Managing newspapers

In all the years since I first became resposible for managing newspapers, two things have always been the most demanding of "quality management time." Developing cutting-edge news content? The arts of effective advertising design? Financial management? Nah! Forget those skills and principles that we learned in the "professional" courses of our university majors. No, the real "bear" has always been keeping the production equipment running. That, and getting the paper delivered. They don't teach that stuff in J-school. Which is probably the reason that most of the people who climb the ladder to top management in newspapers are not the reporters and editors, but rather the iron-pants guys that run circulation departments and have some knowledge of production--which once meant real metal and sweat, and has now morphed into the esoterica of computers and other electronic gear which has no noticeable moving parts, only flat screen video and blinking LEDs. The revenge of the nerd generation. Of course, advertising sales people also usually make it up the ladder ahead of writers, who visit different universes in their idealistic flights and are often considered hopelessly pious airheads by the hard-nosed advertising staffers who operate in the real world of business give-and-take involving the exchange of actual money on the "street." The writers frequently know more about government than the elected politicians in office, more about business than the local bankers, and more about war than the generals. It's part of the deal. Our Constitutional rights, and so on. And often the younger they are, the more they know. It's the professional education, probably.

I recall some years ago visiting the publishing plant of the West Point, Mississippi Daily Times-Leader, which then was owned and operated by William Henry Harris, Jr., a publisher of some regional note. I was there on a prospecting trip, looking to acquire a used newspaper printing press Mr. Harris had for sale. On a walking tour of the Times-Leader plant, I observed that the hot-metal letterpress "back shop" of that era where the printing machinery was located, was floored with polished hardwood, every piece of quietly moving equipment was spotless, and the working crew moved about in sparkly clean clothing with no sign of ink or grease. I remarked to Henry that the place looked like the Captain's deck on a smartly run cruise ship--as opposed to the usual scattering of lead plates and ink-stained rags, papers and other paraphernalia lying about in the normal print shop of that period. Mr. Harris told me a story.

As a coming senior in high school, young Henry discussed the prospect of college with his father, the then owner-publisher. Father told Son, "Boy, I want you to go over to Starkville and study engineering at Mississippi State." "But Dad," protested young Henry, "I want to study journalism and come back and work at the paper." Dad agreed; work at the paper all right, and it will be yours some day. But engineering, not journalism. Why, Dad? "Boy, 90 percent of everything you own will be machinery." And he done it. It showed in the trimly outfitted and smoothly run mechanical shop.

During the same period, the Thistlethwaite brothers, John and Hugh, had the Opelousas Daily World. John was the journalism idealist who expounded The Truth. Hugh was a brass knuckles lawyer, just to keep things steady.

And I think the single experience that gave me the leg up in the scramble for a top management rung in the old Fackelman newspaper group was not the journalism courses I took at old LSU, nor the constitutional law reading I did to complete a political science major at old Northwestern State. No, it was the sneaky move that Mary Riser made by offering me a chance to make an extra buck as publisher of a weekly church bulletin, The Baptist Evangel, at the Winnfield First Baptist Church. For this I had to get costs on my own paper and ink, learn to operate the Linotype machine and the Heidelberg printing press at the old Winn Parish Enterprise, figure out how maximize the number of 8 1/2 x 11 sheets to cut out of a 24x36 sheet of book paper, and make my own bid to the church to take the job away from Estelle Tannehill at the Winnfield News-American. Competition? Those were the days.

If I could make these computers run so easily, life would be serene.

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