It was 1988, and Nichole Christian was fresh out of Detroit’s Mumford High School and spending her first summer at the Detroit Free Press when she and other interns gathered for a get-acquainted session with top newsroom editors. What happened next would shape her view of newsroom opportunity for years to come.
She met Bob McGruder.
He was 6 foot 4; she was 5 foot 2 “on a good hair day.” He was managing editor for news; she was a first-year intern. He was quietly dignified; she was nervous, almost awestruck.
He was black; so was she.
“What he did for me was disprove the notion that black journalists couldn’t reach the higher rungs,” says Christian, now a reporter for The New York Times. “It made me say, ‘If I choose to, I could do that.’ That always left an impression on me. I don’t think I’ve ever walked into a newsroom thinking it can’t be done, because I saw it in action when I was very young.”
Bob McGruder, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press, has made a career out of such lessons as that one, and not just for impressionable young journalists of color. His commitment to diversity stands solidly beside his commitment to good journalism, and he knew long before many of his colleagues that those goals could and should be pursued together.
That’s why Joe Grimm says that recruiting for McGruder has taught him there is no such thing as a diversity shortcut.
“While he insists on having a more diverse newsroom, he absolutely won’t budge on his standards for journalistic quality,” says Grimm, Free Press director of recruiting and development. “The strategy, then, is to look harder, track longer, and to keep at it. Bob helps with all of that. He is one of the few executive editors I have ever seen at the job fair table, talking to young journalists, taking notes, and recommending follow-up.”
McGruder has long been admired by journalists who understand diversity. That’s one of the ways he has extended his reach beyond his own newsroom.
Jim Crutchfield, now publisher of the Akron Beacon Journal, was deputy city editor at the Free Press when McGruder was managing editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.
“After hearing about him for a long time, I met him at an API seminar, and I said to him: ‘A lot of people talk about diversity but don’t have much to show for it, but you’ve managed to do it,’ ” Crutchfield recalls. “At the time, he had two or three African-American department heads.”
McGruder’s response? “Hiring and promoting people is difficult. You have to take chances. But I just take those chances on different people.”
For McGruder, recruiting is a year-round endeavor that can take years to pay off. Julie Topping, a former Free Press assistant managing editor now at The Charlotte Observer, shares this recollection:
“I first met Bob when he was city editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and I was a very young reporter at the Sandusky (Ohio) Register, trying to figure out what my next step was. I called Bob cold on the phone one day after getting his name and number out of Editor & Publisher and asked if I could come visit him and bring some clips. He graciously agreed. So I drove to Cleveland a few days later and talked with him. He gently but thoroughly went through my clips with me and suggested ways I could improve them. This made me so happy because I was working at a small paper that gave little feedback on how to improve my work. The Plain Dealer didn’t have any openings at the time, and there was no reason this man had to spend time with me, but he did. I am forever grateful for that.”
Otis Sanford, now deputy managing editor at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, says the time McGruder invested in recruiting him made an impression that lingers, even years after his tenure as a Free Press deputy city editor.
“I turned down the first job offer the Free Press made to me,” says Sanford. “A couple of days later, Bob called me at my Pittsburgh home on a Sunday from his vacation in Hawaii to get me to change my mind. It was not just that he called from a Hawaiian vacation, but the way he expressed his vision for the future of the Free Press newsroom and how I would fit into it that convinced me on the spot that I wanted to be a part of it and I wanted to benefit from his leadership. It was one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made in this business. He gave me the opportunity to do journalism at a new level.”
But McGruder’s success is about a lot more than hiring diversity into his newsroom. He knows about nurturing and developing that talent. In fact, he’s somewhat legendary for it.
Larry Olmstead is assistant vice president for news at the Free Press’s parent company, Knight Ridder, and a former city editor at the Free Press. McGruder was his boss during a critical time in his career.
“I always knew I could walk into his office and get good advice on any issue,” says Olmstead. “If I messed up, he would never berate me in public; we’d talk about it privately, and I knew he’d always be fair. This is important stuff in any relationship with a boss; for a young black guy trying to make it as city editor at a major paper like the Free Press, this kind of supportiveness was a godsend.”
McGruder has always seen diversity through multiple prisms, and gender is one he’s been especially concerned about. He has recruited and promoted women into key newsroom leadership roles. Laura Varon Brown, now Free Press Oakland editor, is one of them.
“In 1990, young and running a department for the first time, I was taking my knocks as graphics director,” Brown recalls. “There were editors who were dismissive and frustrated by my learning curve. Bob understood that it takes commitment to grow a young manager, and he invested in that growth. He was patient when he needed to be and even stern once or twice. I would go to Bob without the answers I needed. But I always left his office thinking I was brilliant for coming up with a solution. It was Bob’s solution, but he always found a way to have it come from me.
“Bob has always understood that success doesn’t just happen. I really believe he enjoys watching the work in progress. And I hope he feels pretty good about the growth he has nurtured in many people.”
Carole Leigh Hutton is the managing editor of the Detroit Free Press. She has been spoiled by working for Bob McGruder in a variety of capacities at the Free Press since 1990, when he hired her as an assistant city editor. This profile is excerpted from Leading by Example, a new book published by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Poynter Institute.
“Leading by Example: How leaders make a difference in their newsrooms and communities” is a joint project of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and The Poynter Institute, Copyright 2002. Order the book by by mail, e-mail (teesh@poynter.org), or call 727-821-9400 ext. 337.
