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Getting a Second Opinion
Posted by James Hill on Friday, March 12, 2010
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Kathleen Parker hit it right on the head when she recently wrote that the health care reform debate has been healthy for the nation. So too did Michael Gerson when he argued that the issue had seriously damaged Barack Obama's presidency. And so too did Richard Cohen when he noted that despite widespread opposition, Obama had an obligation as a leader to insist the measure be "rammed" through Congress.
In fact, it's difficult to say who hasn't been hitting it on the head once health care reform was put under microscopic examination. Since Obama assumed office, 16 columnists in our shop have offered their prognosis on the moral issue, the financial issue, the policy issue and, of course, the political issue of health care reform. If a great op-ed page is an ideological stew, they've certainly spiced it with any number of intriguing ingredients. (In addition to Parker, Gerson and Cohen, they are: David S. Broder, Marie Cocco, E.J. Dionne Jr., Ellen Goodman, Jim Hoagland, David Ignatius, Charles Krauthammer, Ruth Marcus, Ruben Navarrette Jr., Eugene Robinson, Robert J. Samuelson, Edward Schumacher-Matos and George F. Will.)
That's a lot of intellectual firepower, and it's a testament to how important this debate has become to the American public. Remember, this all began as an assumed done deal. Democrats controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. To argue against the bill was to whistle in the wind.
Whistle they did. Conservative writers such as Gerson, Krauthammer and Will largely built an opposition case that the costs and procedures to implement the bill would far outweigh the benefits of such a radical restructuring of the nation's medical delivery system. Centrists crunched the numbers -- Broder counting votes, Samuelson the fiscal tab.
Liberals didn't hold their fire, either. Dionne was particularly active in advancing the issue and anticipating the legislative zigs and zags. Cohen, Marcus and Robinson countered opposition arguments with appeals to the heart and to the purse-strings.
Then in January, lightning struck. Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts special election to fill the late Edward Kennedy's Senate seat changed the calculus (the Democratic filibuster-proof margin was gone) and the political outlook. Obama, who seemingly had walked on the Potomac to get to his inauguration, was now sinking into a quagmire of his own choosing, and threatening to pull his congressional majority down with him.
This is the conventional view for now, anyway. Yet maybe the wrong one. Given that there are other ways to get a bill through the Senate (reconciliation), health care appears headed for a showdown vote by March 21. So it could get passed despite Brown's victory, and as the terms of the legislation begin to be implemented, all could be forgiven. Or else Democrats could have hell to play.
That's getting ahead of the story. What we need to keep in mind is that health care has the shelf life it does mainly because it is a question vital to the lives of every American. And so it is vital that voters consider the implications -- thoroughly and vigorously.
There is absolutely no other way to do this than through an independent press that allows for second, third, even 16 opinions.
In an article posted on washingtonpost.com, Howell Raines, the former executive editor of The New York Times, argues that there is something wrong with the media in this national discussion. "Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators," he writes, "(Fox News chief Roger) Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. ... This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: 'The American people do not want health-care reform.'"
Well, perhaps. But my guess is that serious people do not trouble themselves much with Fox News or MSNBC or other cable news outlets for that matter. What serious people want, have always wanted, is a richness and diversity of opinion to help them make up their minds on the important issues affecting their lives. The news media, newspapers in particular, may be having problems. But engaging the nation in a great debate is not one of them. We've hit it right on the head. And it's been one of our finest hours.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
For Inmates, Time for Tough Love
Posted by James Hill on Monday, March 8, 2010
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When it comes to advice on money matters, Michelle Singletary is never at a loss for words. Her Color of Money personal finance column is aimed at readers who need tips on how to get by financially, and she dishes them out with a combination of empathy, sympathy and tough love.
Want her take on credit cards? Cut 'em up. Opening an account at a department store to receive an added discount on a sale item? Don't even think of it. Securing a loan on your anticipated tax refund? Crazy.
Along the way, she'll tell you what to do when you think you just have to have a new car (buy one used), or a new wardrobe (you're throwing money away on designer labels), or when your kids want everything they've seen advertised on television (turn off the TV). When the holidays approach, she'll even tell you how to cut down on expenses through regifting.
A few years back, Michelle took on a new project called the Color of Money Challenge, in which she would work with people who had financial issues and then file quarterly reports on their progress. One year it was couples trying to get a handle on their debts. Another year, military families. Last year featured people trying to stay on their feet while unemployed.
This year, Singletary has really put the "challenge" into her Color of Money Challenge, the first installment of which appeared in The Washington Post and other newspapers on Sunday. She introduces two women who are going to need loads of help, a lot of determination and a little bit of luck if they are to avoid returning to the place where Singletary first met them, the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women.
Interestingly, this project did not begin as a journalistic endeavor. Singletary took it on as part of the volunteer outreach effort of a financial mentoring program she directs at the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, Md.
"In partnership with several other organizations ... we visit inmates to review their credit reports and conduct workshops to teach them how to better manage their money or resolve any tax issues they may have," she writes.
How it became a journalist endeavor is that Singletary mentioned it to me one day while we were in the process of doing the final editing on one of her columns. I thought it would make a wonderful story. So did two editors with The Post's Business section, Kelly Johnson and Mike Shepard.
Then the work began. Not only did Singletary have to secure agreement from the women to work with them, she's had to negotiate with prison and parole authorities and, for now, conduct all of her interviews inside the prison fences. Follow-up fact-checking has not been as simple as picking up the phone and asking a question or two; more often it has involved comparing the women's stories against the court records and other official documents.
Once they are paroled, the task will be just as daunting because, in addition to securing jobs and trying to become independent, the women -- one has been convicted several times on drug-related charges; the other for embezzlement -- will be under the watch of probation officers. So Singletary, in addition to helping them sort out their finances, will also be trying to help them sort out their lives.
It's in Singletary's DNA. Tough love, indeed.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
Posted by James Hill on Monday, Feb. 22, 2010
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Even in these most partisan of times, some truths speak louder than others. Consider: the nation's most respected conservative columnist calculates the odds of a populist candidate winning the presidency, and puts them at close to zilch. An equally respected liberal columnist says Republicans are winning an argument they should be losing, and if Democrats don't wake up soon, they'll be the ones who are toast. And one of conservatism's rising stars, examining the tea party movement, cautions about the "Gnostic insights that pit the children of light against the children of darkness."
So much for preaching to the choir. Telling the faithful what they don't want to hear is one of the most necessary functions of a commentator; perhaps the most important. It separates the wheat from the chaff.
These days, there's a lot of chaff out there. For wheat, go back to George F. Will on populism, specifically as it applies to Sarah Palin's chances of winning the presidency in 2012. Will does not tear Palin down.
"She is what she is, and what she is merits no disdain," he writes. "She is feisty and public-spirited, and millions of people vibrate like tuning forks to her rhetoric. When she was suddenly forced to take a walk on the highest wire in America's political circus, she showed grit.
"She also showed that grit is no substitute for seasoning. She has been subjected to such irrational vituperation -- loathing largely born of snobbery -- that she can be forgiven for seeking the balm of adulation from friendly audiences."
But, as Will had noted earlier: "The more attention Palin receives, the fewer Americans consider her presidential timber."
Speaking of timber, most Americans at this time last year thought Barack Obama was being elevated to Mount Rushmore status even as his administration was only settling in. How things can change, writes E.J. Dionne Jr.: "At this moment, President Obama is losing, Democrats are losing and liberals are losing."
He suspects they fell for a trap: "While liberals were arguing about public plans and this or that, and while Obama was deep into inside dealmaking, the conservatives relentlessly made a straightforward public case based on a syllogism: The economy is a mess. Obama and the Democrats are for big government. Big government is responsible for the mess. Therefore the mess is the fault of Obama and the Big Government Democrats."
