Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Media / News Bites The Reader’s New Publisher Is an Edit Guy
Posted by Michael Miner on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 11:01 PM
- Jim Warren
Jim Warren, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, was named publisher of the Reader today, in an announcement by Richard Gilbert, interim CEO of the board now running the chain of six Creative Loafing weeklies.
“He’s all the things you look for,” says Gilbert. “He has integrity, courage, enterprise, intelligence.” He says the appointment sends a message, both within the Reader and to the city, that “this newspaper continues to be very serious about its journalism and its content.”
Warren has been a newspaperman since he graduated from Amherst in the mid-70s; he moved to the Tribune from the Sun-Times in 1984, covered labor, law, and media, and was a surprise choice to edit the old Tempo feature section, where writers told me he was the best editor they’d ever had. In 1993 editor Howard Tyner sent him to Washington to work the same magic there. Warren quickly made a name for himself in the capital by writing a Sunday column in which he mocked the city’s media stars by name for their preoccupation with self-promotion and fat personal-appearance fees.
When he returned to Chicago in 2001, Warren took over the Tribune’s huge features department and became an obvious candidate to succeed Ann Marie Lipinski as editor. That didn’t happen. Sam Zell acquired the paper two years ago, and when Lipinski resigned last year Gerould Kern was moved over from the corporate position of editorial director to succeed her. Warren, no fan of Kern’s, followed Lipinski out the door. Since then, he’s mostly been writing magazine articles for the Atlantic and blogging for the Huffington Post.
Just the other day James O’Shea, talking about the Chicago News Cooperative he’s just launched, told me Warren will be contributing a column to the four pages of exclusive weekly copy the co-op will start supplying to the New York Times next month. O’Shea is also a member of Gilbert’s Creative Loafing board, and it was he who suggested Warren to Gilbert as a possible publisher.
“I said, ‘Oh my god, what a great idea! What a great opportunity! Do you think we could get him?’” Gilbert tells me.
The Reader has been without a full-time publisher since Kirk McDonald resigned in the late stages of the Ben Eason era, before Atalaya Capital Management took over the six papers in a bankruptcy auction two months ago. After two months of talks, the answer to Gilbert’s question was yes. Warren starts November 2.
I’ve known Warren since we were both reporters at the Sun-Times in the mid-70s. I have great respect for him. But I think the message his appointment sends, to the Reader and to Chicago, is more ambiguous than Gilbert may realize. What we have is the appearance of one former Tribune managing editor, O’Shea, looking out for another. The Reader doesn’t think of itself as a place to land; and it does think of itself as a paper launched—38 years ago—as an alternative to staid dailies like the Tribune. “Are there people there [at the Reader] who think, there’s an alum of the almighty Tribune whom they might not particularly like overseeing them? Yeah, there might be,” Warren allows, and continues, “It’s a little bit weird for me. After all those years that I was seen as something of a Tribune iconoclast, to be seen now as a white-shirted Tribune managerial clone, or something.”
“The decision [to hire me] was not made by Jim O’Shea,” Warren lets me know. There was Gilbert, and above him Michael Bogdan, managing partner of Atalaya, with whom Warren says he spent hours talking, taking the measure of his commitment to serious journalism.
Gilbert and Warren stress the same thing: newspaper publishers usually come up through sales or marketing. Bogdan showed what’s important to him by naming a newsroom guy.
But this brings us to something touchy. The best newspapers maintain a wall between publishers and editors, and nothing crosses it but the budget. The Reader is no exception. It’s about to become one. Having been hired because of, not despite, an editorial background, Warren intends to put it to use. “I hope to be pretty involved, yeah,” he tells me. His appointment, he thinks, “is an implicit affirmation of the link between quality journalism and a successful business.” And he’s the link.
“It’s good to hear the board and Warren acknowledging how important journalism is to the success of the company,” says Reader editor Alison True. “Because we’re looking forward to getting the resources to support it. But if that wall disappears, so does our credibility.”
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If editors fold like a house of cards when publishers snap their fingers, the wall between the two doesn't amount to much, does it? (Apologies for the mixed metaphors.) Team Lipinski cut and ran in rapid succession and in shameful silence as the Zell people began trashing their paper. There's some talent (more languid than energized) in their ranks, but the fact that they're popping up again at the Chicago News Cooperative, in the pages of the New York Times and at the Reader isn't what one would call--to be precise--inspiring.
By the way, thank you, Mr. Miner, for this posting on James Warren. It would've been much easier for you to simply give Warren his voice. Instead, you raised the questions that concerned readers would raise. I realize that may not have been a comfortable thing to do. But I'm not surprised, coming as it does from one of the nation's top-flight media critics.
2 points:
a) never worked for warren, but if the polls are still open of the 3 tempo editors i did work for, charlie leroux was hands down the absolute best ... @ tempo or anywhere else ... just a little credit where credit is due.
b) if the current reader staff is having issues w/ a hands on publisher who also posses considerable editorial talent, would encourage atalaya capital to change his title - editor/publisher....you might remember a guy named bob roth who at one time also carried both titles - he established your credibility.
Like DeBartolo, I'm a huge fan of Charlie Leroux. Unlike DeBartolo, I DID work for Warren, albeit indirectly: In the Tribune's Features Dept., he was my boss's boss's boss -- which sounds more remote than it was.
My take, for what it's worth: If Reader staffers weren't energized by this announcement, they will be energized by the reality. This is very good news for the Reader, and for us readers.
correction - make that "of the 4 tempo editors i did work for" ... one was quite forgettable.
@alan - damn straight, this is potentially excellent news for the reader(s)...maybe not so much for ms. true, but rational changes rarely please everyone.
I worked with Jim Warren a million years ago, when we were both at the Sun-Times. I greatly admired his intelligence and ability to get things done. The Tribune lost a good one when they bounced him. But it's the Reader's gain.
Shane Gericke
I don't think it's true that newspapers need a wall between publisher and edit. They need a wall between sales and edit. If the publishers is an edit guy, there's no problem. As De Bartolo says above, Roth was president and publisher just like Warren. No wall was needed when he was running things.
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