Editor's Corner: The Dreamers and the Business Leaders
Damon Vangelis
Issue date: 10/15/01 Section: Editor's Corner
Editorials are traditionally written in the third-person form, and I prefer to avoid injecting myself into them. But I would like to take this opportunity to speak in the first person.
As we launched our online WebSite (the Virtual Reporter) this past week, I reflected on some things I experienced this summer working for Knight Ridder (the newspaper publisher in San Jose) that I thought were relevant to the challenge of making it a worthwhile endeavor, and would be of interest to the community.
In particular, I recall a conversation I had with a former managing editor of The San Jose Mercury News. We met up for lunch to discuss the newspaper business and prospects for an MBA to make a career in that field. I asked him what he thought about the growing tension within many newspapers these days between the paper’s business managers who are seeking greater financial returns and the journalists who are upset about cut-backs in staff and shrinking resources for the news room.
This tension is not new. But it has been a particular problem lately for Knight Ridder – not because it has cut operating expenses to a greater extent than other publications – but because many of its daily newspapers have had considerable journalistic acclaim over the years and there is concern among the “old guard” that journalistic priorities and principles are being abandoned. Ask journalists where space in most papers is being allocated, and they will point out that newspapers dedicate less ink and paper to investigative journalism than they once did; at the same time, more space is reserved for self-help and pop culture articles.
I asked my colleague about The Philadelphia Inquirer (a Knight Ridder paper) which has been a visible example of this tension. He candidly noted that while the Inquirer had received numerous Pulitzer Prizes for journalism excellence over the past three decades, it had (like most every newspaper) lost readers. “So has it been a journalistic success?,” he asked. “If fewer people are reading the paper, does it matter that it won these awards?” I was surprised to hear this from an old-time journalist.
I did not think much more about this comment until I bumped into Dean Podolny last week the day after we launched our WebSite. He asked about my summer experience, and then said something to the effect, “Well, working for a newspaper company would provide some interesting challenges in terms of measuring success. You would seem to have both a journalistic mission and also a business one.”
And that conversation with Dean Podolny led me to reflect a bit more about what my colleague said to me this summer and what we are trying to do with The Reporter. The fact is that the two sides of a newspaper – the editorial side and the business side – are inextricably linked, and – despite the continual tension – each side needs the other. The great challenge for a general manager or publisher is to effectively meld the two by understanding the roles each side has, and the contribution each makes to the other.
A newspaper in which the business managers do not understand the journalistic craft are inevitably going to make decisions wholly ignorant of journalistic principles – and doing so risks undermining the newspaper’s credibility, which is perhaps it’s greatest asset. At the same time, journalists need to recognize that fundamental laws of economics and the flight of readers from newspapers to the Internet and television (fewer people read these days) are making it increasing difficult for newspapers to compete with other media outlets, and as a consequence need to understand the difficult financial decisions that often need to be made. It is a sad fact that as many people today read a daily newspaper as did in the 1950s – despite the population growth over that time.
But this tension is perhaps not unique to newspapers. We can see similar forms of it in other types of businesses, in academia, and in health care to name a few.
The engineers and scientists who develop innovative technologies and inventions must work with managers to share their discoveries and compete in the marketplace. Teachers who form young minds must work with administrators who may or may not have spent years in the classroom or conducting research, but who organize and manage the school. And doctors must work with hospital administrators and health care managers to provide the public with affordable health care.
At The Reporter, we are a small enough enterprise that our business and editorial staff have jointly agreed on the same editorial and fiscal mission. As a non-profit corporation, we plan to donate any profit we make to a charitable cause. Moreover, we have set out with our online WebSite to complement the work of the print paper. But above everything, we hope the VR will expand the reach of what we are trying to do in the print paper – which is to open lines of communication and provide members of the community with an open forum to express their opinions and share their experiences.
The lesson with The Reporter and business more broadly is seemingly that so much in life requires people of different skills, backgrounds, and passions to work collaboratively to achieve goals. We need both the managers and the dreamers. In rare cases, the two occupy the same body. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the greatest assets of our entrepreneurial economy that despite the harshness of market forces and competitive pressures, people must work together in teams to achieve success. It is a lesson we see every day.
So as you read this issue of The Reporter and follow online, think for a moment about how much we all rely on others in most everything we do. How the efforts of one person can be so important to another, and the how your own work, passion, ideas, and insights benefit others. As sources of inspiration, motivation and education, our friends and colleagues so often benefit us whether they share the same dreams or not. “Collaboration” is a fairly prominent theme at the GSB. Whatever career track you take after the GSB, take it to heart and spread it to others.
