Mark Zieman is editor and vice president of The Kansas City (Mo.) Star and will be writing a column for The American Editor this year. Reach him at zieman@kcstar.com
FACED WITH DAILY PROPHECIES of doom, editors today are searching for answers.
Some turn to traditional sources for comfort - facts and figures gleaned from the latest Newspaper Association of America reports or guidance from the Wise offered through ASNE or the American Press Institute. Others seek new prophets, finding hope in a future created by Google or "Web 3.0," citizen journalists or private ownership. And some sit muttering in the dark, gnawing on Wall Street estimates, tuned into the blogosphere, pining for just three more FTEs.
Personally, I look for inspiration in the lessons of people who have survived similar disruptive changes - overcoming multiple competitors, battling new technologies and shaking off the dirt from an endless series of prospective gravediggers. In other words, American journalists from about 1770 to 1955.
People such as Joseph Pulitzer, who once fought off an angry reader by throwing a tomato he had just bought for his pregnant wife; Nellie Bly, who faked insanity to get inside the notorious Blackwell's Island asylum; and the Emporia Gazette's William Allen White, who early in his career protected his editor by tossing an angry mayor down the newsroom stairs.
For me, one endless source of inspiration is a cub reporter we hired right out of high school - Ernest Hemingway. Although he soon left us to join the war effort, Hemingway illustrates several lessons we still use today. Apparently it was mutual, because his experiences in Kansas City appear in at least five of his novels, four of his published sketches and half a dozen of his short stories.
He particularly acknowledged our style sheet, which stressed an economy of words and the use of forceful language. Its first rules were: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."
They "were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing," he later told a reporter. And they still lead our style book today.
But perhaps just as importantly, Kansas City gave him a chance to be on his own in a big, rough town. We know he covered a riot by laundry workers, then enraged the mob by pointing out rock throwers to police.
Covering a fire, Hemingway crept so close to the flames that he burned his new suit. "After I got my information phoned in, I put down fifteen dollars on the expense account for that suit I'd ruined," Hemingway later recalled. "But the item was turned down. It taught me a hell of a lesson: Never risk anything unless you're prepared to lose it completely - remember that."
I still use that example today every time I turn down a voucher, pointing out that the real lesson is that the Star is cheap.
Hemingway learned to write tightly and clearly. He thrust himself into the heart of the action. And he took great glee in working on stories that shook things up.
While chasing ambulances, he discovered a problem with slow response times. So he was assigned an exposé, and wrote this letter home to his mother:
"There is not much doing here now except my hospital fight. ... I was officially barred from entering the institution by the Manager yesterday and the Boss and the big political men are sure raising the merry deuce. ... But the boss said to disregard the fact that I am barred and sent me out there any way to get the dope on them."
One day, Hemingway was making his Union Station run when he came upon a man suffering from small pox, who had been taken off a train and abandoned. Nobody dared touch him. So Hemingway swore at the crowd, picked up the man, ordered a taxi and took him to General Hospital, charging the fare to the Star.
I'm glad to say we paid that voucher.
Today Hemingway is gone. But the Star is still here. We still work in the same building and newsroom he entered in 1917.
Yet more important than the paper or building, the journalists are still here. The lessons that Hemingway learned 90 years ago are still practiced daily in Kansas City - and Miami, Lexington, Sacramento, Biloxi and I'm sure at your newspaper, too.
Our industry keeps changing, but those lessons never will. So let's "raise the merry deuce." And keep making a difference in our world.