Dionne's hard truth: "Moderate and progressive Democrats alike have eight months before this fall's elections to change the terms of the debate and prove they can govern. Otherwise, they'll be washed out by a tidal wave."
Or possibly not, unless the tea party movement washes some of its cups and saucers. Noting first the "predisposition of some on the left to dismiss many of their fellow citizens as dangerous rubes," Michael Gerson also acknowledges that indeed, such rubes do exist, and their theories -- especially conspiracy theories -- can do a movement real damage.
"Eventually, these theories require repudiation or else they can taint a political movement -- like a little red dye turns a container of water pink," Gerson writes. "This is precisely what William F. Buckley did in the 1950s and '60s, repudiating (Ayn) Rand and Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, thereby creating a legitimate conservatism that could elect candidates such as Ronald Reagan."
What these remarkable columns by Will, Dionne and Gerson achieve is to hoist red flags, warning us to not get so caught up in the emotion of the moment. There's been much of this, especially since a Republican captured a Senate seat in Massachusetts and the Democrats lost their super-majority in the Senate. It is correct, as Dionne notes, that Democrats are now at a dangerous precipice. But as Will and Gerson both point out, one election rarely makes an epoch. And American history is littered with movements that burned brightly, only to fizzle.
Hard truth: Beware the chaff.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Read All About It
Posted by James Hill on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010
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I recently joined the more than 6,000 people who have become members of the Facebook group "People Who Like to Read the Newspaper on Paper." It's a delightful bit of anarchy, conceived under this premise: "We need to band together to help save our newspapers -- perhaps convince these owners that there are other options than shutting down."
And then a couple of days later, my paper didn't arrive. Not that I was really expecting it. My driveway and the street were, like everything else, buried under about a foot of snow, with another foot expected to fall over the next 24 hours.
Still, drats. No paper. I grabbed my coffee cup and headed up to the library to log on to the computer. I scanned the headlines on washingtonpost.com, opened a couple of stories to read about the blizzard, then decided to check e-mail. I took notice of one that notified "The Washington Post for Feb. 6 has just been released." This e-mail has been showing up daily for about two years, but I usually ignore it because it is a PDF file of the daily paper, something I've already read.
On this morning, I opened it. And once I figured out what password would work, I went exploring. Page One first. Then the op-ed page. And then the editorial page, followed by the extra page of letters that is a Saturday regular. On to the Metro front page, then to Sports.
Reading a newspaper on PDF isn't the easiest task. For one, you have to highlight a story in order to expand it to the point where you can actually see the type. But it's nevertheless a way to get the benefit of reading a paper on paper -- that serendipity feeling of finding something you least expected. And so I started going through the Post page by page, making note of things I wanted to read. Then I would click back to washingtonpost.com in order to read the stories in a clearer HTML format. Hassle? You bet. But newspaper junkies are known to do just about anything for their fix. I had found mine.
The next day dawned brilliantly clear, there was the encouraging sign of some overnight street plowing, and still no paper on the driveway. I again turned to the e-edition, repeating the routine I had begun on Saturday. But instead of going back to washingtonpost.com to read the stories, I decided to test the plowed streets and drive to the convenience store, where I bought two copies -- one for my household and another for our equally news-junkie neighbor who also happens to own a snow blower.
The paper newspaper finally consumed, I grabbed the snow shovel and went out front to start clearing the walkway. Something was on the driveway, in a plastic wrapper. The newspaper had been delivered -- late, by a few hours, but Sunday seemed normal again.
Now there are a couple of morals here. One, of course, is the tremendous extra effort employees of a newspaper will put into getting the product into the hands of readers. Not just the reporters and editors -- who, by the way, did a fantastic job of thoroughly covering every aspect of what is being called Snowmeggedon -- but literally everyone involved in production and distribution. Carriers were kept off the streets until it was safe to get through, and once it was, they were making their rounds. (On washingtonpost.com, an e-mail address was displayed where readers could report non-deliveries.)
But more importantly, I think, is how newspaper managers are using technology to beat the problems that always plague delivery during weather incidents or other calamities. While I can't see myself ever reading a PDF version of the paper everyday, I could see the benefit if I wanted to read the Post but I was out of town.
In Detroit, where deteriorating economic conditions forced The News and the Free Press to cut back home delivery to just four days a week, the e-editions of both papers have become big hits with readers, who find them preferable to the Web sites. And in New Orleans, the Times-Picayune turned to an e-edition the entire time it was flooded out of its building following Hurricane Katrina. Thus it was able to maintain its link to its city, providing vital information at a time when New Orleans residents -- and those who worried about them -- needed it the most.
That's what papers do, and why people like to read them. I just like mine preferably on paper, and I'm aware of at least 6,000 others on record as saying they do too.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Pulling a Fast One at Light Speed
Posted by James Hill on Friday, Jan. 29, 2010
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"Ellie Light" isn't exactly a household name, but for those journalists who edit letters to editor, it is now -- particularly those with egg of their faces.
Late on the evening of Jan. 6 (11:36 Eastern, according to the copy I received), Ms. Light dropped a letter into e-mail inboxes around the nation defending President Obama for what he had tried to accomplish during his first year in office and rejecting criticism that his administration had not lived up to its campaign promises. It was typical boilerplate, and looked as though it could have been submitted by some junior staffer in the White House press office.
Editors get this type of correspondence all the time -- and usually assign it to its proper place: File 13.
Yet last week, a Washington-based reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who had also received the e-mail, noticed something odd: Ms. Light's letter had been carried by newspapers nationwide. And although the content was virtually the same, the address for Ms. Light was within the circulation area of each paper running the letter. The reporter, Sabrina Eaton, became curious. After her story was posted, the Drudge Report picked it up -- and it went viral. (It also became the most viewed item ever on cleveland.com, the Plain Dealer's Web site.)
You can imagine the reaction of some critics: More evidence the media are in the tank for Obama.
Not so fast. Even though an army of bloggers has turned up other Ellie Light sightings, the fact the letter ever saw the light of day probably says more about staffing problems at many newspapers these days, particularly smaller ones, than it does for following any ideological agenda. As for damage done, the letter's publication is the equivalent of a burr in your saddle.
But letters to the editor are one of the most popular features of any newspaper, read both for their entertainment value and to gauge the public mood. Readers have every expectation, even if they agree with the contents of a letter, to not feel taken by someone trying to pull a fast one.
And in Ellie Light's case, boy, were they taken. For starters, Ellie is really Winston T. Steward, a health care worker in Frazier Park, Calif. (So much for the conspiracy theory that this was the work of the White House.) So Steward wasn't who he pretended to be -- a no-no by all journalistic standards. And he didn't live where he claimed to reside (Mansfield, Ohio, Myrtle Beach, S.C., Staunton, Va., among others) in all of the letters Eaton found published. Someone should have smelled a rat.
And many did, which is the subject of our upcoming edition of Editorial Roundtable. In fact, the National Conference of Editorial Writers routinely alerts members about suspicious letters (called AstroTurf, because they're not real). But you would not have needed an alert to figure this one out. The one I received had no address or phone number attached to it: Rule One that it's likely a plant.
Rule Two is to verify the author's existence. My assumption is that if the editors who published the letter actually replied and asked for an address, "Ms. Light" would know what newspaper was doing the asking and send back an e-mail saying she lived either in the city of record or a nearby suburb. (My other assumption, gulp, is that no verification was attempted.).
Rule Three: When in doubt, throw it out.
As our Roundtable will show, letters editors are usually overwhelmed with choices of what and what not to print. There are nuances, of course. And in one instance, you'll discover, you could make the case for printing the letter (come back and read the Roundtable and you'll see which one).
