Editor of the Year 2009: What's Really Brewing in Milwaukee

By: Mark Fitzgerald In this harshest-ever climate for the newspaper industry, so many editors have been fired for refusing to implement more newsroom cuts, angrily quit while publicly declaring their frustrations, or simply quietly slipped out the door to retire in peace, that E&P briefly considered naming them all Editor of the Year, under the name "The Departed Editor."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editor Martin Kaiser is glad that was not the choice ? and not just because he is E&P's Editor of the Year.

Though he doesn't point fingers or name names, Kaiser says tough times are exactly when editors shouldn't bail on their newsrooms: "It's a matter of leadership. If you're passionate about journalism and care about the work you do, you help the newsroom, the newspaper, get through any kind of times."

In this challenging environment, Marty Kaiser ? no one at the Journal

Sentinel calls him Martin ? has pulled off a remarkable trifecta. He has overseen the grim work of reducing staff through two rounds of voluntary buyouts in less than a year, while keeping morale unusually high. He's transformed the newsroom to an online-first operation so smoothly that it's the most veteran journalists who are among the most prodigious bloggers, Tweeters and videographers.

Oh, and the Journal Sentinel won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, among other high honors in 2008, for David Umhoefer's expos? of county officials who rigged the pension system to pad their benefits.

"There are a lot of editors these days who are putting up the white flag, surrendering," says Mark Katches, who heads up the Journal Sentinel's unusually large and unusually well-organized investigative projects team. "It's great to be working for someone who believes in what they do."

Kaiser is leading the newspaper through the rough waters menacing all big city dailies by emphasizing ... journalism, of all things. "Times like these force you to say, 'What's special, what are the stories that matter,' where can you have impact," he says. When Kaiser gathers the newsroom together for a talk, which he does fairly regularly, he talks journalism. And he cultivates the feeling, forgotten in so many newspaper shops now, that putting out a paper is fun.

"Marty is always using sports metaphors, and he tells us all the time, he wants to go for home runs ? no singles or doubles," says reporter Bill Glauber, who covers aging and demographics and who worked for Kaiser in the sports department of the Baltimore Sun back in the 1980s.

If the staff is having fun even in these parlous times ? and a surprising number of people will tell you they are ? it's because Kaiser has turned the newsroom to his view of staff reductions, says Managing Editor George Stanley: "We never look back on what we had."

When the Journal Sentinel made its first newsroom cuts in the recession of 2000, Stanley recalls, Kaiser gazed around at the newsroom ? a cramped place that looks little changed since the 1960s, save for the flat screens and computers. "He said, 'What if we had just moved here today, and that's the number of people we had to work with? We'd think, this is a great staff and we can do great things with it.' And that's the attitude we have to have."

Kaiser appears comfortable with the uncertainty of the business these days. "Nobody knows what's going to happen, so let's just enjoy it," he says. "Let's take up the challenge."

Greatness by committee
Reporter Glauber says his boss has the calm management style you often find in sports editors. Indeed, after serving as a copy boy in Florida newspapers, Kaiser, 58, became a sportswriter because he couldn't decide between being a reporter and an editor, and someone told him that in sports, he would have to be both.

He began in the big leagues of newspapers at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1977, rubbing shoulders with Mike Royko and Roger Ebert, and became sports editor two years later. He went to the Baltimore Sun with the task of reorganizing the sports department before moving on to other duties.

"I tell people in Baltimore now, this is exactly the kind of newsroom you'd expect Marty to run, based on what you knew when he was at the Sun," says Glauber.

Kaiser's unruffled leadership style can mask a very deliberate approach to management.

Consider the way the Journal Sentinel launched its "breaking news hub" that emphasizes early-morning online reporting to drive traffic. It's not an especially original idea, and other newspapers have implemented it simply by changing work schedules and rearranging furniture. At the J-S, it came out of an innovation task force that has no high management members, just rank and file journalists. "We reached out to the newsroom and said, 'What do you think?'" says managing editor Stanley. "Everybody who wanted a say in it had a say."

