What's this? A publisher who's tired of gutting his newspaper on orders from
corporate headquarters? Jeffrey M. Johnson has been ousted as publisher of
the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. subsidiary of the (Chicago) Tribune Co., for
refusing to cut his staff back still further.
Imagine that-a publisher who believes that the way to save a newspaper is to
maintain and expand its quality, not sacrifice it. A new publisher now has
been dispatched from Chicago to make sure the troops in L.A. toe the line.
It's no surprise to learn that he's the old publisher of the Chicago
Tribune, a lawyer by trade who worked his way up the corporate ladder. This
is what newspapers have come to.
It isn't exactly a new phenomenon, this transformation of the Hometown News
into just another branch of Distant Corp. to be milked for all it used to be
worth.
One of the most successful and respected of newspaper chains, the once
mighty Knight Ridder, has just been hacked up and its body parts sold. It
seems its 32 daily newspapers had been able to record "only" a 20 percent
return on investment in recent years.
Cut back on the quality of a newspaper in order to show an impressive
short-term return for the market's sake, and the slide toward disaster has
begun. Readers will notice and begin drifting away, and advertisers will
soon follow. It won't be long before the vultures are circling.
For now the best hope for restoring the L.A. Times' reputation may be its
sale to somebody who would take personal pride in it, and personal
responsibility for it.
A century ago, an editor of a small paper in Kansas made it a great one, not
in circulation but in quality. He gave that little people a national
presence. His name was William Allen White, and the secret of his paper's
appeal was its identity with its publisher-and his with it.
William Allen White's fellow citizens knew he was deeply invested in his
community, and would stand by his beliefs whatever the cost. They might not
agree with the Emporia Gazette, but they could respect it. It had character,
just as its owner did.
The importance of the personal in this business/obsession that is journalism
was brought home again by the news that Oriana Fallaci had died at 77 in her
native Florence. Her life, like her journalism, was one long, very personal
fight against fascism, a fight she began as a 10-year-old look-out for the
Italian Resistance.
It wasn't just Mussolini's fascism that Oriana Fallaci detested but every
other variety-national or racial, Italian or German, or, in her last years,
Islamic. She tore into each as it appeared on history's chaotic stage - not
only with her untamable words but her Florentine flair. Custom could not
wither nor age stale the infinite variety of her invective. Or dim her
glamor. All her life, she lured the powerful and celebrated like a Venus
flytrap, and the aspiring Machiavellis of the world were her natural prey.
Signorina Fallaci saw through the practitioners of Realpolitik as if they
were made of glass, brittle glass. After reading her, one could never again
think of them in the same way. She had an unmatched talent for drawing
attention to the specks of blood on their well-tailored cuffs, and the human
groans behind their professorial talk about the balance of power and the
correlation of forces. (Henry Kissinger said his interview with Fallaci "was
the most disastrous conversation I ever had with a member of the press.")
There's nothing wrong with American journalism that couldn't be cured by a
few more publishers who take their responsibility personally - the way
William Allen White did - and a few more tough old broads who can not only
write but think - a la Oriana Fallaci.
Or Florence King. Instead we get snappy neo-McCarthyites like Ann Coulter on
one side and fashionables like Maureen Dowd on the other, for whom the
adjective precious might have been invented. (You can take the girl out of
the Upper East Side, but not the Upper East Side out of the girl.)
Oh, for another Oriana Fallaci, whose unflinching words survive her, and
more publishers like the kind who brought her thoughts, and soaring spirit,
to us.