Nuance only goes so far, however. Better for journalists to live by the dictum: be skeptical.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Deborah Howell, 1941-2010
Posted by Alan Shearer on Monday, Jan. 4, 2010
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At Deborah Howell's farewell lunch at The Washington Post a year ago, I told the gathering that in 19 years at the paper, Deborah was the only person ever to flip me the bird. Not that I hadn't deserved the honor in the past, but she was the only one to go through with it.
Deborah was like that -- forceful, blunt and at times profane, terms that have appeared in every obit and remembrance I have read about her. I would add "passionate" -- in her love of journalism for its pursuit of the truth. And her passion was often quite audible, even three doors away.
Deborah would storm in my office with a reader comment about one of our columns. Sometimes it resulted in a correction or clarification; other times we, shall we say, politely disagreed. When she was right, she demanded action, immediately. And got it.
She also at times saved me from my sorry self, pointing out when my remarks intended for publication in her column were a tad intemperate. Lesson: If you ever catch yourself saying, "You can quote me on that," it might be time to rethink. Deborah covered all the bases, as a great journalist does.
I last heard from Deborah about two months ago, informing me in forceful terms that she was having trouble getting a response from a columnist needed for a speaking gig. She demanded action, and got it.
Her death robs us of a passionate keeper of the journalistic flame, someone who always stood for getting it right, and getting it fast.
And what did I do to deserve the finger? She was a week away from the end of her contract as the Post's ombudsman and was hassling me about a clarification we disagreed on. I said, "Aren't you leaving this place soon?" Comeuppance was mine.
Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Farewell, Good Friends
Posted by Alan Shearer and James Hill on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009
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As the year ends, we say farewell to two good friends whose words graced opinion pages for decades.
Ellen Goodman
Ellen Goodman has written her final column. We may see her appear from time to time with special writing projects, but the relentless syndication deadlines are over.
I met Ellen in 1990, long after she became a column-writing superstar. I was a finalist for my current job at The Washington Post and, after interviews with Don Graham, Bo Jones, Ben Bradlee and Len Downie, I became the leading candidate. Just one more round of interviews in December of that year -- with George Will, Dave Broder and Ellen Goodman. I flew from New York to Washington to meet Will and Broder, then to Boston for breakfast with Ellen.
All three put me at ease and made me feel welcome. Ellen was as gracious and charming as her columns demonstrate, and she displayed a down-to-earth humility that I have always recognized among the best journalists. It's partly what she once described as the "fear of getting something wrong." I knew exactly what she meant. All true journalists write with the fear of Eternal Damnation at their shoulders.
After my hiring was announced, I attended a reception at Katharine Graham's New York apartment for Bill Dickinson, whom I would succeed at The Writers Group in a couple of months. There I met Ellen's daughter Katie, who said something about her mother I've never forgotten: "She's a good listener."
Ellen Goodman became one of the premiere columnists of her generation, and probably its greatest pioneer, by listening -- by always keeping her ear tuned to the latest social and political trends. And with her conversational style, and musings on subjects such as gardening, family milestones and changes all around her, she touched people in a personal way. Hard to believe now, but most of the topics Ellen wrote about for the last 43 years had rarely appeared on pages that made up a nearly exclusive men's club. When White House Chief of Staff Don Regan started talking in 1985 about women not understanding "throw-weights" and such, the men's club was still in full voice.
Ellen broke through this hidebound tradition and, along with others of her generation, hacked a trail that led to opportunities for women everywhere. That younger generations can take this for granted is a tribute and a testament to the growth of equality for women. Ellen once recalled covering the 1984 Democratic convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. She and the other female reporters went out to dinner -- and sat at one table. Compare this with the opportunities for women today -- just 25 years later. Sure, it's a work in progress, but it is progress nonetheless.
One of the great stories of the late 20th century has been the emerging opportunities for women. Ellen was there to cover it all. Her columnist voice will no longer be heard, but her friendship will endure.
Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Jim Hoagland
Another friend is leaving The Writers Group as the new year rings in: Jim Hoagland. Dictators, despots, and destructive officials the world over will no doubt rejoice. Readers who have followed his column for years -- in The Washington Post and newspapers throughout America and abroad -- will no doubt suffer withdrawal. I certainly will.
At least until his book comes out. In a note to client newspapers last week, Jim explained that he is taking leave of the column "to write a book and pursue other writing projects for an indefinite period." Some of those writing projects will show up in the Post.
As for the book, I'm confident it will be Jim Hoagland at his best. Over the course of his remarkable and distinguished career as foreign correspondent, foreign editor and columnist, he gathered material that could fill several volumes. (The late Katharine Graham, in her autobiography "Personal History," tells of Jim and the late Meg Greenfield, then the Post's editorial page editor, escorting her on trips to meet world leaders -- an assignment any reporter would jump at, but only the savviest could pull off.) Curious, persistent, dare I say fearless, he could track down a story from any corner of the globe and then put it into words that flowed with clarity.
While others could only wonder at the Berlin Wall falling and the Soviet empire crumbling, Jim could tell you why. His column, begun from Europe in 1986, immediately became go-to reading for journalists, policymakers, diplomats and officeholders in Washington and around the world. In 1991, he was awarded his second Pulitzer Prize, this time for commentary.
Although I had purchased his column while serving as editorial page editor for another newspaper and had long admired his work, our paths never crossed until I joined The Writers Group in 2000. To me, it might as well have been a reunion.
Over the years, we have discussed just about every subject imaginable, celebrated successes and consoled each other over matters big and small. But the relationship between editor and reporter (or columnist, in this case) usually bonds because of professional respect. And with Jim, I have the utmost.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I called him to ask him what he could get, and when. His column -- a masterpiece -- ran in the extra edition the Post published that afternoon. From that terrible day on, Jim has "owned" the story of 9/11 and its aftermath, which, we are continually reminded, has yet to play itself out.
And that's what I think we'll all miss about the end of Jim's column. He has been such an essential gatherer of information throughout his career -- information you can get only by going to far away places, asking probing questions, verifying with multiple sources. You just know that there is so much more he needs to tell us.
There's a saying that journalists shouldn't have friends, and certainly not heroes. When it comes to Jim Hoagland, I strongly disagree.
Long before he became my friend, he was my hero. And he'll always be.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Happy Holidays from the Writers Group
Posted by James Hill on Monday, Dec. 15, 2009
Into the Storm
Posted by James Hill on Monday, Dec. 7, 2009
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Perhaps only in America could an event billed as the most important foreign policy and national security decision of a young president's still-maturing administration compete with a Tiger who suddenly proved himself all too human and a couple from Virginia's horsy set who made jackasses out of the Secret Service and, subsequently, themselves.
Yet such was the news climate as Barack Obama, standing before the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, committed 30,000 more Americans to a war in Afghanistan that we once assumed was all but over -- in 2002.
My hunch is that in mid-2011, the point at which President Obama hopes to start bringing U.S. forces home, Tiger Woods will still be one helluva golfer and that the White House state dinner gate crashers (what were their names?) will be lucky to be a trivia question. But our holiday from reality, reflected in celebrity gossip masquerading as news, probably came to an end the other evening at West Point. Afghanistan will likely dominate our national discourse in the weeks and months to come, and a presidency will once again ride on the outcome of a war.
Such is the feeling approaching one week since the president's speech, particularly on the nation's opinion pages. Any time a president puts Americans in harm's way, the commentators notice, but even these events once could be met with great skepticism -- think of Bill Clinton's dispatch of forces to Haiti, or earlier, Ronald Reagan's "liberation" of Grenada.