Journal Sentinel Publisher Elizabeth "Betsy" Brenner says Kaiser got the newsroom to buy into digital reporting and storytelling "in his slow but relentless way of saying, this is a change that is coming."

Another thing Kaiser saw coming two years ago was the enduring industry slowdown. "As soon as he saw the storm clouds gathering, he said, 'We're going into some hard times and we're going to have to trust each other,'" Stanley recalls.

Kaiser brought the leadership team off site to talk and plan for the coming industry recession, and to spread the message that the paper was not only still in the business of ambitious journalism ? it was going to get better. When the newspaper was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer in explanatory reporting, Kaiser recalls, "that sort of said to people, 'I can do great journalism here.'"

That sense that Kaiser, Stanley and their leadership team of assistant managing editors knew where the paper was going made staff cuts in the newsroom bearable, the editor says: "There's urgency here, but not panic, never panic."

Reporter Glauber puts it another way: "I tell people this is a normal newsroom, where people know what their job is, and nobody has to worry about getting their backs stabbed because the editor is insecure. There's no insecurity here."

Instead, "continuity" is a word the newsroom uses a lot. Kaiser and Stanley have been editor and M.E. together for more than a dozen years now, and they use their different approaches ? Kaiser with mass talks and memos, and Stanley with a more one-on-one approach ? to lead in the same direction. "That stability at the top is reassuring when times are bad," says investigative projects chief Katches.

While colleagues sometimes describe the soft-spoken Kaiser as shy, he's known every Christmas season for showing up in the newsroom as Santa Claus. When he had to be out of town over the 2008 holidays, he videotaped a greeting, complete with outtakes, as he wrestled with a hot and itchy beard. (It's posted on YouTube.)

What's my motivation?
Long before the business' current meltdown, Kaiser and Stanley in 1995 shared the wrenching experience of merging what was then the morning Sentinel and the afternoon Journal. Though both papers were owned by Journal Communications, their newsrooms were fierce competitors who operated in two different buildings joined by a bridge over a narrow alley, and had nothing to do with each other. In fact, each flat-out didn't like the other's paper.

"We were literally strangers to each other, and suddenly we are all thrown together ? and we have to put out a daily newspaper at the same time," says Stanley, who was business editor while Kaiser was managing editor. With the merger, too, came not a double-sized newsroom, but one that would painfully be cut down to size. "It was an awful time," Stanley recalls, "but I'm so glad we went through it 14 years ago because when the new hard times came, we were in better shape than other papers."

In these tough times, publisher Brenner says, Kaiser taps into the newsroom's ? any newsroom's ? desire to be motivated and inspired by an editor who wants to do real journalism. "It's like a tonic," she says. "With Marty, it's not just the newsroom that's proud that there's a great newsroom ? the whole [parent] company is proud of it, and so is this community."

The company is aware of the newsroom partly because Kaiser makes himself visible around his newspaper. He not only comes into the newsroom at night and on weekends, but he makes the rounds of other departments like customer service, telling them their work is appreciated. Says Brenner, "Marty thinks of things other editors never do, or that they just take for granted."

Kaiser and his wife Claudia, a business owner, have two grown children: Wike, a forensic accountant, and, Emily, a viral marketer, both of whom live in D.C.

Milwaukee remains a good city in which to be a newspaper ? and the Journal Sentinel seems a good fit for it, even physically. Milwaukee is a mix of old Industrial Revolution-era offices, breweries and steepled churches with an enlivening downtown and clusters of modern architecture topped by Santiago Calatrava's famed wing-like pavilion at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

During a visit in early January, the Journal Sentinel's newsroom remains the same mix of the old and cutting edge, a place where news budget meetings start by checking Web stories on a flat screen monitor, under the oil-painting gaze of Lucius W. Nieman, who founded the Milwaukee Journal and gave his name to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

People in Milwaukee take the Journal Sentinel seriously, and can be heard on any number of local radio talk shows discussing something in the morning's paper. The J-S has seen the same revenue decreases and same sickening fall-off in classified as any other metro, but it can still boast a household penetration of 70% that puts it among the best in the nation. The cumulative readership of the Sunday and daily editions is 81% ? the second highest in the nation, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Investigative reaps rewards
It's a city that deserves a good paper, Brenner says. That's why two or three years ago, she and Kaiser concluded there was something missing in the newsroom. The paper was earning national recognition for its explanatory journalism and for its computer-assisted reporting, but an investigative capability just wasn't there. Brenner gave Kaiser the green light to build that strength.

