I can understand why Jerry Roberts, the former editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press, is upset. He resigned last week in protest at alleged meddling in news coverage by his owner. And he didn't go alone. Four senior executives and a veteran columnist went with him (see July 7 posting, Six quit US newspaper in dispute with owner), quickly followed by the sports editor. Roberts, 57, suffered the indignity of being escorted from the office. He had been editor for four years, is a former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and it would appear he is much admired by fellow journalists.
But has Roberts drawn the right lesson from his departure? He believes the episode should be a warning to other journalists who see a new wave of private buyers as the saviours for the troubled American newspaper industry. In an interview with Editor & Publisher, he says: "When you have one owner who is very wealthy and used to getting their way, you have this conflict between the audience of the paper and the audience of one - the owner." Roberts was referring to Wendy McCaw, a billionaire who bought the News-Press from the New York Times group in 2000.
Within American papers, there is a recognised separation of powers between the editorial (opinion) pages and the rest of the editorial content, most especially the news. Roberts was fairly relaxed about McCaw's influence on the editorial page. What troubled him and his colleagues was her growing involvement in the news pages, where she allegedly insisted on certain stories being suppressed and once reprimanded reporters for the way they wrote a story about actor Rob Lowe, who complained direct to her. Her involvement, says Roberts, "became untenable." (He should have edited under Robert Maxwell if he wants to know what interference is really like, but I digress).
Let's leave the ins and outs of the disagreement between editor and owner to pick up on Roberts's views about private, as distinct from corporate, ownership. It's become an issue in the States where there's been a growing concern about corporate-owned papers being squeezed by managers trying to please investors. Now, on the basis of his experience, Roberts thinks the alternative - ownership by a wealthy individual - is flawed. I don't want to be rude, especially to a man who's out of a job, but hell, why not? He just isn't thinking straight. One incident at one paper with a 40,000-circulation in one city owned by one woman in dispute with one editor doesn't negate the whole practice of private ownership. There can be good individual owners and bad individual owners. There can be good corporations and bad corporations. There are good family owners and bad family owners.
Could it be that Roberts, along with the colleagues who resigned alongside him and a host of sympathetic journalists across the States, are beginning to question the whole nature of newspaper ownership at this time of crisis? Are they wondering whether all private ownership - be it by an individual or a large corporation - is inimical to the needs of journalism? If so, then that's a discussion worth having. Then again, as I say that, I realise it may not matter. The non-ownership pattern of the net is already signposting the future, is it not?
