Turning Point: One Day, Two Stories And How The Chicago

Turning Point: One day, two stories and how the Chicago Tribune rediscovered its mission. *** I am honored to be with you today at the Medill School of Journalism and to participate in the Crain Lecture Series. Let me tell you a story about one of the most important days in Chicago Tribune history and how it changed us. That day was Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008. In the print and online editions that morning, Chicagoans learned that Tribune Co., our corporate parent, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. For our loyal readers, it was disturbing news, the acknowledgment that an institution long central to the life of Chicago was in peril. For those of us who work at the Chicago Tribune, the story was dispiriting—another blow in a year of upheaval. We saw the life of the institution flash before us that day. The Chicago Tribune is 162 years old. Our story is entwined with the history of the nation. This is the newspaper that helped launch the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Through the darkest days of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Chicago Tribune advocated for the political principles that would guide a nation reborn. This is the paper that rallied Chicago to rebuild after the devastating fire of 1871. The paper’s editor, Joseph Medill—the man for whom this school is named—put down his pen and became mayor, laying the foundation for the city we see today. This is the newspaper that Robert R. McCormick—one of the titans of 20th Century media—built into one of the largest circulation newspapers in America and used it to fuel the growth of two new media of his era, radio and television. This is the newspaper of Clayton Kirkpatrick, who marshaled the staff to perform a publishing miracle in1974 by printing the complete transcripts of the Watergate recordings on deadline, the only newspaper in the country to do so. His “Listen, Mr. Nixon” editorial helped usher the president out of office. And, in recent years, our reporting helped free innocent men from Death Row and bring about a moratorium on capital punishment in Illinois. We exposed corruption at City Hall, advocated for solutions to protect children from a plague of violence, offered a new vision for the city’s lakefront, took on prosecutorial misconduct and were awarded journalism’s highest honors for our work. 1

However, like just about every other media company in America, we had been hit hard by the structural changes in the industry, the collapse of the advertising market and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Although the Chicago Tribune remained profitable, as was the case with all other Tribune media, the numbers were heading south and the debt load from the sale that took the company private was crushing. Something had to be done, and Chapter 11 was it. On Dec. 9, many wondered whether the Chicago Tribune would survive. There was another story on the front page that day—one that ran right next to the Tribune bankruptcy story. It was a blockbuster exclusive: The U.S. attorney’s corruption probe of Gov. Rod Blagojevich was now focusing on his appointment of a U.S. senator to replace President-elect Barack Obama. This story was the culmination of four years of investigative work by Tribune reporters who relentlessly pursued Blagojevich’s pay-to-play schemes. Early that morning—as the online edition posted the story and the print edition hit doorsteps—Blagojevich was arrested at his Northwest Side home by federal agents intent on halting what the U.S. attorney would call a “political crime spree.” The confluence of those two stories—Tribune bankruptcy and the Blagojevich scandal—presented a moment of truth. The message was unmistakable: We must solve our economic problems and reset our priorities in order to preserve the powerful public service reporting the Blagojevich story represented. A city without a strong, vigilant newspaper committed to its welfare was unthinkable. The events of Dec. 9 would mark a turning point for the Chicago Tribune. *** On most days, there aren’t many people roaming the Tribune’s 4th floor newsroom at 6 a.m. At that hour on Dec. 9, the newsroom was already busy. Editors clustered around the metro desk. They talked to reporters posted around the city who were poised to report the explosive political story about to unfold: the arrest of the governor of Illinois. 2