Not since 9/11, however. Simply put, we no longer have the luxury of debating "Wag the Dog" scenarios. Obama's call was in and of itself a major marker in our continuing battle against terrorist agents waging war in the name of Islamic fundamentalism -- and because he has further assured us that the nation will expend even more blood and treasure in this fight, it is, correctly, being examined for all the significance it implies.
On the day of his speech, the president invited a select group of columnists, including The Washington Post's David Ignatius, to the White House for a lunch/briefing. Ignatius, who has spent a considerable amount of time lately in Afghanistan and Pakistan (see this
Groupblog post of Nov. 16), in turn gave readers a thorough briefing of the thinking behind the president's decision.
Not lost on either the columnist or the president was the political peril of the situation. "Politically, it's an Afghanistan strategy with something to make everyone unhappy," Ignatius wrote. "Democrats will be angry that the president is escalating a costly war at a time when the struggling economy should be his top priority. Republicans will protest that by setting a short, 18-month deadline to begin withdrawing those forces, he's signaling to the Taliban that they can win if they just are patient.
'Obama insisted ... that 'given the circumstances, this is the best option available to us.' At another point, he conceded: 'None of this is easy. I mean, we are choosing from a menu of options that are less than ideal.'"
Perhaps so, but as Michael Gerson noted, it was the right call. "In contrast to the expectation that he would settle on a timid half-measure, Obama took more of a seven-eighths measure, leaving his commanders impressed and satisfied," wrote the columnist, whose conservative bona fides include a stint as a speech writer for President George W. Bush. "In contrast to former Vice President Richard Cheney's charge that Obama is making national security decisions for 'small "p" political reasons,' the president opposed his political base. There is no credible explanation for these actions except a commitment to the national interest. It is time to rally around the president."
David S. Broder, however, wondered if Obama was walking into political quicksand. "It is now as certain as anything can be in politics that 2010 will be a painful year for Democrats -- a year of high unemployment, staggering deficits and a growing list of casualties from an unresolved war," Broder began his column assessing the president's speech.
And, he cautioned, "Setting 2011 as the targeted turnaround time for American forces in Afghanistan may make it a bit less painful for dovish Democrats to accept what Obama has done. But it leaves (Gen. Stanley) McChrystal and his troops almost no margin for error. It will be mid-2010 before the last of the 30,000 new troops are in the country, and longer than that before the buildup and training of Afghan forces can be accomplished."
E.J. Dionne Jr. thinks the president is pursuing a Goldilocks strategy -- "neither too hawkish nor too dovish, but just right." It was too hawkish for Eugene Robinson, however: "It never made sense to think of the fight against terrorism as a 'war' because it's not possible to defeat a technique or an idea by force of arms. George W. Bush chose a path toward a more or less permanent state of costly, deadly, low-level war. Barack Obama should have taken a different course."
And Charles Krauthammer stood the Goldilocks analogy on its head: "Obama's surge speech wasn't that of a commander in chief but of a politician, perfectly splitting the difference. Two messages for two audiences. Placate the right -- you get the troops; placate the left -- we are on our way out."
Jim Hoagland put the speech in the context of why we are in Afghanistan in the first place, and the fact that for some Americans, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are fading in memory.
He wrote: "In his speech, the president recognized the challenge presented to his policies by the passage of time:
"'It's easy to forget that when this war began, we were united -- bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack. ... I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again.'
"But his speech did not immediately have that unifying effect. Most members of Congress quickly found points on which to disagree and, while not attacking Obama, take self-protective distance from the president's surge. Politically, Obama got away with selling a new strategy that deserves to be tried -- for a while."
The last words I have saved for George F. Will, who set off a firestorm in September with his call for the U.S. to end its Afghanistan mission. Ponder them: "The president's party will not support his new policy, his budget will not accommodate it, our overstretched and worn down military will be hard-pressed to execute it, and Americans' patience will not be commensurate with Afghanistan's limitless demands for it."
Will's assessment: "This will not end well."
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
No Gray to This Issue
Posted by James Hill on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009
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When giving talks on op-ed writing, I like to emphasize that an op-ed page, done right, is where serious readers go to find something serious to read.
Serious readers had their choice of a wide range of serious issues this past week, from Afghanistan to health care reform to proposed guidelines on mammograms. But no issue quite called out for distinguished commentary as the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to hold trials for the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and four of his al-Qaeda associates, in New York, not far from Ground Zero, the site of the most carnage and destruction of that horrible September 2001 day.
To which Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer and Eugene Robinson, certainly filled the void. Writing at midweek, Gerson unloaded on Holder, branding him "the most destructive member of Obama's Cabinet." Yet this was not a column of name-calling. Rather Gerson, who served in the George W. Bush White House as one of the president's main speechwriters, offered up a bill of particulars challenging both the Holder decision and the logic the attorney general presented to defend his action.
"Something unique and frightening is taking place," Gerson wrote. "The ACLU is effectively being put in charge of the war on terrorism."
Krauthammer's and Robinson's columns were released for the same publication date, allowing editors to present a pro-con (or maybe con-pro) debate that asked questions both about our security and our standing as a nation under the rule of law.
From Krauthammer: "Everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning."
Robinson: "We can and should go after Osama bin Laden and his collaborators with relentless determination and, yes, that fight should be led by our armed forces. But to achieve a meaningful victory, we also have to win the war of ideas -- and in that philosophical and theological struggle, the concept of justice is a key battlefield."
The columns are as different as night and day, but both Krauthammer and Robinson, as did Gerson, have given us reasons to personally think through our own assumptions and ask if there aren't other factors we should be weighing. And this is what serious opinion journalism does for serious readers. It's an essential part of a vibrant democracy, more proof, if you need it, of the Founders' genius in crafting the First Amendment.
Blessed Event
Richard AIdacushion, our manager/editorial production (in other words, the guy who makes everything click) is taking a couple of weeks off to help wife Amena as they welcome Nadia Nasrin and Noah Richard into their world.
Mother and children are doing fine, Richard reports. And, as you will see from the photos below, the twins are adorable.
Congratulations to all.
 
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Bringing the War Home
Posted by James Hill on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009
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You'd think that with all the traveling he's been doing lately, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius would be the king of the frequent fliers. Except when you're flying on a C-17 military transport, you don't get a reward for all the miles eclipsed. You're lucky if you just get a good place to sit.
Ignatius addressed his recent travels in a Veterans Day column praising the men and women who, as the headline stated, stand "tall in harm's way":
"I had the pleasure of living in the military family when I traveled for 2 1/2 weeks recently with U.S. Central Command. What I heard, listening into the military's unscripted conversations, were the wisecracks and dark humor of soldiers trying to make the best of a hard situation. But there was also the satisfaction of fighting these tough and sometimes thankless wars: The troops don't boast about it, but they are very proud of what they have managed to accomplish.
"For a journalist, traveling with the military is a bracing antidote to privilege. It's about dorm rooms and bunk beds, and roommates who snore. It's about chow halls that serve so much food it makes your eyes pop every morning."
But it's also the only way to get up close and personal, to add the reporting and depth that helps construct the analysis in an opinion column. And on the subject Ignatius was covering on his most recent travels -- the war in Afghanistan -- being with the military in theater was his only logical way to arrive at an answer to the question that has bedeviled Washington for months now: troop surge or withdrawal?
Many reporters and columnists find their way to Kabul, the Afghan capital. But for a variety of reasons, security being paramount, few make it to the front lines of this war unless embedded with U.S. or NATO forces. As Ignatius opened his Oct. 30 column:
 "Here's what you would see if you traveled this week to Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the two big battlegrounds of the Afghanistan war: a conflict that is balanced tenuously between success and failure. The United States has deployed enough troops to disrupt the Taliban insurgency and draw increasing fire, but not enough to secure the major population centers. That's not a viable position."
