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So are you saying people like Gene Roberts are out of touch? And you shouldn't even bother to listen to them because you've heard it ALL before?

I think what you're really saying is that you'd rather not hear the truth because it would depress you. And then you'd have to make a choice: Either keep mouthing managementspeak platitudes about the future, or actually fight for your newsroom the way Roberts did. If you think he didn't stand up to KR beancounters and that it shortened his tenure in Philly, well, maybe you SHOULD go hear him speak. Because what editors of Roberts' generation have to share is not only the "good old days" but how their immense personal courage made the bad days less bad for a lot of people.

I am not being critical of the personal and professional courage of Roberts or of any editor. It is not an issue of standing up to bean counters or of mouthing platitudes.

But what worked in the 80s and 90s in newsrooms isn't a healthy prescription for newspapers in the 21st century (although it could be one for journalism).

Keeping newspaper newsrooms strong without also adapting to the changing marketplace means you only understand part of the equation.

Hmm. It'll be hard to improve on that first post.

Today's newsroom managers have little to no chance of turning the tide. Bad, subjective hiring and misuse of technology have doomed today's newsrooms. The powers-that-be try in vain to cling to the status quo while suggesting "improvements" that are destined to fail before they're implemented.

I guess we'll keep hearing those managementspeak platitudes. Today's dim newsroom managers don't have anything else to offer.

Your choice not to be enlightened. So then did Roberts, Bradlee and other relics of the last generation just coast through their careers facing no challenges and gaining no wisdom about publishers or the public they might want to share and pass along? How self-important and cocksure are you that you can't pick up some tip on managing a newspaper or solving a problem? Oh, yes, and great journalism that peers around the corner like that Duke rape case? If you really felt you are too busy engineering the new journalism to meet the demands of future generations, why waste the time writing this column, which reeks of spite and jealousy. Next time, don't tell us and just peer off into the distant future. Here's my humbling Japanese saying" "If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by." I got it from a Hollywood move Rising Sun.

Did you guys actually read the post? I'd say he went easy. How about these great editors of the past leaving the business in better shape? How hard can it be to edit a newspaper when margins are in the 25-30% range? Couldn't they have left us better prepared to deal with the coming readership crisis? Yes, but did they? Not that I can tell.

I, too, have heard from editors of the past bemoaning changes that have been made. I have received precious little usable advice -- in other words, precious little about how better to do more with less.

"How hard can it be to edit a newspaper when margins are in the 25-30% range?"

I just remember the saying of one out-of-his-league editor: "It's easy to put out a paper when you have a lot of people!" Then he would allow his egocentric managing "editor" to open mail for hours as stories accumulated in the editing queue. Meanwhile, that "lot of people" would sit, waiting to be able to do their jobs.

Too many newsrooms operate under this premise. The alleged managers aren't team players; they do what they want, and everyone else is expected to "just do it" or to blindly parrot whatever platitude is in place at that location.

Many of today's managing editors and city editors simply are not doing the jobs they're paid to do.

How hard can it be to edit a newspaper when margins are in the 25-30% range

You need a little history lesson. Bradlee took over the Washington Post when the paper was second in a four-paper town. The Post bought the Times-Herald at a bankruptcy sale, and the Evening Star (then the leading and richest paper) eventually bought the Washington Daily News. Under Bradlee, who expanded his staff with the acquiescence of Kay Graham _ someone who clearly saw the value of investing in the future at the sacrifice of her profits -- pulled the Post ahead of the Star in 1968-69. Of course, this was helped by a tide turning against afternoon newspapers like the Star, which went under in 1981. Yes Ben Bradlee left the Post a powerful monopoly with 30 percent profit margins, but it was a close-run thing. Had the Star gone morning in 1965, there probably would be no Washington Post today. As it was, I remember when you could buy WPO stock for $5 a share. It's $670 today. All we get from editors today is moaning now no one has faced the problems they are facing. But I say, yes they certainly have, and left triumphant after bringing them under control. That's something I don't see happening in Greensboro.

Roberts career is similar to that of Bradlee. When he took over the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972, it was a basket case, second in circulation to the afternoon Philadelphia Bulletin, with outdated equipment and still reeling from a scandal involving its ace prize-winning reporter Harry Karafin, who was convicted of bribing officials to keep information out of the paper. The paper had been owned by Walter Annenberg, who made a fortune from TV Guide and racing form publications. The Knight chain, which became Knight Ridder bought it from him and installed Roberts. Within eight years, Roberts had turned things around. The Inquirer erased the Bulletin's circulation lead by 1980, and by 1982 the Inquirer had 60 percent of the city's advertising to the Bulletin's 24 percent. LIke the Post, it could have gone the other way, but Roberts and Knight Ridder poured money and talent into the Inquirer and they made a fortune after the Bulletin folded. The lesson from both Roberts and Bradlee is to hire good talent, reward them with good pay checks and generous expense accounts, and print what they find out. You simply can't make a successful newspaper counting pencil stubs, laying off productive, prize-winning staffs, or paying for pointless readership surveys to find out what readers want. Landmark has the cash to make this work, if they wanted to.

"Bill said:
I, too, have heard from editors of the past bemoaning changes that have been made. I have received precious little usable advice -- in other words, precious little about how better to do more with less."

Maybe they aren't telling you "how to do more with less" because the phrase is complete nonsense and they're not going waste their breath on anyone who would say such a thing. You do more with more. You do less with less. You do more with less only in speeches in which you lie to your staff.

When two dailies folded in Philly, leaving two owned by KR, Gene Roberts somehow convinced a publically traded company to ADD staff. A lot of staff. Even though the competition had died. Even though the economy wasn't good. Because it was a tremendous opportunity to strengthen the product and attract the 500,000 people who, for whatever reason, had preferred the Bulletin or the Journal. Now there was a man with courage, vision and the clout to argue that when you want to add readers, you need to spend.

Nah, no need to hear from Gene.

I'm not sure what planet you people were on in the early 1980s, but here on Earth it was the freaking apocolypse. Big-city papers were folding with 300,000 and 400,000 circulation.

Gene's a smart man, but he also has big ones. And that's what's needed today.

I'm not sure why you are so angry. I'm not critical of Roberts or Bradlee. They were great editors. But they faced dramatically different issues than editors do today.

If you'd like to play this out, though, it is easy to find out the advice they give to newspaper editors by googling. Aside from producing great journalism, I can't find where they address the issue of two generations of people who don't read papers anymore or what to do about the decline of the traditional advertisers.

Again, that is not criticism of them; it simply is. Newspaper editors now are trying to produce great journalism and to plan for the future. That's the point of this post.

You only speak to the 1980s-90s.

Perhaps we should go back to the 1950s when I first started reading newpapers. It's all about content, not the method of distribution.

I still take the local paper; I also read most national and world-wide papers online.
It amazes me that most media commentators don't realize the over 60 demographic actually knows how to turn on a computer.

Cordially,
An old person who still reads, whether on paper or online.

"Use Google to find information" -- Now there's an approach that should have readers running to newspapers.

"Aside from producing great journalism, I can't find where they address the issue of two generations of people who don't read papers anymore" -- They probably don't address them the same way as today's underperforming editors: Just view the generations as dumb in order to justify dumber newsrooms and dumber approaches that rely on simplistic, idiotic techniques like page design and pointless articles.

"They probably don't address the issue of two generations of people who don't read papers anymore.."
I think you are disrespecting your potential audience as much as the retirees. Americans are still thirsty for newspapers, and here's the proof: go to www.alexa.com (a company which monitors daily Internet usage) and then find the top 100 Internet sites visited daily in the U.S. on the top right hand side.
Now, leaf through the list and you will find the NYTimes at 25, the BBC at 44, and Washington Post at 84. The New York Times even gets more visitors a day than youporn, which actually pleased emensely me because it shows people are more interested in what's going on than looking at pornography. What I get out of that is that people are reading newspapers and looking for old-fashioned plain vanilla news like they get on BBC, crisp, clear and authoritative. Yes, I know of the readership surveys that the newspaper industry conducts showing declines, but I've already told you what I think of worthless readership surveys. I think the BBC hits are telling, (note ABC, CNN and the other TV horrors don't make the list) and show that Americans are going elsewhere because their local newspaper is loading them down with pretty pussy cat stories, or mindless advertorials on trendy new Crocs, or latest fashion in skirts. These stories are not news, and both you and I know that. While you are googling, read some of the suggestions from the old editors, and you will see they are pointing to a thirst for old fashioned quality journalism, and argue that from their experience the ads and money comes back only after quality newspapers are published. Strikes me they know what they are talking about, and it's better than moaning about why no one is reading newspapers anymore or just monitoring the steady ad lineage declines.