No one had gotten much sleep the night before. That night was another in a series of intense, deadline-pushing evenings. We faced high-stakes decisions about what to report and when. We had been pursuing the allegations of corruption surrounding Blagojevich for years, but in the past few months our investigation had begun to intersect with a criminal probe by the U.S. attorney’s office. A few weeks earlier, we had learned that John Wyma, one of the governor’s closest advisors and top fund-raisers, was cooperating with the government. We contacted the U.S. attorney’s office to complete our reporting. It was then that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald made an urgent request of the Tribune: He asked us to delay publication of the story because it threatened to derail the investigation at a critical moment. Without surrendering control of the story or the ultimate decision about when to run it, we delayed publication so investigators could collect evidence. As the circle tightened around the governor, more requests came to delay publishing what we knew. We carefully considered these requests, but rejected them. As we prepared the edition of the 9th, we were on the phone again with federal authorities about our decision to report that the criminal investigation was now centered on the Senate appointment. It was past 11 p.m. and the presses were waiting. We believed the investigation was complete and the evidence gathered. It was imperative that the public know the accusations against the governor. We went with the story. Now, in the dim light of the morning, we learned that FBI agents in two black sedans and an SUV had arrived at the governor’s home. At the same time, a phone rang inside the governor’s house, awakening Blagojevich and asking him to come quietly to the door. Blagojevich reportedly asked, “Is this a joke?” We sent out the first e-mail alert and posted it on our Web site: Blagojevich arrested. At a mid-morning press conference, Fitzgerald disclosed the full scope of the charges against the governor. 3

Then he made a surprising revelation. He alleged that Blagojevich had threatened to hold up Tribune Company’s proposed sale of Wrigley Field until members of our editorial board were fired. This is the quote he attributed to Blagojevich, expletives deleted: “Our recommendation is to fire those (bleeping) people, get ’em the (bleep) out of there and get us some editorial support.” We were very well sourced on this story, but we didn’t know this. However surreal Blagojevich’s performance had been in recent months, it appeared that we may have been the target of a government plot to silence us. For most of that day, the Blagojevich arrest was the biggest story in the country —and the Chicago Tribune was squarely in the middle of it. *** These two events galvanized us. We in the newsroom had been knocked down hard by the Chapter 11 news. But we got back up and came out swinging. We did our jobs. And it mattered. We will not be intimidated. No politician will conspire against us and get away with it. We will fight. Most of all, we recognized that day—as did many other people in Illinois—that if we’re not here to do our job, the forces of crooked self-interest will win. We are not going to let that happen on our watch. While the governor eventually was impeached, we knew this would not end the culture of corruption that grips the state. Over the next few days, I talked to our top newsroom leaders—Jane Hirt, Joyce Winnecke, Bill Adee, Bruce Dold, Peter Kendall, Joe Knowles, George Papajohn and others.

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I told them that the responsibility to see the paper through this period of its history now fell to us and our colleagues across the Tribune. We had to make sure that the most important journalism that the Chicago Tribune performs on behalf of this region and its people lives on—no matter who owns us. It was our duty to make fundamental changes—many of which we had avoided for years—that would ensure our survival and form the foundation for our future success. As you all know, we had been engaged since August of last year in a series of painful layoffs at the Chicago Tribune, including the newsroom. Just about every other major newspaper was experiencing this trauma as well. Unfortunately, these layoffs were necessary because the scale of our operation no longer matched what the revenue would support. Dealing with that economic reality took an enormous human and emotional toll. We said goodbye to many of our colleagues, good people and dedicated journalists whom we worked alongside for many years. No one would choose to go through this unless the future of the enterprise was at stake. And it was. There will be no meaningful journalism without a business that makes enough money to support it and has an audience that cares about what we deliver. So these changes weren’t just about profit and loss. They involved a complete rethinking of the editorial mission. It forced us recognize what matters most to readers and not be afraid of what they tell us. You will see in these changes many of the findings of the Readership Institute, developed here at Northwestern University, as well as our own research about consumers and their information needs. We had to be honest about the difference between journalistic convention and true principle. We had to excel at journalism and be smart at business. By December, we had already made major changes based on this thinking. But we had a lot more to do more…while there was still time.

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We asked ourselves: If we were starting fresh today, what kind of news operation would we build to best meet people’s needs and make a business out of it too? The same kind of question was being asked across all departments at the Tribune, and similar actions were being taken everywhere—in operations, circulation, marketing and advertising. We resolved that while our newsroom would be smaller, it would focus like a laser on a few key areas where we could truly make a difference. Even with a smaller staff, we substantially increased our resources in investigative reporting and our online operation, and we put even greater emphasis on our local news coverage. We reduced resources in other areas to make this possible. We joined forces with the Los Angeles Times on world, nation and Washington coverage. We now operate bureaus jointly with them and serve the entire Tribune group. We streamlined editorial production and design functions so we could keep more reporters on the street. And we simply stopped producing some non-local news and features content that was readily available from other sources at lower costs. Last spring, the outside world may only have seen more layoffs and dislocation. But inside, we were remaking ourselves. We began to build a news organization that supported all of our media—digital and print—and we established these principles to guide us: •

We stand up for our community and citizens. Watchdog reporting is at the heart of our mission, and it drives everything we do. It is what people want most from us. And, happily, it is what we journalists want too.

It also means using our editorial voice to lead opinion in this region. For the first time in 30 years, we are publishing editorials on Page 1 in service of this cause.

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I will talk more about this shortly.

•

We capture the Chicago experience. We reflect the drama, vitality, conflict and hope of life in Chicago in the 21st Century.

We commit to being the first and best source of news, information and knowledge about this region.

Therefore, our news priorities are centered on: o

Local government and community issues…such as the eruption of youth violence in Chicago and urgent need for safe passage for school students, as we reported this week.

o

The Chicago-area economy.

o Local entertainment and culture. o Chicago sports—pros, college and high school. o People and personalities that lend color to life here. Local relevance is not strictly geographic, I understand that. But we view the world from Chicago because this is where we live, work and play.

•

We move people emotionally and intellectually. We want the Tribune to be smart and authoritative, that’s for sure. But we also want to connect with people on an emotional plane. For years, too many readers have told us they were ambivalent about their experience with us.

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So we increasingly are weaving stories into our report that more fully reflect the human condition, whether it’s the inspiring story this past Sunday about Derrius Quarles, a young man who fought his way out of a troubled childhood in foster care to win more than $1 million in college scholarship offers…or the behind-the-headlines story of Patrick Robbins and his family, who were in danger of losing their home and went on food stamps just weeks after he was laid off.

And readers respond to these stories in ways that go far beyond calls or emails.

When the Tribune wrote about an 85-year-old man who felt shunned in his nursing home because he is gay, more than 100 readers volunteered to visit or help him. He attended the Gay Pride parade for the first time in his life with the assistance of someone who stepped forward after the story ran.

And when we published an article about an Evanston man’s effort to help the local pizza delivery man who had been mugged and carjacked, people from 24 countries sent in more than $16,000 in donations—enough to buy the man a new car so he could return to work.

Readers hunger for these stories and these connections. •

We help people navigate their daily lives. We give people information they can use to be better consumers and citizens.

This may be as practical as giving people details about how Chicago’s automatic parking meters work—or don’t work—and how to appeal tickets… …to helping parents plan for the start of a new school year… 8

…or creating the most complete online database on nursing home health and safety records, as we did last week as part of our “Compromised Care” series.

•

We fuel conversation—the Tribune is a social medium. We’ve found that one of the biggest drivers of readership is how much people talk about the stories they read. And there is room for fun in the newspaper.

So we established a daily feature called “The Talk” on Pages 2 and 3, a virtual water cooler with news, observations and voices commenting about the news.

We are giving greater emphasis to our columnists such as John Kass, and we’re developing new voices and personalities to generate conversation.

•

We break news—we don’t just report it. It is no longer sufficient just to report news that is readily available from many other sources.

Our goal is to set the news agenda each day with original reporting—news that you can’t get from anywhere else.

We made our biggest push in watchdog reporting.

It’s not that the Chicago Tribune wasn’t doing investigative reporting before. We were. And our record of accomplishment is recognized across the industry and I’m very proud of it. It’s a tremendous legacy.

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But we resolved to make watchdog reporting a daily defining characteristic of our report.

“Investigative” describes a method, but “watchdog” reflects a mentality. It says, “Your problems are our problems, and we are committed to solving them with you.”

