Sinking Ship, part 3

If it’s vitally important that the Inquirer win the battle for the suburbs, then it’s equally essential that those offices be staffed with competent people who are enthusiastic and in tune with management’s goals. And yet at times it seems that Rosenthal’s team has gone out of its way to alienate as many of them as possible.

Goodman’s involuntary transfer is just one of many. Earlier this year, a list of 19 staffers who felt they’d been treated poorly — most had been moved to jobs they didn’t want, that they considered beneath their skills or that conflicted with other responsibilities like child care — was compiled and taken to the Newspaper Guild, the staff writers’ union. The response, according to a source familiar with the list, was that management has the right to move workers around as it sees fit. And while one source says there seems to have been some effort recently to post jobs and find volunteers for given assignments, the moves continue. Several sources say a longtime staff writer quit recently rather than take a new assignment on the obit desk, but this person could not be reached for comment.

Late last month, an editorial staffer retrieved from the paper’s computer system a copy of a memo from Janet McMillan, Pennsylvania editor, to Rosenthal, regarding staffing in suburban offices. In it, McMillan urged Rosenthal to approve the filling of vacancies in the correspondents’ program, a two-year paid reporting internship the Inquirer offers in suburban bureaus. (Correspondents are prohibited from working in Philadelphia or Camden by the terms of the staff writers’ collective bargaining agreement with PNI.)

McMillan wrote: "These correspondents do 95 percent — or more — of all the work on the suburban staff. We would have no zoned editions without them. Certainly, we cannot put out papers with the few staff writers we have. Many of those staff writers produce such poor quality work — when they work — that they are outclassed by our interns."

Staff writers, obviously, were incensed. (McMillan was out of the office and could not be reached for comment before press time.)

"Janet is being asked to expand her coverage when her staff is shrinking, and that’s a challenge," admits one reporter. "But she basically smeared an entire class of reporter out here, and she did that to a management that rarely sets foot in the suburbs.… People were very angered by that."

They also noted the candor with which she summed up the suburban coverage situation: "I cannot say too strongly that if we do not fill all current and future intern slots we are dooming our suburban coverage. The choice was made years ago to put the coverage of our most important growth areas into the hands of these inexperienced people. Now, we are totally dependent on them."

Compounding the problem, some add, is that increasingly, suburban editors have little or no news reporting experience.

Arlene Morgan has tough words for Inky employees who dish inside dirt. "To me, the people who are [tipping off outside journalists about controversial personnel moves] are the harsh ones. I think that is just unconscionable."

"At one time in New Jersey," says another, "five of the six editors… had no [news] reporting experience. They don’t know what it takes to cultivate a source, to get beneath that top layer." Others mention this as well. Whether it was a deliberate strategy or not isn’t clear, but all who complain of this situation agree that quantity now counts for far more than quality. Various sources say that when crime reporter George Anastasia informed Rosenthal recently that he’d received a tempting offer from another paper, and that perhaps the Inquirer might want to pay him better, Rosenthal countered by noting that while Anastasia’s work was of high quality, he went through "lulls" in which he didn’t file anything.

Colleagues say Anastasia was stunned by this response. Clearly, they say, Rosenthal doesn’t appreciate or even understand why not all stories can be reported and written in time for tomorrow’s edition.

Complains one, "It just seems to me that someone, somewhere along the line, decided that hard, investigative journalism was problematic."

"It all started with this total disdain for reporters" that Rosenthal and his lieutenants seem to have, the source continues, "which is a total turn-about from the collegial atmosphere of the past. A reporter who truly believed in a story, and who worked it and worked it, was treasured at the Inquirer. Not anymore."

Another source, however, says that it’s the result of mixed signals from the top rather than policy.

"There’s two different messages being sent out by management," this source says. Rosenthal loves in-depth reporting, and is more inclined to throw bodies at a breaking story, and keep them on it for days or even weeks, than to fret over the budget. (Remember the saturation coverage of the Second Senatorial District voting scandal? Classic Rosenthal, who was an associate managing editor at the time.) Deputy managing editor Phil Dixon, on the other hand, is seen as being more concerned with feeding the beast — maintaining the intensity of comprehensive daily coverage to which the Inquirer has committed itself.

"The State of the American Newspaper," a Pew-funded study conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and published in American Journalism Review (http://ajr.newslink.org/special/), cites the Knight Ridder chain, owner of the Inquirer and Daily News, as among the most fanatical when it comes to monitoring and increasing productivity in the newsroom. Rosenthal and Dixon both take this mandate seriously, according to the source; and because they agree wholeheartedly in theory, they may not even recognize how much they differ in practice. As third in command — managing editor Butch Ward oversees operational and technical matters — Dixon has more direct contact with lower-level editors. Hence, mixed signals.

In editorial meetings, the source says, there seems to be complete consensus among management on how to cover the suburbs. "But if you ask reporters and editors in the suburbs, they’ll tell you, to a person, that they’re discouraged from doing that kind of work," the source says. "So I think the issue is, who’s running the newspaper? Why do you get different messages out of Philip and Rosey?… You kind of wonder, how can that happen, and I don’t know that there’s an answer. But it does. It’s a very strange situation."

Morgan notes that staffing issues are among the most difficult management faces. And while the correspondents are generally reliable and enthusiastic, the suburban bureaus can’t be run exclusively with them; experienced reporters are needed there too — whether they are excited about the prospect of working in Cherry Hill or not. Also, coverage benefits when "fresh eyes" look at a given beat from time to time.

She also disagrees with the suggestion that Rosenthal has been unnecessarily harsh in making these changes. To Morgan, he’s just being honest.

"I am a big proponent… [of the management philosophy] that you tell people the truth, you don’t treat them like children. If I’m performing well, if I’m underperforming, if I need to be doing something differently, I’m an adult, talk to me about it.… Unfortunately, not everyone believes that. Not everyone wants to hear that they’ve got to look in the mirror and wonder if they’re doing the level of work they could be doing.

"To me, the people who are [tipping off outside journalists about controversial personnel moves] are the harsh ones. I think that is just unconscionable."

Morgan adds that mixed messages may be heard, but aren’t necessarily being sent.

"[Rosenthal] sets the standards, sets the direction, sets the vision, and I think we will always have the vision here that we are a watchdog newspaper," she says. "But Phil has to do the operational stuff, he has to do the day-to-day stuff, he has to make the decisions about what’s a go and what isn’t a go. So maybe it is going to be a mixed message for somebody who gets told ‘I don’t think that story’s worth it, I don’t think you’re nailing it, you don’t have the data to back it up.’… "

"So I don’t know that there are mixed messages; [Dixon’s job] is operational, [Rosenthal’s] is philosophical. And I think Phil sets a very, very high standard of what he thinks is a project and is going to be worth the time."

"There’s always going to be fears about this kind of stuff, because journalists are worrywarts, bless them. And you’re always going to be afraid that you’re [not doing] the level of work you want to do, that you should be doing. So that’s good, it keeps you on your toes.…"

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