From his column, it is obvious early on that Ignatius thinks the viable position is more troops. What struck me most about the column, as with several others he filed from both Afghanistan and Pakistan, is that readers were getting a more "real time" experience than they would from following the political debate that the Afghan conflict has become in Washington.
Don't get me wrong. That debate is crucial, particularly for national security but also for our national will eight years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many of Ignatius' Post colleagues -- Richard Cohen, Michael Gerson, Eugene Robinson, Jim Hoagland and David S. Broder -- have written recently on the subject. All offered compelling arguments for one course or the other.
And while the eventual course that the Obama administration chooses will be decided in Washington, it's necessary that we also know the conditions on the ground. Does troop moral remain high? Do the Afghans want us there? What equipment and support are needed to get the job done?
No one can have all the answers. Yet in his foray into Kandahar and Helmand, Ignatius offered us a glimpse of the task ahead.
Along with the political reality. "The goal isn't to transform Afghanistan into a 21st-century showplace but to buy enough time for the country's army and government to fight their own battles," he concludes his column from the front lines. "A year from now, that may seem like an impossible mission, but the evidence from Kandahar and Helmand this week suggests that it would be a mistake not to try."
Keep this in mind as the debate rolls on.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
In the Eyes of the Beholder
Posted by James Hill on Friday, Nov. 6, 2009
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I was a bit underwhelmed when my favorite morning newspaper arrived on my driveway a couple of weeks ago -- with a new set of clothes. Dressed up it might be, but the redesign of The Washington Post looked at first glance a little hand-me-down, borrowed duds from all over the newspaper world.
This is not an unusual reaction, by the way, when a newspaper commits to a redesign. In fact, it seems that almost everyone but the redesign team hates the new product. What have they done with my paper?
Glad you asked. For one, the body type is a bit different. Many readers called in to complain it is smaller; actually, it is (microscopically) larger. Headlines now read like complete sentences; only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized. Bylines are boldfaced (a disappointment, I still like the old style better) and news and sports columns now carry images of the writers. Throw in some other bells and whistles, and you've got the essential package.
Except my favorite part of my favorite paper -- the editorial and opinion pages. Here, the changes are eye-catchingly bold.
 
The editorials themselves no longer run in a stack down the left side of the editorial page, but instead occupy three columns of the page, and wrap around the Tom Toles cartoon. Letters to the editor get a spot down the right hand side of the page and it seems, at least, that there are more of them. A mini-essay called Local Opinions runs on the bottom third of the page below the editorials, and the masthead is also at the bottom, in the center of the page.
The op-ed page does not look quite so dramatically changed, but there are big differences, primarily in column count. Whereas the page before the redesign could accommodate five full columns, it now runs only four. An excerpt taken from the Post Partisan blog, a regular online feature, rounds out the new-look page.
Both pages achieve what you should want your institutional voice to accomplish: speak with authority, present your views in a serious manner, inform and enlighten. I have seen many other newspapers attempt to redesign their editorial pages and the result was a disaster. Not so The Post, it's a triumph.
 And a bonus for readers. Because one full column (or article) lost each day adds up over a week, The Post now features a second op-ed page every Friday called Washington Forum, with policy-based essays. So, including the second op-ed page that has been part of the Sunday package since earlier this year, that's nine opinion pages over seven days. And that's a pretty good deal for an opinion junkie like me.
Redesigns eventually grow on you, and that's the point. I've already gotten over my initial reaction; my guess is that many readers have too. The trick is to accomplish the redesign without sacrificing quality, and The Post has certainly done this. And each day when I turn to the editorial and opinion pages, I still tell myself: Wow.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Farewell, Marie Cocco
Posted by James Hill on Oct. 12, 2009
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This week columnist Marie Cocco is leaving The Writers Group.
Her departure -- she is ending her column -- is, quite frankly, a sad event for all of us. Since she joined The Writers Group in 2002, Cocco has been an always reliable, sometimes controversial writer who really did feel it was her mission in journalism to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Her column of mid-May 2008 (published in The Washington Post on May 15), "Misogyny I Won't Miss," about the treatment in the media of Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries, went viral on the Internet, and landed her, along with the Post's Ruth Marcus, an appearance on PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."
Yet it was the columns that dealt with policy as it affected America's working class where Cocco's star glittered so brightly. Social Security privatization, the continuing health problems suffered by emergency workers and others who experienced the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks at Ground Zero, the present debate on health care reform, and a host of other issues were all part of the rich plate of commentary she served up twice each week with clockwork devotion to deadlines, crisp writing that required only a soft touch from her editors, and an easygoing manner that made her a joy to work with.
I asked Marie how she came to this business. Sort of like most of us, she said. The business came to her. "My parents read The Boston Globe and The Malden (Mass.) Evening News every day, and my father read both newsmagazines every week, so there were always newspapers and magazines in my house," she said. "I was editor of my class newspaper in sixth grade."
From that point on, did she always want to be a journalist? "I wavered from time to time," she said. "But then the job that I got out of grad school (at the Daily Register of Monmouth County, N.J.), I got hooked. I couldn't believe you could have a job that was so much fun."
Even if, she noted, the pay qualified her to live in Section 8 housing.
Cocco worked her way through Tufts University (six days a week her freshman year), and took out a loan to attend the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism ("paid it back"). Her rise to the professional big time came in 1980 when she was hired by Newsday, the high-quality tabloid serving Long Island that was then owned by the Times-Mirror Corporation. In 1986, she joined Newsday's Washington bureau, and it was Cocco's columns following 9/11 that her Newsday editor, Noel Rubinton, sent to Writers Group editorial director Alan Shearer.
Cocco was always more reporter than pundit, and her columns were meticulously researched and built on facts. Her political leanings were toward the left and she pulled no punches. Ambiguity was not in her playbook; readers were never left to wonder what she really thought about an issue.
Marie has now accepted a job as national communications director for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and there's not a better person for that position.
But I can't help but thinking that journalism is losing one of its true troopers -- someone who carried on the good fight because she always put the interests of her readers before the self-promotion that would have made her a more recognizable name amid the Beltway chattering class. That just wasn't Marie Cocco.
Godspeed.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
The Future Is Now
Posted by James Hill on September 18, 2009
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I borrow the cliche uttered early and often by the late George Allen when he was coach of the Washington Redskins because, well, because for daily newspapers, it's true.
The future indeed is now. In days not so long ago, it was at least 24 hours away; when you got one day's paper out, you started working on the next one. No longer. Through their Web sites, today's newspapers can be as immediate as the news that is breaking. And readers have come to expect thorough coverage every time they log on, with updates as a story develops. The same for opinion columns. When we send one out marked for immediate release, this means it can be posted on the Web the minute it is received.
I've been thinking about this compressed cycle quite a bit since I was invited to appear on a panel that, next week, will discuss the future of newspaper syndicates. The panel, at the annual convention of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, will be moderated by Richard Burr, the opinion editor of The Detroit News. He put it together as part of the decision by the Association of Opinion Editors to meet jointly with the editorial writers.
It's a good time to look forward, for journalism today is facing challenges that most of us who were in this business 20 to 30 years ago could not imagine we'd ever see -- the Internet, for sure, but also a 24-hour cable TV news cycle that can magnify minor incidents into major issues in a matter of minutes; an obsession with hand-held electronic devices that has transformed my city during the workday into an ant colony of professionals fiddling with BlackBerrys as they walk down the street, ride the subway or get in an elevator; and the development of an "alternative media," most of it Web-based, that plays to partisan instincts on both the left and the right. Add to this a crippling recession that has seen circulation decline while advertising inches and dollars shrivel at an alarming pace, and, indeed, newspaper journalism has been suffering an annus horribilis.
