How Newsrooms Deal With 'Local' Publishers

By: Joe Strupp The Philadelphia Inquirer had written about Horsham, Pa.-based Toll Brothers Inc. numerous times over the years. A successful builder of luxury homes, the company's doings were nearly as common in the paper as the Phillies' box score. But after the builder's vice chairman, Bruce Toll, became a partner in the group that bought the Inquirer from Knight Ridder via the McClatchy Co., Toll Bros. coverage took on an entirely different context.

Since the purchase was finalized in July, the Inquirer's business writers have taken extra care in their coverage of Toll Bros., as well as other local business interests of Toll and his partner, Brian Tierney ? who is also the paper's new publisher. They form the power structure of Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC ? and have a link to any number of potential news targets.

"On many stories, we are having to ask ourselves if there is an ownership that has to be disclosed," says Henry Holcomb, an Inquirer business writer and president of the Greater Philadelphia Newspaper Guild. "We are thinking about that for the first time."

Holcomb has had to make such disclosures on several occasions since the newspaper's sale, including the Aug. 23 story he wrote about Toll Bros.' earnings falling 19% over the same period last year. Although Bruce Toll was not mentioned in the main elements of the story, his brother, Robert Toll, the company chair and CEO, was. He also included a line disclosing Bruce Toll's link to the Inquirer. "That is how you are fair with the reader," Holcomb explains. "Letting them know there is this conflict."

While the disclosure of such connections may appear to be a simple call, the issues of how, when, and what to disclose have prompted the paper to form a committee charged with creating a specific policy. "We don't have precedence on this," says columnist Tom Ferrick, who is on the committee. "We have to do it out of the blue."

But disclosure is just one of the issues facing the Inquirer as it moves away from a distant corporate entity and plunges into the unknown world of local, private ownership ? and an ownership that is not just interested in newspapers. Toll and Tierney have both strong business concerns, as well as political views and connections. While staffers say the publisher and his partners have shown no signs of meddling in stories, the fact that they are who they are elicits at least some uncertainty from the newsroom. "There is a feeling that people are going to watch this thing very, very carefully," says Dick Polman, a longtime Inquirer political reporter. "People have to be very vigilant."

Under the influence
Heightened vigilance in the Inquirer business section is just one example of the impact private ownership is having on newspapers these days.

Whether it is a newly purchased newsroom like the Inquirer or any of the others that have changed hands this year, or a paper with a long history of local, private control ? such as The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch or the Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times ? the concerns about possible influence by a single owner who often sits in the same building are many.

While those in such newsrooms often praise the access they have to their owners when needed, and claim they are often better community citizens than faraway chain executives, many also raise issues about how local ownership can diminish everything from extensive resources to a balanced approach on certain pet projects.

"We did an enormous amount of coverage on things that probably didn't deserve it," says Michael Todd, former business editor of the Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press, who was among two dozen staffers who resigned in recent months complaining of co-publisher Wendy McCaw's alleged meddling. "In the last months, the interference got really accelerated." That acceleration, he says, included reports earlier this year of the ownership blocking coverage of co-publisher Travis Armstrong's drunk driving arrest as well as criticism of a story that noted actor Rob Lowe's connection to a proposed development project and included the address of the site.

But even before those incidents, which led to the recent uproar at the paper and the newsroom rank and file voting for union representation, there were examples of the paper doing McCaw's bidding in its pages. Todd recalls the owner's interest in animal rights issues that led to some assignments from her office, such as a directive to shoot photos of protesters at a nearby rodeo. "There were a couple of instances like that," he adds.

Others, such as Lillian Covarrubias, president of the Toledo Newspaper Guild (which represents some 400 employees of The Blade in Toledo, Ohio), say the influence is less direct than in Santa Barbara but just as real. "At times, it is subtle," she says of the influence by the Toledo-based Block family, which owns the paper along with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Sometimes it is non-existent, and other times it is a major part."