We told everyone on our staff that they are watchdog reporters, and that this should manifest itself in stories large and small.

And in a special report in June, we made the promise to readers that we would be on guard for Chicago.

We must be constantly in the fray, on the streets, doing battle every day.

While watchdog reporting is everyone’s responsibility, we built three teams to give the effort momentum:

•

We established the government watchdog team. This includes the reporters and columnists who led the Blagojevich investigation, as well as those who cover the Statehouse, City Hall, schools and county government.

•

We created a new, consumer watchdog team. This is a new department focused on consumer safety, health, medicine and regulatory agencies. It also includes an investigative SWAT team that can be directed wherever it is needed most.

•

We expanded the role of the editorial board. Our editorial writers and columnists set the agenda for change and hold our leaders accountable. We’ve put our editorial board at the forefront of our mission as never before. And I’m very excited to say that we hired Scott Stantis to fill the political cartoonist job that had been vacant for nearly a decade. 10

We also added a new resource to support our entire newsroom—a news applications team.

These colleagues are a new breed of journalist-programmer, and they master massive amounts of public information to create searchable online databases. By the way, Brian Boyer, Ryan Mark and Joe Germuska are all Northwestern University graduates.

Their work supercharges our investigative reporting, helping our journalists quickly scour public records, and it empowers citizens to use the information themselves.

Readers have seen a steady parade of watchdog stories march across our Web site and newspaper—wrongs identified, solutions offered, corrective actions launched.

These have included: •

Investigations about toxic chemicals in the air.

•

Polluted wells and the suburban officials who looked the other way.

•

Deadly flaws in infant car seats and cribs.

•

The connection between zoning and campaign donations in Chicago neighborhoods.

•

Consumers denied health insurance benefits.

•

The “junk science” of dubious autism treatments.

•

Dangerous allergens in our food despite safeguards.

•

And, in the last few days, the risks of mixing felons, the mentally ill and geriatric patients in nursing homes.

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I want to talk more about two projects in particular.

In February, just after Blagojevich was impeached, we promised readers we would lead a campaign on our news and opinion pages to drive true political reform in Illinois.

That campaign is called “The State of Corruption,” and in many ways it is an oldfashioned newspaper crusade.

We set a six-point agenda for cleaning up government, and we began publishing editorials on Page 1 of the newspaper.

In those editorials, we called on our lawmakers to act—and called them out when they failed.

We urged citizens to call, write and e-mail their legislators—and they swamped lawmakers’ switchboards.

Our reporters detailed how public officials were hiding behind Illinois’ infamously weak Freedom of Information Act.

We told how officials routinely ignored not just reporters, but individuals trying to get public information about how their government works.

In response, we established an online open records help desk where we assist citizens gain access to these records.

We told how the campaign finance mechanism in Illinois cements the fealty of lawmakers to top legislative leaders. 12

The General Assembly passed a campaign finance reform bill and got Gov. Pat Quinn to support it. They called it “landmark” legislation. But the bill was riddled with so many escape clauses that it would have achieved nothing.

Because of the unflagging work of reform groups in Illinois—and because of the spotlight we put on that bill—the governor reversed course and vetoed it in an extraordinary ceremony attended by all of the legislative leaders.

Pressure works—and you can hold power accountable.

Now we will be taking the “State of Corruption” campaign to the ballot box in next year’s primary and general election.

We promise to give voters the best information and the best tools they’ve ever had to make choices that will change the political culture in Illinois.

If you want to see the impact of political entitlement on the lives of individual citizens, take a look at the admission scandal at the University of Illinois.

The “Clout Goes to College” investigation by Jodi Cohen, Tara Malone, Stacy St. Clair, Tracy Van Moorlehem and others shows just how pervasive secret political privilege really is in this state.

These reporters broke the story that politically connected applicants were being admitted to the university over more qualified students who lacked clout.

