Me and Demi...and Remembering Jim Batten

The estimable Michael Wolff skewers the billionaires who would be 21st Century newspaper moguls in the latest edition of Vanity Fair, its cover graced by Demi Moore. He well captures the banalities of our times. In the piece, Michael noted some of my research on historical newspaper trends and quoted me, "The principle of free speech owes at least as much to department stores as to the First Amendment."

It's worth providing some context to that remark, which I shared with Michael at a Chicago meeting. I use that quote often and attribute it in tribute to Jim Batten.  Jim served as CEO of Knight Ridder in its golden age, from 1988 to 1995, the year he died, way early in so many ways, of a brain tumor.

I don't remember the year I heard those words tumble out of Jim, though it was probably around 1990. It was in Miami at a Knight Ridder editors' meeting. I remember the small assemblage was shocked when they heard it. Our first reaction: Jim, a long-time editor before ascending into the corporate executive ranks, was making light of our papers' public interest reason for being.

On the contrary. He still understood and prized our public interest role as much as all of us. He had learned, though, that it wasn't the First Amendment that built large newsrooms of reporters and editors. Rather, it was the parallel growth of the American department store, and all those full-page and double-truck ads, then the great growth in classifieds and then the arrival of the lucrative preprint business.

His message: what seemed like a God-given connection, almost a right, to have lots of experienced reporters reporting the news, was in fact an accident of history. By 1995, Jim saw the outlines of how the world was changing, of how newspapers' readership was slipping, of how advertisers were finding new choices and of the potential disruption by electronic media. On the last point, Viewtron, nurtured on his watch and well described here by Howard Finberg, showed his pioneering vision in digital media.

Now we know, painfully, the prescience of his observation.

It's curious. I often find myself quoting Jim Batten, in my presentations, more than 10 years after his death. We all now understand the long odds faced by those trying to fund journalism. Those of us who were touched by Jim come back to those moments, the times when he unabashedly connected community and commerce and said that as newspeople we needed to master the connection anew -- if the trade we loved were to survive and prosper. I think I quote him often -- and many recall him often -- because it's a time when we need leaders like Jim Batten. We remember him in worthy awards, but I'm sure he'd say we're all the ones that need to provide the leadership to fund the craft through this time of troubles.

Yes, on leadership. Let me quote the late Bob McGruder, once the editor of the  Detroit Free Press, long one of Knight Ridder's most spiritied papers.Upon receiving the John S. Knight Gold Medal in 2002, Bob quoted Jim Batten on the notion of leadership:

By the way, when we talk about leadership, I use as my model a quote that I understand was a favorite of Jim's. It's by a Chinese philosopher who said: ''as for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next the people fear, and the next, people hate. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'we did it our selves.' ''

Comments

[Mark Batten]

I'm Jim Batten's oldest child, and it's gratifying to know that he is still on the minds of journalists. Thanks for this. One comment in particular leaped out at me, though -- the reference to his tenure as Knight Ridder's "golden age" -- because he didn't see it that way at all, at least not the way I remember it. He spoke often of the golden age, but it was about a time before newspapers had to bear the heavy (and ultimately crushing) weight of Wall Street demands, and before newspapers were forced to be as cognizant of the department stores as of government malfeasance. It's all in your perspective, I guess, and if he had lived to see the state of the industry today he might now describe the late 80's and early 90's in rosier terms.

[Liara Covert]

John C. Maxwell has rightfully said that, "a good leader encouages followers to tell him what he needs to know, not what he wants to hear." Whether it be journalism or any other industry, leaders are those people who anticipate, who are proactive, who act to be at the cutting edge, who evolve before and with the times, not after. The transition from focus on print to electonic media doesn't make print media obsolete. Print media leaders simply need to redefine innovation. A new way of thinking is needed. If we maintain obsolete values and beliefs, and self-centered spirit grounded in the past, we will continue to hold onto outdated goals and behaviors. Thinking globally requires new action.