'We need a galvanizing force'

The following is an excerpt from McGwire's farewell address to the ASNE convention, held April 10 in Washington, D.C. To view the full speech, click here

We need an industry-wide leader to bring CEO's, publishers and editors together to lead the national discussion on news values and profits.

There has been some important discussion on this matter, but it is too diffused.

Jim Naughton told the Poynter board of advisors in January that "It no longer is appropriate to assume that someone -- ASNE or RTNDA or SPJ or the Committee of Concerned Journalists --will speak for journalism. Bless them if they do. Poynter must."

I agree with Jim that Poynter and all the other journalism organizations, including ASNE, must speak for news values.

But I think we need something more. We need a national convener. We need a person and an organization to bring real firepower to the effort to find the right balance between corporate profits, news values and personal values.

There are lots of disparate efforts right now at universities, foundations and think tanks to find effective ways to center this problem-solving conversation. What we need now is a galvanizing force to take charge. We need dynamic leadership to mobilize editors and publishers to work this problem to solution.

We're going to need money. We're going to need vision. We're going to need dynamism. Most of all we're going to need unity. All the groups who want to figure out how newspapers can be profitable and remain true to core news values are going to have to be effectively harnessed, focused and energized.

Len Downie suggested to the ASNE board of directors Monday night that ASNE should lead this effort. Len's thoughts were provocative and ASNE needs to be a major player in the effort. But I don't believe ASNE's governance allows ASNE to lead this effort. A one-year president with full-time work obligations simply could not produce the creativity, the energy or the leadership required.

Poynter, the Knight Foundation, Pew, a major university or API would also be hard-pressed to lead this process alone.

I think perhaps the best solution is a coalition of all of these organizations along with NAA, the McCormick-TribuneFoundation, APME, SPJ, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, Unity, the Council of Presidents and many others, led by a powerful individual with the skills I've talked about. I can easily think of five or six outstanding people who might be willing to get their hands dirty to make such an effort a success.

On Friday afternoon I will be an ASNE past-president. I would happily join with other past-presidents, the new ASNE president and leaders of other organizations to help create this sort of dynamic problem-solving powerhouse.

My prescriptions today have been specific.

I have called for a reinvestment in our commitment to living and spreading our personal values, for a rededication of editors to the principles of the First Amendment, for this industry to tell its story to Wall Street in a public-service context and not in a context of ever-higher profit margins, for a specific type of contract to allow publishers and editors to jointly serve the demands of profits and our public-service mission. And I have called on the industry to come together around a powerful organization to facilitate the discussion on finding the right balance between profits and the public interest.

I believe we are at a crucial juncture in our profession and in our industry. We must decide today whether we're going to take newspapers forward with a genuine sense of values and commitment or if we are going to choose the path of milking our companies of every last dime. If we do that, we will die.

I recently read the excellent Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Joseph Ellis, "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation." I was struck by Ellis's contention that the voices of the revolutionary heroes speak to us so eloquently "because they knew we would be looking and listening." Ellis says, "All the vanguard members of the revolutionary generation developed a keen sense of their historical significance even while they were still making the history on which their reputations would rest."

Every editor, every publisher and every newspaper company CEO in America is living at a special, critical moment for American journalism. We need to find the personal courage to overcome our feelings of isolation, fear and powerlessness so we can live that moment in a way that would make Casper Yost and all of his ASNE founding brothers proud. We must act as if history is watching.

We must put our whole force, our whole thought, into making newspapers and the news business responsible, responsive and respected.

We must put our whole force and our whole thought into finding ways that profits and news values can live happily together.

We must put our whole force and our whole thought into living our personal values in a way that makes a critical difference to journalism, to readers and to all citizens.