The unfairness of this practice is clear and outrageous. Choosing a college and the opportunities it represents is one of the most important moments in a young person’s life. Acceptance should be based on merit. 13

Yet, some public officials who sponsored candidates regarded it as just another “constituent service” like cutting a curb in a sidewalk. University officials acquiesced, fearing they could lose funding sources and political leverage if they did not.

I’ve rarely seen an eruption of public anger like that generated by “Clout Goes to College.”

Most people in this state probably know someone who was denied admission to the U. of I. They can picture the face of that student and wonder if he or she didn’t get in because someone else had clout. It’s personal. So now we have a new board of trustees and the university soon will have a new president. The infamous “Category I” list has been abolished and hopefully a new fair and transparent admissions policy will be established. I believe university officials across the country are examining their own practices in light of the U. of I. scandal. As a result, young people everywhere may get the opportunities they have earned and deserve. In this business, you always hear more complaints than compliments, and I’ve certainly heard a fair number of complaints since I became editor 15 months ago. But the outpouring of support for our renewed emphasis on watchdog reporting has been humbling and gratifying. Every day, we receive notes and calls from people thanking us for what we’re doing. They depend on us. *** Nearly a year has passed since Dec. 9—and it has been an extraordinary year by any measure. So where are we now?

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We’re still in Chapter 11, but we expect to emerge sometime before the end of 2010. Terms are being worked out now, but I believe Tribune will be a stronger company with an appropriate level of debt for the revenue we generate, and wellpositioned for the future. We’re in the black and our financial performance has steadily improved throughout the year. This is true for other Tribune Co. media too. Advertising revenue is down considerably year over year, and it is still unclear when and how much it will rebound. Nevertheless, we’ve rebuilt ourselves to operate at this level, so when the recovery finally does arrive, it certainly will put wind in our sails. We’ve become more innovative and we take smart risks. This is a cultural change that has been driven by the top leadership of this company. I am very grateful especially for the leadership of our publisher, Tony Hunter. His unfailing optimism and entrepreneurial spirit have driven us forward. In the bleakest part of the recession, we launched our Trib-to-Go edition for newsstand sales, giving commuters a tabloid alternative to our home-delivered broadsheet edition. The Tribune is the only major American newspaper to publish simultaneously in both formats, and we’ve added single-copy buyers as a result. TribLocal, our hyper-local news network, expanded this year. It now serves 100 communities with 21 print editions and 87 Web sites. This year, we also expanded “The Mash,” our publication for high school students. We now serve 125 city schools and 25 suburban schools. In August, we launched ChicagoNow, a new blog network with more than 100 blogs. These are the voices of Chicago, discussing everything from sports to sex to commuting on the CTA. More new media are in the pipeline. ChicagoNow, like our other media—RedEye, Hoy, TribLocal and chicagotribune.com—are part of what we see as a portfolio strategy. We understand that we must reach different audiences by creating targeted products for them. If you are part of a distinct community, chances are you read a newspaper, magazine or visit a Web site tailored to you. You can see this in the success of RedEye, our free publication for young urban professionals, which has grown to 200,000 daily circulation in six years.

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So one size does not fit all, and the only way to gain mass is through multiple channels. And that’s what we are doing. Like nearly all major metro dailies, the print circulation for the Chicago Tribune is down, but we’re seeing some encouraging signs in readership. Recent studies show that people are spending more time with the paper and readership is up for nearly all of our sections. At the same time, chicagotribune.com is showing steady growth in attracting unique local visitors in response to our local news coverage and watchdog reporting. Our total audience—print and online combined—continues to grow, and we reach about 70 percent of the market through all of our media. The reach is more than 90 percent when you include our broadcast partners, WGN-TV and radio. Today, everyone at the Chicago Tribune knows the editorial mission. We are building again. After a year of very difficult change, we have the best up-and-coming news staff in America. I am incredibly proud of our people and what they’ve accomplished this year. You are going to see a lot more from them in the future. Like everyone else in the media world, we are going through a complex and trying transformation that will take time to sort out. We don’t have all of the answers yet. Certainly, there are daunting challenges ahead. But one thing is clear: We are here to stay.

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