He started by recruiting Katches, who had headed investigative projects at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif., and was forced to watch as his reporters left and weren't replaced. Kaiser offered him the chance to lead a team of 10.

But Katches, Kaiser and Stanley agreed this would not be some elite "I Team" working off by themselves. Everyone would have a beat so that they could generate stories and keep fresh sources. "They're treated like everyone else, they work the weekend rotations just like everyone else," Stanley adds.

In just the last two years, the team has produced results that have gained national praise. Its 2008 Pulitzer ? the newspaper's first since 1977 ? was just one accolade earned for the paper's work.

Susanne Rust, who was getting her Ph.D. in science when she caught the journalism bug at the J-S, led a team (featuring Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak) that won the prestigious John B. Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting for "Chemical Fallout" ? a multi-part series that revealed how federal agencies have failed to protect the public from carcinogenic chemicals found in plastic used in baby bottles, food packaging and household products. It also gained an honorable mention in the Bartlett & Steele Awards for excellence in investigative work.

Another ambitious project, "Wasted in Wisconsin," examined the drinking culture of the Badger State, where the little city of Appleton, for instance, has more taverns than Sacramento, Calif. The project was Kaiser's long-simmering idea.

"It was something I kept coming back to: What is it about Wisconsin?" he says. The project, which documented the consequences on drinkers' health and the high number of drunk-driving deaths, had enormous public impact. As the Wisconsin legislature set to reconvene in January, the Journal Sentinel was ramping up the pressure both on the Web and in print for legislative action.

As part of the project, the paper published an ambitious 72-part series ? each day a portrait of someone from one of Wisconsin's 72 counties who was a casualty of drunk driving, either as perpetrator or victim. "When you say you want to do a 72-part series, there are a lot of editors who would have said you're crazy," says investigative projects chief Katches. "There are a lot of editors you wouldn't even approach with that idea."

But Kaiser doesn't just greenlight ideas, he generates them, adds Katches. The investigative team's Consumer Watch, perhaps its most-read feature? "That was Marty's thing," he says.

The investigative team lost one reporter to the most recent buyouts, but at nine it still remains unusually large ? and Katches says he has no fear it will be whittled away: "We know we have support where it counts."

Greg Favre, now the Poynter Institute's Distinguished Fellow in Journalism Values, was the Chicago Sun-Times' managing editor in the 1970s when Kaiser was its sports editor and sharing the newsroom with Royko, Ebert, Roger Simon and others.

"He's not a person who's going to walk away from a fight ? that's just not his style," says Favre. "The people at the Journal Sentinel, I know, appreciate the way he fights to maintain the quality of the journalism. That's why its journalism has remained top-notch even in these times when resources are less and less. It really goes to Marty's strength in fighting for that quality."

And even in tough times, Favre says, Kaiser has insisted on the continuing education of journalists. "Marty has really been at the forefront of leading for training in newsrooms ? which is normally forgotten right away in tough times," he adds.

Tough times take the ease out of being an editor, but not the shine, Kaiser reveals: "I do think there's something special about being a newspaper editor, about being a journalist. It's a gift."

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CLARIFICATIONS: The Journal Sentinel's 2008 Pulitzer was the first since the two newspapers merged. The papers won Pulitzers in 1977, 1953, 1935 and 1919, according to the Pulitzer Prize Web site.
Susanne Rust says she did not "lead the team" that produced the "Chemical Fallout" series, but rather collaborated with reporters Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak.