Category: newspapers
Watching TV often makes me grumpy. “Dramas” with actors who look like actors (as opposed to the doctors and detectives they’re supposedly playing). Emcees applauding their own appearance on stage. Charlie Rose awestruck in the presence of Penelope Cruz, lobbing her softballs and then saying “less movies,” as if the interview were being conducted in his second language.
But reading a newspaper I almost always find something to cheer me. Sunday it was the sports section of the New York Times, which ran the headline: “Querrey Rebounds From a Scary Fall to Resume His Steady Climb.” The two opposite and single-syllabled nouns fronted by two-syllabled and nearly rhymed adjectives practically made my day.
The other morning the Sun-Sentinel sat in front of the door instead of the Herald.
It reminded me of the call I got in 2007. The man on the other end said that he was not a subscriber, but every morning he found a copy of the Sun-Sentinel in front of his house. He found this irritating, and he wanted it stopped.
And I remember thinking: We used to get calls from subscribers complaining that their paper hadn't been delivered; now we're getting calls from people annoyed that they are getting the paper for free. It seemed to represent a critical shift in public opinion.
When a magazine goes under, it is upsetting for subscribers and personally disturbing for contributors. I neither read nor wrote for Editor & Publisher, but I heard of its death yesterday with a feeling of sadness.
One day in the spring of 1989 I was sitting in my cubicle in the editorial offices of the Providence Journal scanning the want ads in the back of E&P. (Reading classifieds is not really reading.) One caught my attention: the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale was looking for a travel editor.
I sent, as the ad requested, a resume and a letter stating my philosophy of what a travel section should be. Feeling I had no chance allowed me to be brutally honest. To my immense surprise, I got a call a few weeks later, and shortly after flew down for an interview. The features editor and her assistant - Robin Doussard and Lisa Shroder - both shared my ideas about travel writing.
That August I began my career as a newspaper travel editor, one of the very few who was hired from outside - usually someone was plucked from the newsroom as a reward for long service - and perhaps the only one who got the job through Editor & Publisher.
The more depressing the newspaper business gets, the more entertaining old newsroom stories become.
I had dinner with some ex-colleagues last night and one of them, a former editorial writer, told a story I never tire of hearing. It was the fall of 1978 and the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had just been chosen to become the next Pope - the first non-Italian Pope in over four centuries. Kingsley, a little too caught up in the historic nature of this appointment, described him in his editorial as "the first non-Catholic Pope."
People were so focused on the "non" that nobody who proofed the page noticed the mistake. Of course, once it was published it caught the attention of many, including the editor. The next day he walked into Kingsley's office - I had not heard this part of the story before - placed the editorial on Kingsley's desk, and uttered the only comment he would ever make about the piece: "This is not an editorial," he said. "This is a news story."
This seems to be the season for anniversaries, so I'll add my own: Twenty years ago this week I became the second and - judging by the current decline - the last travel editor in the history of the Sun-Sentinel.
For many of my generation, Woodstock is an example of paradise lost. For me, that example is the American newspaper of the late 20th century.
The features editor and her assistant (an assistant features editor!) hired me because they were looking for a good writer. (A newspaper interested in writing!) I was given about $20,000 for travel and the same for freelance purchases. (Never much for luxury, I would find it impossible to spend all that money myself, and recruited colleagues to help with the travel.)
The profitability of not just the paper but the Travel section - all those Sunday ads - allowed me a certain amount of freedom (as did the fact that the specialty sections are an editor's lowest priority). After complaints from his office about my first few columns, I was left pretty much alone to do what I wanted with the section. I decided where I would travel, what I would write in my biweekly column, which freelance stories I would put on the cover. (I rarely allowed a wire story there.)
That autonomy lasted for 17 years, until the newspaper business started to fail and editors' perspectives dangerously narrowed. (Local and useful replaced worldly and interesting.) To paraphrase Evelyn Waugh on travel: I'm happy I put out a Travel section when the putting out of a Travel section was good.
The Miami Herald yesterday introduced its new travel editor and - surprise - she's also the Home & Design editor.
(Note: I did not apply, so the following is not sour grapes.)
Newspapers traditionally have paid little attention to who oversees their travel sections. Travel editor has always been, of the four specialty section positions, the only one that is seen as requiring no expertise. A Food editor needs to know about cooking and nutrition; a Home editor about architecture and design; even Fashion has its own vocabulary. But putting out the travel section has always been regarded as something that anyone can do, which is why the job, historically, was given to veteran reporters as a reward for years of faithful service.
Today, instead of being moved into the job, people are being given it in addition to their current one - even if the two have nothing in common (or, as in this case, are diametrically opposed). For a few years the Baltimore Sun travel editor was also the book editor, which made a little sense, as there is a great body of travel literature (but don't tell the editors of newspapers that). Then the paper eliminated both positions.
It may seem impractical, at a time when newspapers are shrinking in size and declining in quality, to insist on strict standards for such a lowly position. But maybe this is exactly what newspapers need to do to lure readers back. Why not look for someone who has not just traveled, but lived in another country? Someone who speaks a language other than English? While everything else in the paper is going local, why not reserve at least one section for the worldly and the cosmopolitan? When I was a travel editor, I always saw my section as not just an escape, but a complement to the rest of the newspaper, a place for people to be entertained and educated about other countries. Savoir-faire is as important to travelers as tips and information.
The new Herald travel editor, readers were told, has written eight cookbooks and traveled to the Arctic Ocean, the Great Barrier Reef, and a cooking school in Tuscany. It was like announcing that your new fashion editor has written five mysteries and wears nice clothes.