As we launched our online WebSite (the Virtual Reporter) this past week, I reflected on some things I experienced this summer working for Knight Ridder (the newspaper publisher in San Jose) that I thought were relevant to the challenge of making it a worthwhile endeavor, and would be of interest to the community.
In particular, I recall a conversation I had with a former managing editor of The San Jose Mercury News. We met up for lunch to discuss the newspaper business and prospects for an MBA to make a career in that field. I asked him what he thought about the growing tension within many newspapers these days between the paper’s business managers who are seeking greater financial returns and the journalists who are upset about cut-backs in staff and shrinking resources for the news room.
This tension is not new. But it has been a particular problem lately for Knight Ridder – not because it has cut operating expenses to a greater extent than other publications – but because many of its daily newspapers have had considerable journalistic acclaim over the years and there is concern among the “old guard” that journalistic priorities and principles are being abandoned. Ask journalists where space in most papers is being allocated, and they will point out that newspapers dedicate less ink and paper to investigative journalism than they once did; at the same time, more space is reserved for self-help and pop culture articles.
I asked my colleague about The Philadelphia Inquirer (a Knight Ridder paper) which has been a visible example of this tension. He candidly noted that while the Inquirer had received numerous Pulitzer Prizes for journalism excellence over the past three decades, it had (like most every newspaper) lost readers. “So has it been a journalistic success?,” he asked. “If fewer people are reading the paper, does it matter that it won these awards?” I was surprised to hear this from an old-time journalist.
I did not think much more about this comment until I bumped into Dean Podolny last week the day after we launched our WebSite. He asked about my summer experience, and then said something to the effect, “Well, working for a newspaper company would provide some interesting challenges in terms of measuring success. You would seem to have both a journalistic mission and also a business one.”
And that conversation with Dean Podolny led me to reflect a bit more about what my colleague said to me this summer and what we are trying to do with The Reporter. The fact is that the two sides of a newspaper – the editorial side and the business side – are inextricably linked, and – despite the continual tension – each side needs the other. The great challenge for a general manager or publisher is to effectively meld the two by understanding the roles each side has, and the contribution each makes to the other.
A newspaper in which the business managers do not understand the journalistic craft are inevitably going to make decisions wholly ignorant of journalistic principles – and doing so risks undermining the newspaper’s credibility, which is perhaps it’s greatest asset. At the same time, journalists need to recognize that fundamental laws of economics and the flight of readers from newspapers to the Internet and television (fewer people read these days) are making it increasing difficult for newspapers to compete with other media outlets, and as a consequence need to understand the difficult financial decisions that often need to be made. It is a sad fact that as many people today read a daily newspaper as did in the 1950s – despite the population growth over that time.
But this tension is perhaps not unique to newspapers. We can see similar forms of it in other types of businesses, in academia, and in health care to name a few.
The engineers and scientists who develop innovative technologies and inventions must work with managers to share their discoveries and compete in the marketplace. Teachers who form young minds must work with administrators who may or may not have spent years in the classroom or conducting research, but who organize and manage the school. And doctors must work with hospital administrators and health care managers to provide the public with affordable health care.
At The Reporter, we are a small enough enterprise that our business and editorial staff have jointly agreed on the same editorial and fiscal mission. As a non-profit corporation, we plan to donate any profit we make to a charitable cause. Moreover, we have set out with our online WebSite to complement the work of the print paper. But above everything, we hope the VR will expand the reach of what we are trying to do in the print paper – which is to open lines of communication and provide members of the community with an open forum to express their opinions and share their experiences.
The lesson with The Reporter and business more broadly is seemingly that so much in life requires people of different skills, backgrounds, and passions to work collaboratively to achieve goals. We need both the managers and the dreamers. In rare cases, the two occupy the same body. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the greatest assets of our entrepreneurial economy that despite the harshness of market forces and competitive pressures, people must work together in teams to achieve success. It is a lesson we see every day.
So as you read this issue of The Reporter and follow online, think for a moment about how much we all rely on others in most everything we do. How the efforts of one person can be so important to another, and the how your own work, passion, ideas, and insights benefit others. As sources of inspiration, motivation and education, our friends and colleagues so often benefit us whether they share the same dreams or not. “Collaboration” is a fairly prominent theme at the GSB. Whatever career track you take after the GSB, take it to heart and spread it to others.