte Observer.
Last year, her husband, Foster Davis, succumbed to cancer.
As Foster was dying, he and Cheryl began creating a fund to carry forward the work that they had helped Poynter do in training journalists in South Africa.
Karen Dunlap, who was co-author with Foster of “The Effective Editor,” will tell you more about all this during lunch on Saturday.
What I want to relate is that a few months after Foster’s death, Cheryl Carpenter was a visiting faculty member at a Poynter seminar.
When she got back to Charlotte, she sent a note to Paul Pohlman.
It said how grateful she was that the experience had been therapeutic for her, and how amazed she was that the seminar had been so practical to her work at The Observer.
Then Cheryl wrote this:
“I enclose a check for the Foster Davis Fund for African Fellowships. A friend of mine at The Observer, Cliff Harrington, and his wife, Mary Ann, lost their twins (a son and daughter) this past week. They were born too early to survive. He asked that his friends give something to charity on their behalf. This makes my contribution doubly important.
“Thank you for all you do to make visiting faculty feel supported. I come back to Charlotte feeling stronger and inspired. Poynter is so important to the hearts and minds of so many. Foster often thought of you and your colleagues as a compass for journalists, pointing us in the right directions, orienting us and reminding us of how to get home. I share those sentiments.”
A compass for journalists.
What a worthy aspiration.
Thank you for what you will do to help us achieve that.