Yet perhaps we doth protest too much. ln 2006 at NCEW's convention in Pittsburgh, newspaper consultant John Oppedahl boldly predicted that newspaper syndicates would no longer be in business in three years. It's been three years since he made that prediction. We're still here. That's not a boast, it's a fact.
So are most of the country's newspapers -- in major, medium and small markets. Despite layoffs and early retirement buyouts that have seriously restricted the ability of some news organizations to adequately cover their communities, newspapers continue to publish daily, and readers continue to buy them. In fact, only two major papers went out of the print business this year, and both were considered second papers in two-paper towns. But for the business as a whole, we're still here. That's not a boast, it's a fact.
Here's another fact: Newspapers get a great deal on syndicated material. When he made his longevity prediction, Oppedahl was referring mainly to the opinion-page copy -- columns and editorial cartoons that, for The Writers Group, certainly make up the bulk of our production. Yet go through your newspaper some morning (or check the Web edition) and note how much content would not be there were it not for newspaper syndicates: comics, for one; advice to the lovelorn, for another; television schedules (gee, this list is growing); money tips; real estate tips; medical tips; entertainment tips, raising children tips, plus George Will and Nick Anderson, Ellen Goodman and Signe Wilkinson, Kathleen Parker and Lisa Benson, David Broder and Clay Bennett and all the rest of our talented stable -- you get the picture. Oh, did I mention news? The Associated Press calls itself a news cooperative, but it operates in much the way a syndicate does.
My point is that we are a market-driven product that responds to the demands of our customers. Like any business, we are vigilant in searching for ways to expand our franchise and provide service to please the clients. This year alone we have begun putting headlines on all columns in order to ease the workload on our client editors; we send an e-mail to more than 900 editors worldwide informing them of what material we are moving each day; and we created our Editorial Roundtable in part with the idea that it can be turned into an online forum beneficial to NCEW and AOPE and help then achieve some of their broader goals.
We also market our content on electronic platforms, including Facebook, and allow our clients to post columns on their Web sites at no additional cost.
None of this guarantees us perpetuity; I can't think of anything that does. But as long as there is a demand for quality journalism, we'll try to help fill it -- not only in the future, but right now.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Where There's a Will, There's Independence
Posted by James Hill on September 4, 2009
To listen and to read the chatter about George F. Will's last two columns calling for an end to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, you'll run across the charge from some conservatives that Will has gone off the reservation. It's their way of saying he's diverted from orthodoxy.
Say what?
If you've really been reading your George Will over the years, you'll know it's a pretty silly accusation. Recall that in 1973, he bucked the conventional wisdom and boldly stated that calls for Richard Nixon's resignation over Watergate were premature without articles of impeachment.
"Had Nixon allowed himself to be blown out of office by a gale of telegrams and a gust of editorials, he would have set a precedent even more injurious to the nation than his dreaded presidency," the columnist stated. "In the future, every time a divisive issue seized the nation's attention, our new political mores would cause citizens to ring up Western Union to 'vote' on the future of the regime. We would have created an unholy hybrid by grafting an informal 'no confidence' vote procedure onto our tripartite governmental system."
George Will did not become America's most influential conservative columnist by spouting orthodoxy. He earned it by an independent streak that has consistently challenged orthodoxy.
This said, let's get into the meat of Will's most recent columns. On Afghanistan, Will is not calling for an end to U.S. involvement in that faraway land -- he is calling for a change in U.S. policy. "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters," he wrote.
On Iraq, a country invaded on the premise that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction that he would soon use against Israel and the West, Will rebuts the assumption that we still have more work to do to make that country right: "No, we don't, even if, as (The Washington Post's Greg) Jaffe reports, the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops 'serves as a check on Iraqi military and political leaders' baser and more sectarian instincts.' After almost 6 1/2 years, and 4,327 American dead and 31,483 wounded, with a war spiraling downward in Afghanistan, it would be indefensible for the U.S. military -- overextended and in need of materiel repair and mental recuperation -- to loiter in Iraq to improve the instincts of corrupt elites. If there is a worse use of the U.S. military than 'nation-building,' it is adult supervision and behavior modification of other peoples' politicians."
Others may quarrel with Will's thesis. In a Pentagon briefing Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said: "I absolutely do not think it is time to get out of Afghanistan. Liberal columnist Marie Cocco and conservative Michael Gerson both made impassioned defenses this week of U.S. involvement there; Cocco without knowledge of what Will was writing, Gerson as a response.
And this is a debate we should be having. We have been in Afghanistan since shortly after the terrible tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. We have been in Iraq since early 2003. Too many U.S. servicemen and women have been coming home in coffins or with terrible scars that they will carry for their lifetimes. Why should questioning only come from the liberal camp? (For the record, Will is not the first conservative to question the Iraq mission; the late William F. Buckley, the Godfather of the modern conservative movement, came to see the war as a failure and said so in his National Review in early 2006.)
Another point: Will's columns generated quite a shoutfest in Washington and elsewhere. One editor complained to The Writers Group that Will's columns would have had more impact if they had been written during the George W. Bush presidency. Debatable. Afghanistan a year ago was a deteriorating situation, but not nearly what it has become today -- despite an increase in the U.S. commitment. Iraq was being pacified by the troop surge; today those troops cannot operate in the country's cities, under a directive issued by the new Iraqi government.
But for the most part, much of the criticism seemed based on talking points. You'd think that if you wanted to prove George Will wrong, you would get some original material to back up your argument. Gerson certainly did -- he interviewed Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command. Cocco certainly did -- she drew on the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 and consulted terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 commission.
Trying to slap down Will for showing his independence should be noted for what it is -- an exercise in futility. He's called for new thinking. And his critics should take up that challenge.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Tea, Anyone?
Posted by James Hill on August 10, 2009
Call me clueless if you will, but until Kathleen Parker filed her column for editing late last week, I'd never heard the terms "teabaggers" or "townhallers."
I asked her to fill readers in. "Teabaggers are conservatives who staged tax protests earlier this year," she wrote in a revised version. "Townhallers are those now confronting congressional leaders as they return home to chat it up with constituents."
And I've a hunch we haven't heard of the last of them either. If you consult the Drudge Report (I must confess I do), you'll find that the Internet gossip is having quite a good time with these protests. One day last week he linked to nine stories related to a form of American venting that predates the Revolution.
A scan of major American papers last week would have turned up little, if any, news that anything out of the ordinary was going on. The Washington Post did do a major takeout Thursday under the headline "Protests at Democrats' Health-Care Events Spark Political Tug of War" and ran it on Page A4. Friday's Post -- the same day Drudge went wild -- contained no follow-up stories. Meanwhile, the hacking of Twitter and Facebook made Page One.
Worse was the mainstream media's reaction to last spring's "tea parties," in which tax protesters turned out around the country. Although well-covered in the blogosphere, traditional outlets largely ignored them.
This is not to be critical of the judgment of various news editors. Many Democrats have complained that the protests, especially the most recent ones, are orchestrated and, in fairness, it doesn't seem that mobs are roaming the country demanding an end of health care reform.
But there are signs that something may be afoot. For one, Democrats -- given that they control the White House and both houses of Congress -- seem pretty nervous these days. They've especially targeted the reactionary right wing, which seems to me to be about as pointless as Republicans zeroing in on the loony left. They don't call these folks wing-nuts for nothing.
