Five Questions for Boston Globe Publisher Richard Gilman

API posed five questions to Richard Gilman, Chairman and Publisher of The Boston Globe. He will be appearing at API's
Advertising Leadership: Building Your Team, Your Revenue, Your Market Share (metro markets) seminar, held March 28 - April 2, 2004

1. A newspaper like The Boston Globe has a lot of constituencies to
satisfy in a highly competitive news market. How do you sustain the balance
between maintaining your "regional paper of record" brand and the
need to connect with readers through more intensely local coverage? What do
you sacrifice that you wish you didn't have to?

Until a few years ago the Globe lagged behind other newspapers in how local
we were. We seized this as an opportunity. But our intention is to maintain
balance by avoiding the extremes at either end of the spectrum. We have stayed
away from offering lots of editions or zoning every day, because we see those
things as offering diminishing returns. And we have focused our zoned products
on the Greater Boston metropolitan area, where the great majority of potential
readers and advertisers are located.

2. What can and should newspapers do in the wake of recent journalistic
scandals to re-establish their image as independent, objective and ethical?

One of the great challenges of the journalism profession is to convincingly
respond to ethical challenges while still remaining independent of undue influence
or pressure. Many steps have been taken, such as instituting readers' advocates
and being more open to corrections and clarifications. But more needs to be
done. We can't just assume that young people coming into the profession have
all the right ethics. We need to codify our ethical standards and train our
people accordingly, and I'd like to see us go so far as to publish the standards.
I'm convinced that many readers would be pleasantly surprised to learn what
we expect of ourselves. And of course they would help hold us to those standards.

3. What are the three most important qualities you look for in candidates
for your executive team?

We have created a multi-faceted description of the attributes that we look
for in the business managers of the Globe. All of those attributes are important
in their own way, but if I had to reduce them to a few, I would select those
who best work well with others, who think strategically, who have the drive
to get things done and the integrity to do them right.

4. How have you addressed any need for culture change at The Boston
Globe? What recommendations would you offer for an executive needing to lead
truly systemic change?

Successfully changing a culture ultimately depends on how many come to understand,
accept, participate, believe, and lead. Not everyone will make this journey,
but there must be enough to achieve critical mass. I don't know if there is
a single, surefire formula for getting this kind of participation, but I believe
it requires that many be involved in choosing the direction, that the direction
be described clearly and simply, that senior managers not only say the right
things but have the right stuff to lead by example, and that it all be communicated
relentlessly. Achieving a few wins doesn't hurt either.

5. Over the past two years The Boston Globe published its fearless
series of stories about child sexual abuse by priests, which has put it at odds
with an enormously powerful and important Boston institution. Any "lessons
in courage" from that experience that you'd be willing to share?

Our editors and reporters did their work so well that there could be no question
about going forward. The work met three standards: 1) It presented authoritative,
persuasive proof that 2) terrible wrongs had been allowed to occur 3) in an
area of immense public interest. We had much more to lose by not publishing
than by publishing. The only reason not to go forward was fear of the possible
consequences to the newspaper, and that's not much of a reason.