One of the most unfortunate modern developments in newspapers is their increasing ownership by publicly held corporations, their need to please shareholders, their profit targets of 20-plus percent. Pining for the days of the dedicated independent newspaper proprietor is more than engaging in nostalgia because the best of them really did run their papers in a different way. The lesson here may be the time has come for publicly held companies to put editorial quality, credibility, and independence into their mantra, and to tell Wall Street that editorial protections are part of the cost of doing business just like newsprint and printing presses. Publishers need to remind themselves of that, too, since there appears to be an newsroom-executive office gap. Only 19 per cent of editors agreed.
Editors sometimes have a voice in the planning, but often are outgunned by the business-side people.
Downing's own Times management team numbers seven business executives, the company lawyer, and editor Parks, according to a New York Times story. That would seem to have put Parks under an enormous handicap in trying to hold high the paper's journalistic principles whenever a conflict arose. But things looked up some after that. This time, of course, it required an aroused newsroom and an indignant Chandler to speak out. And finally the paper itself found its voice through the Shaw investigations and its new principles and guidelines.