Yet I think they fear they may be losing the great middle, which put them in power in the first place. Virginia, which along with New Jersey elects a governor this year, may provide some insight into just how the middle feels, and a story in Wednesday's Post -- "Is Race for Governor More About Obama?" -- indicated that voters in the Old Dominion, who made Obama the first Democrat to carry the state in four decades, may be having buyer's remorse.
More reporting, backed up by polling, will have to be done before anyone can tell if health care reform will again be the Democrats' great undoing. But not-so-distant history should be our guide. In 1994, conventional wisdom right up to Election Day held that the Democrats might lose some ground, perhaps even the Senate. They got slaughtered. In the media's attempt to catch up with a story they largely missed, health care reform (Hillarycare) stood out as the biggest factor in what commentators came to label as a tidal wave.
It was a similar missed boat in 1980 when Jimmy Carter was expected to narrowly win re-election. Ronald Reagan beat him so convincingly that Carter was forced into a humiliating concession speech while polls were still open or just closing in the western parts of the country.
Again, I'm yet to be convinced the town-hall protests are on the same level as the groundswells of 1980 and '94. But it seems that mainstream media ignore them at further risk of an already tarnished reputation. Voter anger is a two-way street. Lyndon Johnson didn't think much of early protests against the Vietnam War, other than to dismiss them as orchestrated mischief. Look where it got him.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Reaching Friends and Making Them Fans
Posted by Karisue Wyson on July 31, 2009
At the beginning of 2008, I was encouraged by a group of teenagers at my church to set up a Facebook page as a way to keep them up to date about activities and allow them to invite friends to events. They explained that as much as I might use e-mail, they never did. They communicated by text and Facebook. If I wanted to get the message out, this was going to be the way to do it.
A few months later, I was charged with helping round up former high school classmates for a 20th-anniversary reunion. Fueled by the success of our youth-group page, I created a Facebook page for the reunion and within a month we had located more than 70 percent of our class, most of whom were beginning their first but feverish relationship with Facebook. It wasn't uncommon to learn that many had been spending hours tooling around the site and making new connections.
It didn't take long for me to figure out that there was great potential for reaching readers and fans of our Writers Group features through Facebook. And in less than a year we've amassed nearly 5,000 fans for our many fan pages (not counting the 15,000-plus fans that Newsweek has on its own) and we're growing each week.
One great truth in marketing is to go where the people are, and the people are on Facebook.
More comprehensive than quick-hit Twitter (for which The Writers Group also has an account), Facebook offers us the chance to interact with fans who are keen to know our writers, editorial cartoonist and comic strip artists in an informal way. We post news about scheduled TV appearances and then upload video links and transcripts once the shows are done. We share links to each column, editorial cartoon or comic strip, for which readers can give us a "thumbs up" or start a debate with other fans. The key point here is that unlike the anonymous comments sections of most online newspapers, there is a "face" that goes with every comment. Discussions are nearly always civil, informative and engaging.
With one click, we can send e-mail reminders to hundreds of fans about upcoming chats or book signings and even target the message in specific geographic regions. From a marketing standpoint, Facebook is invaluable in giving demographic insights about fans: their ages, their connectivity, where they live, and more. I pass along this information to our marketing representatives so that they can share it with editors at our client newspapers and Web sites and encourage them to run our features in the markets that would reach the most active fans.
But more importantly, The Writers Group has a presence in the one of the largest gathering spots in the world -- and we are learning each day how to reach those people who want to know us better.
Karisue Wyson is manager of marketing, licensing and sales for The Washington Post Writers Group.
Sitting Around the Table
Posted by James Hill on July 13, 2009
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We're three weeks into our Editorial Roundtable, which features a panel of editorial page editors from around the country, two moderators (editorial director Alan Shearer and me) and a journalism educator who critiques the panel's answers.
So how's it going? Glad you asked.
I'm happy with the launch. On a screen, projects such as these look like a piece of cake, but that's only because our assistant comics editor, Kate Dobson, doubles as a page design whiz. We've introduced the panel, with a general question concerning editorial page philosophy and a couple more on the nuts-and-bolts issues of actually getting product into the hands (or before the eyes) of readers.
This week, we hope to mix it up a little more, with a question concerning editorializing about the culture war.
But I think the greater question at this point is: Where are we going? And to that, I have no good answer.
Our journalism educator does, however. Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, raised the stakes considerably in last week's critique. Asking the panel to consider what they will have to do to stay competitive in this digital era, he implored: "please, panel, please: Respond because your jobs may depend on it if status-quo business models keep failing (and they will) -- concerning how much influence, if any, you had personally in shaping the direction of the digital version of your newspaper."
Pretty good advice to anyone in this business today. Last week, the Gannett Corp., the country's largest newspaper chain, cut another 1,400 jobs at papers both large and small around the nation. Since two of our panelists are with Gannett papers -- Dick Hughes at the Statesman-Journal in Salem, Ore., and Mary Ann Lindley at The Tallahassee Democrat -- I'd place a bet that every day begins and ends for them with a thought of what they can be doing to get from dead trees to cyberspace before this mad dash consumes us all.
At times, though, I wonder if we haven't already been consumed. Don't get me wrong -- I love the Internet, particularly the anarchy of it all. But I still want a paper in my hands each morning, and at several times during my work day. Are we robbing our most valuable resource -- the paying print subscriber -- by eliminating content in our print editions (Bugeja's status-quo business models) because we want them to find it online?
Maybe so. Despite circulation losses of recent years, newspapers still sell a lot of, surprise, newspapers. Some people -- Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today, among them -- contend the losses are not much different than when radio and then television became the new mediums.
But there is a palpable sense of urgency that if we don't find a way to integrate the print product online, and make money doing so, then the business won't survive. I wish that urgency would have existed a few years ago when newspapers were making those colossal profits. Had many executives put more back into the product than into their pockets, we might not be facing a doomsday scenario. We are though, so no use crying over spilt milk.
If you'll take a look at the Web pages of our Board of Contributors (they're linked at the bottom of each response on the Roundtable), I think you'll agree with me that a lot of innovation is going on. Bugeja would prefer more, and I think all of our editors would like to do more. But many are working under severe limits that tax innovation, not to mention reduced budgets that hamper the ability to hire and retain the talent needed to maintain quality staffs.
When Alan and I began this project, we promised those who signed on that we would not be probing the state of the industry. And we'll keep that promise. What we want to do is explore the industry's strengths, along with the intellectual curiosity that goes into putting out editorial pages today. I'm confident the answers you will get will show the tremendous amount of professionalism that editors demand of themselves and their staffs even when the future is so unclear.
Stay tuned.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
When News is In Your Backyard
Posted by James Hill on June 26, 2009
On most days, Washington's Metrorail rapid-transit system is a wonder to behold -- clean, reliable and fast. But almost everyone who has ever been a rider, and that includes just about everyone who lives in the metropolitan area plus the legions of tourists that descend on the nation's capital year-round, has a horror story about a train being mysteriously taken out of service, of being stuck in a tunnel for what seemed an eternity, of escalators and elevators that break down, of announcements you can't hear or, if you can, are unintelligible.
No one, however, could imagine the horror that visited Metro on Monday, June 22. A train on the heavily traveled Red Line hurtled into the back of another train stopped outside a station, and nine people lost their lives. Eighty were injured.
A catastrophic breakdown must have occurred somewhere in the fail-safe system designed to keep trains at a safe distance. All of that will be determined after a thorough investigation.
But on Monday evening, the only thing most people in the Washington area wanted to know was just the facts: Were loved ones on one of the trains? Would other Metro lines continue to run? How could you get home if you depended on the Red Line? How long before service could be restored? How would you get to work the next day? In other words, the very definition of news: What happened?
