Executive Leadership Program Makes Businessmen out of Publishers

By: Deena Higgs Nenad In a world where ad revenues, circulation numbers, and content have been turned upside down, news executives may not know where to turn for solutions. They certainly can't call up a competitor and collaborate on a project to raise revenue. Or can they? Every year, high-powered newspaper executives gather for The Punch Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Program, a yearlong program at Columbia University in New York. Four times during the year, company decision-makers fly in for a week of intense leadership training. Las Vegas rules apply as they work together on projects to improve their own newsrooms. It is collaboration and a bonding experience rarely seen in the newspaper business, said program founder Arlene Morgan of Columbia University. "These are smart, competitive people whose common bond is they really want journalism to succeed in this atmosphere of change," Morgan said. "At the heart of it is the sustainability of the values of good journalism." Morgan - whose program mainstays include high-ranking executives from The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, and the Associated Press - welcomes newspapers, television stations, magazines, and even nonprofit startup news sites. "We learned so much from having those types of organizations," Morgan said. "They are the future. They're trying to figure out what they're doing. We think it's important to have them always in the group." Sulzberger success stories abound. The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) went mostly digital and changed its daily newspaper to a weekly magazine. ABC digitized much of its organization, and The Dallas Morning News' Al Día, a Spanish language publication, became profitable. Punch Sulzberger, a longtime NYT executive, didn't actually start the program. In 2007, his two sisters gave him an 80th birthday gift - a $4 million endowment that now helps fund operating costs for the executive program. Participants pay $25,000 (not including airfare and hotel) for sessions with Doug Smith, the program's executive director and a former partner at the corporate consulting firm McKinsey & Company. High-level business advisers, some from McKinsey, are at a participant's disposal for the year. In an online testimonial, CSM executive editor John Yemma called his adviser experience "invaluable," as his became the first national newspaper to move mostly online. "It was a remarkable thing to have that kind of backfield," Yemma said of his 2008 experience. "I've worked with him (Yemma's adviser) on everything from personnel issues to revenue potential and cost structure." Neill Borowski, executive editor for The Press of Atlantic City, is enrolled this year with the goal of further increasing the paper's digital audience. He called the program "sort of exclusive" among newspaper executives who are starting to realize they need to "think more like business executives." Morgan said that for some, the business aspect is a completely new world. "Who knew a journalist had to take a business course?" she said.