One such example at the Blade, which has been going through its own labor battles this year, occurred in 1992 when the City of Toledo was considering a shift from a city manager to a strong-mayor form of government. Newsroom veterans recall the newspaper's serious push in favor of the measure, which eventually passed. "They advocated hard for the change, to the point where bylines were removed from stories on the issue," recalls Larry Vellequette, a Toledo guild leader and a former Blade staffer. "There were edicts that any story on that issue had to appear on a section front, in its entirety."

Mark Zaborney, a 22-year Blade veteran, reporter, and guild negotiator, agrees that such incidents do occur. "When the publisher is interested in a subject, we tend to cover it a lot," he says. "There is more attention paid [on a daily basis] from the publisher than from a chain owner."

In Wilkes-Barre, Pa. where the Times Leader was among the Knight Ridder papers sold to a private ownership through McClatchy, staffers are also concerned about what the influence of new publisher Richard Connor will be. "Everyone is trying to wait and see if it is good or bad," says one reporter who requested anonymity. "Waiting to see if there will be cutbacks or changes, that is a worry."

Guiding hands from above
At the Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times, the name of co-publisher John B. Johnson Jr. may well appear in the paper more often than many of his reporters. Owners of the newspaper for generations, Johnson's family not only oversees the daily's operations, but has become active in the community ? so much so that his participation in local governing bodies, boards of directors, and community events requires newsroom staffers to make clear who he is when stories arise linked to his involvement.

"If he says something we deem to be significant, we quote him," says Managing Editor Bob Gorman. "We always disclose that the publisher has a connection." Those incidents can range from stories on a local power commission that includes Johnson, to his work with the nearby Clarkson University board of trustees. In most cases, the link merely requires a disclosure, often at the end of the story. But in some cases, such as a Sept. 20 piece about a state audit criticizing the local development authority's financial operations, Johnson could not escape scrutiny as the story noted his position as member of the authority.

While Gorman says Johnson has never tried to influence coverage of any group he serves, he does offer ideas for stories. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't hear from him about a story suggestion or that he heard something good," Gorman says, and he welcomes the ideas. "He does not decide what goes on the front page. But he knows the community better than anyone else. The aggressiveness with which they run the paper is well known."

Johnson does not apologize for his involvement, saying, "I am out and about in the community all the time." The Watertown publisher adds that "one of the problems some of the bigger newspapers have is the 'editor of the month club' with people who do not have the intimate knowledge of the community that is necessary."

Dale King, city editor of the Boca Raton (Fla.) News, cites similar news coverage of his publisher and owner, Craig Swill, noting that his boss "likes to get involved in the community." King says most such news happenings usually involve social gatherings or college-related events rather than hard political or other news. When asked if the involvement has ever altered coverage of an event, King says, "maybe once or twice, but never to the point where it is editorially significant."

Swill, who has owned the paper since May 2005, says he sometimes requests coverage. "It does come up where I have to call them up and say, 'Come and cover this event,'" he tells E&P. "If they are not busy covering something else." He jokes that when he first arrived as publisher, "people were scared to talk to me because they thought it would end up in the paper."

At The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, which has been owned by the Wolfe family since 1905, the owners not only run the daily paper but are involved in "all aspects of the community," says Editor Ben Marrison. He admits some stories that are "pet issues" may get some notice they might not ordinarily receive, but they are never over-covered.

Marrison says the paper is affected more by the perception that it is doing the Wolfe family's bidding rather than the reality: "People may think the paper is [championing] an issue, and that is not true. Our reporters run into people who try to take advantage of that. They will drop a family member's name. I will let the family member know, and they are typically offended that their name was used."

Mike Curtin, the Dispatch's associate publisher and a spokesman for Publisher John F. Wolfe, says the paper discloses any potential conflicts and "we tend not to lobby on public sector rulings in favor of those things we are involved with."

But Curtin admits the paper may cover pet issues, such as the Wolfe family support for Columbus Children's Hospital, more often than it might otherwise.