Before the Internet, a story of this magnitude would have belonged to the broadcast media during the initial hours of coverage. Newspaper reporters would have jumped on it immediately, but their more in-depth stories would have to wait until the next edition was published, in most cases the next morning.
No longer. Through their Web sites, newspapers today have to be ready to start publishing information the minute they get it in hand. That's not an easy chore, given that in addition to reporting the news -- a time-consuming process -- editors must then sort it, verify it, and make sure it is understandable. A newsroom in a situation like this is the picture of controlled mayhem, and the adrenaline rush is why most journalists got in the business.
As it was, I was able to read the first Washington Post story online on my cellphone about an hour and a half after the crash occurred. I then read another one that was speculating on the causes -- and reporting that a similar tragedy had been averted four years before when two train operators realized the computerized fail-safe system was not working and manually stopped their cars.
Once home, I again went to washingtonpost.com and a more thorough picture of events was beginning to unfold, including answers to many of the questions I referred to above.
The next morning's Post was what you would expect of such a newspaper, its reports thorough, authoritative, richly illustrated with photographs and graphics. A contributors box noted 19 names of reporters who had worked on the story besides those who received bylines. But of course, many, many more were involved -- in truth, the entire newsroom on duty that evening.
Online, the same thoroughness of the morning's paper was evident, yet also changing as updates came in during the day.
I point all this out because there is a great temptation today to say that newspapers should just throw in the towel. Their time is passed -- Twitter brought us the news of what was happening in the streets of Tehran (a libel, I might add, against the work of reporters such as The Post's Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran).
Truth is, when news consumers want information, they turn to the most reliable sources they know, and in most cases -- particularly when it is happening in your backyard -- it is still the local newspaper.
Publishers, consultants and bean-counters busily trimming staff and cutting back on reporting resources should ask themselves what they would do if suddenly their operation had to cover a huge story -- and do so immediately. How they meet this challenge will determine their futures.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Conversation Starter
Posted by James Hill on June 19, 2009
If the good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise, we plan to go live on this Web site next week with a project that I hope -- fingers crossed -- generates a lot of talk and maybe even a little buzz.
We call it Editorial Roundtable, and it will take the form of a conversation that editorial director Alan Shearer and I will have with a Board of Contributors made up of editorial page editors from around the country.
The idea is to pose a question to the contributors about their thinking on the crucial issues of the day -- and ask them to tell us how they develop their approaches for their commentary.
Then, once the Roundtable has been posted, we ask readers to join the conversation.
Our debut Board of Contributors is a stellar one, and I can vouch for all because they are professional friends I have come to know mostly through my association with the National Conference of Editorial Writers.
They are: Harry Austin, editor of The Chattanooga Times editorial page in The Chattanooga Times Free Press; Dick Hughes, editorial page editor of the Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore.; J.R. Labbe, editorial director of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Mary Ann Lindley, editorial page editor and columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat; Mark Mahoney, editorial page editor of The Post-Star in Glens Falls, N.Y., and recipient of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, and Dan Radmacher, editorial page editor of The Roanoke (Va.) Times.
In addition, I have asked Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University of Science and Technology, to provide regular comments on the answers. I hope to enlist others to comment as well.
We'll post these Roundtables weekly here on The Writers Group site, and participating editors can link to the Web sites of their own newspapers. In addition, we'll be on Facebook.
Now, just a little bit about objectives: The idea was originally hatched as Alan and I were tossing about thoughts on how to make our Web site more, as they say, user-friendly. Most of the columns we sell are targeted for editorial or commentary pages, and they are meant to complement the work of local editorial writers, who provide the institutional voice for a newspaper.
What better way, we reasoned, than to provide those who are directing that institutional voice to tell us how they go about crafting their product? Meanwhile, if we could get the conversation going, it would allow readers to join in on this fascinating aspect of daily journalism.
I at first had hoped to enlist about 20 editors in the project, but that turned out to be unrealistic, at least for the launch. Most of those approached begged off because of time-restraints. I understand. Journalism is in crisis today because the poor economy is seriously cutting the revenues needed to put out a quality product.
Nevertheless, the news doesn't stop, and one thing I hope readers pick up from the Editorial Roundtable is the tremendous commitment these editors have to serving the public in the spirit of the First Amendment and the right to have an informed citizenry.
Don't look for ideological food fights in the Roundtable, because we're going to keep that off-limits. Same goes for discussions about the plight of the industry -- there's more than enough of that already out there.
What I hope you do find is a lively exchange of views. As I said in an e-mail to potential contributors: "My idea is to have a forum where editors can candidly discuss what still gives journalism its incredible kick, why we feel so passionately about issues, and what tools we use, be it print or online, to reach as wide an audience as possible. In other words, a little mix of philosophy and shop talk.
"And I hope we have a blast doing it."
Join our conversation. You might have a blast too.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
Fingers in the Cookie Jar
Posted by James Hill on June 5, 2009
Thanks to a combination of Washington's god-awful traffic and a satellite radio receiver that picks up the BBC, I've been able to get a pretty good briefing these last few weeks on a developing scandal that, any day now, could topple the Labor Party government of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The reason: Members of Parliament, included Cabinet ministers, got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar. Like the House Post Office scandal in the early 1990s, what gives this story legs is not the amount of money fleeced from the taxpayers (small change, in the majority of cases) but the audacity of the fleecers: They were expense accounting everything from dry cleaning services and upkeep on second homes to pornographic DVDs.
For Brown, who always seems to have a black cloud hovering over him, the scandal couldn't have come at a worse time. Already battle-scarred by the world financial meltdown and facing a revolt from within his party, he's now had to contend with several Cabinet members stepping down and a likely drubbing for Labor in the European Parliament elections. On Friday, he reshuffled his government in a desperate attempt to keep the wolves at bay.
But, man, what a gift it has been for Britain's lively and highly competitive newspapers, especially the Daily Telegraph, which broke the story. Sales are up, buzz is keen, and the plight of the dour prime minister is now becoming of interest in the European and American press as well.
Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine, thinks this story has lessons for U.S. newspapers. In the current issue, he writes: "My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here's an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences."
Amen to that. But before editors start filing freedom of information requests to look at the expenses of city council members, they should probably read the rest of Carter's article, concentrating especially on his point to "devote your best resources to it."
Scoops like the Telegraph got just don't fall in your lap. Indeed, as Carter notes, it was a four-year quest to break down the bureaucratic wall that blocked the Telegraph from seeing what should be on the public record.
At papers that already do admirable investigative work, reporters know this story all too well. Watergate might have been knocking on doors and making a lot of calls, but today's investigative reporters are just as likely to tap into databases. And that's not so much a wall as it is a morass. You've got to be highly skilled to get through.
But what a treasure trove you can find. I've been particularly enjoying The Washington Post's examinations of companies that have close ties to Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and earmark king. I can only imagine what some defense supplier CEO must feel like when he realizes that Carol D. Leonnig, the lead reporter, is on the phone to ask a few questions about those campaign contributions and that government contract.
Investigative reporting like this isn't so much swinging for the fences as it is doing the job of holding government accountable, and the Post excels at it. It consumes a lot of resources, not only in reportorial talent but in legal talent as well. And it takes commitment, starting at the top and all through the newsroom.
Not all newspapers are going to be able to meet such standards, and editors live in fear of loose cannon reporters who can present a story that looks so right until it turns out to be so wrong. Still, as Carter notes, the expenses scandal has been a boon to the Brit press, proving that newspapers aren't dead. So with evidence that they are still kicking, he asks, "aren't you growing just a bit tired of reading about the demise of newspapers -- in the papers themselves?"
Count me in on that. I'd rather like to read about who has their fingers in the cookie jar.
James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.
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