RAINBOW LADDER
The top officers of the American Society of Newspaper Editors are all precedent-making. As each one fulfills her or his one-year term, they will ascend the leadership chain toward the presidency.
The new ASNE president, Diane H. McFarlin, on Friday succeeded Tim J. McGuire, editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
McFarlin is the third woman to serve as ASNE's top officer. The late Katherine W. Fanning and Sandra Mims Rowe, the editor of the Portland Oregonian, have been ASNE presidents. Fanning, who died in October 2000 of colon cancer at the age of 73, was the ASNE's first female president and was the editor of The Christian Science Monitor.
"You will note there is not a single middle-aged white man on this ladder," McGuire told the ASNE at its closing luncheon Friday.
The ASNE, made up of about 500 daily newspaper editors from the Americas, has traditionally been an organization of white, middle-aged men.
After McFarlin, publisher of the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, completes her term, she will be followed by Peter K. Bhatia, executive editor of The Portland Oregonian. Bhatia would become the ASNE's first Asian-American president.
Karla Garrett Harshaw, editor of the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun and a senior editor of Cox Community Newspapers, would become ASNE's first African-American female president.
Rick Rodriguez, executive editor of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, would become ASNE's first Latino president.
BAY AREA FISTICUFFS
The ASNE's annual conventions are generally very genteel gatherings. But at a Thursday session on the future of newspapers, during the question-and-answer period, the gloves came off, briefly.
Narda C. Zacchino, assistant executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, posed a below-the-belt question Thursday to Tony Ridder, CEO and chairman of Knight Ridder, corporate parent of the Chronicle's main rival, the San Jose Mercury News.
Zacchino told Ridder that she has encountered several top-level Knight Ridder staffers who apparently wish to leave the company. She noted that Knight Ridder, which has a long tradition of journalistic excellence and has garnered many Pulitzer Prizes, has historically been a magnet for journalism's top talent -- not a place they want to exit.
Knight Ridder, which enacted a 10 percent companywide cutback in staff last year, was challenged by high-ranking executives at its showcase papers -- including the Mercury News and the Philadelphia Inquirer -- over the company's adherence to double-digit profit margins.
Knight Ridder has 5,000 people in its newsrooms across the country, commanding a daily circulation of 3.8 million.
Ridder, in his presentation Thursday to the packed room of editors, had called 2001 a frustrating year because profits at the Mercury News had plunged 70 percent and ad revenue had dropped by 26 percent.
"So we felt we had to do something about it," Ridder said. "We were trying to stop the bleeding."
Ridder told Zacchino that he had been associated with the Mercury News for some 35 years, and for all that time, his experience was that "we continue to feed off the Chronicle" in attracting top editors and other staffers to the San Jose paper.
Phil Bronstein, the Chronicle's executive editor, was asked by United Press International about his reaction to the question posed by Zacchino, whom he had recruited from the Los Angeles Times.
"The role of a journalist is to be fearless about asking questions," Bronstein told UPI in an interview Friday.
STELLAR DIVERSITY
The San Jose Mercury News was praised Friday by the ASNE's convention newspaper, the ASNE Reporter, for the paper's trail-blazing approach to coverage of its multicultural community. The Silicon Valley is home to many ethnic groups, including substantial Asian and Latino populations.
David M. Yarnold, the Mercury News' executive editor, recently set up the Race and Demographics department. Two staffers in each section of the paper -- business, sports, features, copyediting and graphics -- will be dedicated to enhancing the paper's coverage of diversity.
"If we can't step up to a whole new level of diversity, what newspaper will?" Yarnold told the ASNE Reporter.
The Mercury News has been aggressive in building a diverse newsroom staff.
About 32 percent are minorities, Yarnold told UPI in an interview Friday. Seventeen percent are Asian-American. Those are exceptionally high figures for an American daily newspaper.
Yarnold said the paper's recruitment has been easy because staffers help bring in colleagues from other papers.
Carolyn Ayon Lee is UPI's chief media correspondent. You may contact her with story ideas and tips at [email protected]. Her column, imMEDIAte, will appear monthly.