To those who might accuse his staff of ducking potential conflicts, Marrison points to the 2004 lawsuit by the paper's parent, the Dispatch Printing Company, against the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team. A minority owner of the team, the company did not let that stop the lawsuit that sought access to an out-of-court settlement between the team and the family of Brittanie Cecil, a 13-year-old girl who died two days after being hit by a puck at a Blue Jackets game in 2002. Despite the company conflict, Marrison says the paper went after the lawsuit vigorously, and won: "We are fortunate that our owners want to be proud of the product that is put out there."

The local connection, however, can cause other reporting disruptions, according to Senior Editor Joe Hallett. He points to the Wolfe family's common ownership of the paper and sometime-competitors WBNS TV (a CBS affiliate) and the Ohio News Network. "There is a great deal of interest in convergence," says Hallett. "If we get a scoop, Channel 10 [WBNS] might jump in and want to put us on [the air]." He cited as an example a 2005 Dispatch exclusive report that Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman was dropping out of the governor's race, which WBNS also reported. "There is a push to identify the brand as Dispatch Printing Company," Hallett adds, "this consortium of news entities."

Limited editions
And while local, private owners often require profit margins that are less massive, they also typically have less money to put into the paper. This can limit coverage in some expansive areas, such as state, national, and international news, veterans say. "It is a bit of a drawback," admits Robert Price, a metro columnist at The Bakersfield Californian, whose owner and publisher Virginia F. Moorhouse is otherwise praised. "We have a seasoned reporter in Sacramento, but we don't have anybody in Iraq or Washington, D.C. It is a little bit of a limitation."

Block Communications Inc., which owns the Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, closed its Washington bureau earlier this year to offset rising budget problems, leaving one reporter on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, news coverage took a bit of a national and international hit when the paper lost its longtime connection to Knight Ridder's vast Washington, D.C., bureau and numerous overseas correspondents, who now work for McClatchy. "Sometimes we will have a New York Times story on the front page," says Joseph DiStefano, an Inquirer business reporter. "It is a question for the long term: Where we are going to get that coverage? We are leaving that large [reporting] pool. A lot of people would like to see us cover more national and foreign news." He adds that the paper's Washington reporters remain on the job there, and one Middle East correspondent is also still reporting.

At The Greeneville (Tenn.) Sun, owned by the Jones family, one longtime employee who requested anonymity says the paper often limits coverage to its own county, claiming the family's ownership in a neighboring weekly is the reason: "It is almost a throwback to the 1940s, a booster of everything local. I might run things differently than they do."

Editor John M. Jones Jr., whose father is publisher, boasts about the paper's local connection, declaring, "We are definitely boosters of the community." But he denies any one-sided coverage, citing a recent uproar over the local city planner being attacked for poor performance by city officials. He says the Sun drew some complaints when it editorialized in favor of the employee. Jones also says the paper prompted complaints from some leaders at a nearby college when it looked into the issue of whether there was faculty support for the president.

In Daytona Beach, Fla., where the Davidson family has owned the majority of the Daytona Beach News-Journal for years, it is unclear how the owner's pending buyout of minority stakeholder Cox Newspapers might impact resources. If the paper lays out millions for the buyout, the paper will likely need to cutback some resources. Prior to the buyout, staffers said the local connection had been mostly positive. "Every paper has issues when it covers itself, but I think we have done a good job," says metro columnist Mark Lane, who has been with the paper for 26 years. Adds Executive Editor Don Lindley, "On balance, it is a great thing. When we need to get things done, they are right here."

For a number of local, privately owned papers, having the ownership nearby and involved adds positive elements as well. Jay Grelen, a columnist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, says his paper's well-known owner, Walter Hussman, does push for education-related issues, but "it has never resulted in any sort of interference." He also says the paper has a reporter and photographer in Iraq during October, and has sent reporters to cover events ranging from combat in Afghanistan to Hurricane Katrina: "For a paper from Arkansas, that is pretty ambitious."

Boca Raton's King chimed in, saying "it is a lot easier to deal with when your owner is upstairs than four or five states away."