Retooling the Nation's Newspaper

Ken Paulson, the editor of USA Today, wanted to gauge reaction to a front-page feature on six heavyweights who will shape the future of Social Security. "Anybody hit us on the fact that there were six men and no gender diversity?" he asked.

No, said reader representative Brent Jones.

Any backlash to a photo spread on a gay couple and their kids? "No backlash," Jones said.

Jack Kelley hasn't set foot in the paper's glass-sheathed headquarters near Tysons Corner since he was fired for serial fabrications last year, but in some ways his ghost inhabits the place. Paulson, who took over 11 months ago, solicits reader reaction at the daily editors' "huddle" as a check on potential missteps.

The veteran Gannett editor has also imposed strict rules on the use of anonymous sources, which some reporters say go too far and limit their ability to compete on stories. No information attributed to a "senior administration official" has appeared in USA Today since December, largely because of Paulson's crackdown. Even such formulations as "Democrats opposed to Bush's Social Security plan" are barred unless some names are included, and the use of unnamed sources has dropped about 75 percent.

To grant someone anonymity, Paulson says, "you have to go to a managing editor, identify that source -- which was at the heart of the Jack Kelley mess -- explain why we trust that source and how it moves the story forward." Paulson also runs Jones's picture on the editorial page, inviting feedback -- because, he says, past complaints about Kelley never reached or were dismissed by senior editors.

Since Karen Jurgensen and her deputies were ousted last year in the wake of an outside report blaming a "virus of fear" for the Kelley scandal, Paulson, 51, has been stressing communication. At a monthly staff meeting, he announces all staff engagements and retirements, flashes pictures of new babies on a six-foot PowerPoint screen and offers to respond to any questions or rumors. He also awards $50 each day for the best contribution to the paper.

Running the nation's top-selling paper is a huge step up for the genial Paulson, whose first job, at a Florida newspaper, was as police reporter, newsroom attorney and rock critic. Formerly a senior vice president at the Freedom Forum and an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, he has run Gannett papers in Green Bay, Wis., Melbourne, Fla., and Westchester County, N.Y.

Many staffers say they find Paulson pleasant and approachable, but they question whether he has improved the editorial product and contend that belt-tightening is hurting the paper. The editorial staff is down to 417 from about 440.

Despite its 2.3 million circulation, USA Today has just four foreign bureaus, including one that recently opened in Baghdad. Staffers say some foreign trips have been canceled for financial reasons. Under a new partnership with the Christian Science Monitor, the paper has opened a joint bureau in Mexico City and will run Monitor dispatches from abroad. Paulson, who has also named the paper's first foreign editor, says he's mainly interested in covering global news that affects American readers. Jones says his reports that readers felt the paper was focusing too heavily on violence in Iraq prompted a weekly feature called "Life in Iraq."

USA Today plans to reopen vacant bureaus in Boston, Chicago and, eventually, Austin, Paulson says, but also to team up more with other Gannett papers.

Some staffers say the paper, with its tightly packed front section, has limited interest in Washington politics. Last Monday and Tuesday, USA Today carried a total of three staff-written Washington stories about domestic affairs. It has not run a story since January on the mounting allegations against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The paper also dropped its best-known political columnist, Walter Shapiro, citing space constraints.

"We believe firmly in the need to monitor what goes on in Washington, but we also have to make clear why it matters to people in Idaho and Iowa and Montana," says Paulson, adding that he wishes he had more space.

One misstep during Paulson's tenure occurred when USA Today obtained the now-discredited National Guard documents about President Bush and published a front-page story the morning after CBS broadcast Dan Rather's story on the subject. While editors later said they would not have published had CBS not acted first, the Sept. 8 story cited memos "obtained by USA TODAY and also reported Wednesday on the CBS program '60 Minutes.' "

At a morning news meeting last week, Paulson complained about airport security delays, asking, "Is there any way for us to chart that?" He expressed interest in stories on how obesity affects life expectancy and how ordinary Iraqi families are faring, both of which would end up on Page 1. "We'll do a basketball billboard," Paulson said, meaning a box on the NCAA tournament would be placed above all headlines. After each editor ran through the day's stories, J. Ford Huffman, deputy managing editor for graphics, offered a list of potential charts, from death row statistics in the wake of Scott Peterson's sentencing to the sale of healthier bread.

USA Today was ridiculed as journalistic fast food after its 1982 launch, but most newspapers wound up copying its full-color, graphics-intensive approach to attracting readers. Now it's USA Today poking fun at its rivals with a "Never Gray" TV ad campaign that depicts unnamed broadsheets as so dull that their readers doze off.

With no home town to cover -- its sprawling campus, with rooftop tennis courts and landscaped ponds overlooking the Dulles Toll Road, seems to emphasize its isolation -- USA Today takes a special interest in local trend stories. "Study shows rural roads are most deadly," said one front-page piece, with a box listing five states with the highest death tolls. Another Page 1 effort on the hazards of teen driving included a 50-state chart. These are not the kind of stories that win Pulitzers -- the paper has never captured one -- but play to its core audience.

Catering to a 60 percent male readership, the paper gives sports big play, with recent front-page pieces on obese football players, NASCAR drivers lacking pensions and two best friends attending the college basketball playoffs.

Paulson, who says the front page needs "energy," reviews newsstand sales to see what sells and what doesn't. "The message is not to go soft at all," he says. Paulson stresses the importance of covering pop culture -- the paper played the Oscars at the top of Page 1 for three straight days -- and owns seven TiVo recorders to help him keep up with what's on the tube.

"We're not snobs," Paulson says, invoking one of his mantras. "If our readers care about 'Desperate Housewives' and Green Day or the new Nintendo platform, let's approach those stories with the same level of professionalism we do in covering Iraq. We don't apologize for reflecting our readers' interests."

Premature Review

How did The Washington Post manage to report that a Gridiron Club skit had lampooned commentator Armstrong Williams when the skit never took place?

"It was a goofball mistake on my part," says Post reporter Neely Tucker, who corrected it after the first edition and apologized to Williams. He says journalist sources told him of the planned skit -- working reporters are barred from the annual event -- and that he only learned later that it had been dropped. (President Bush did make a joke about Williams, who took $240,000 from the administration.) Williams is miffed that a Post correction on the incident didn't mention his name for those who might have read the early-edition story.

Pay to Play?

The Wisconsin State Journal's new monthly business publication is offering advertisers a $25,000 package that includes appointment to an advisory board, guaranteeing six meetings a year with key editors. Despite the appearance, Publisher Jim Hopson denied to Madison's Capital Times that "these sponsorships buy access."

Switching Sides

Gloria Borger, who co-hosted CNBC's now-defunct "Capital Report," is rejoining CBS News as chief political correspondent. "It just feels like going home," says Borger, who was persuaded in part by anchor Bob Schieffer, her former partner on "Face the Nation."

Back on political turf, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Dick Polman has some really stinging quotes from Democrats about the possibility of Kerry Redux:

"Don't be shocked if he launches another presidential candidacy in 2008, despite the fact that no U.S. senator has ever run, lost, and won a subsequent nomination. History notwithstanding, however, it may not be easy for Kerry to simply walk away, not after winning 59 million votes -- although there are plenty of Democrats who wish that he would.

"Right now he's uttering the ritual denials -- he told CNN Tuesday that talk of his running in 2008 is 'unbelievably premature' -- but he already has engaged in the preliminaries: starting a PAC (a political action committee to raise money for fellow Democrats, and help him amass IOUs), starting an advocacy group to push pet issues, e-mailing the 2.7 million citizens on his campaign. . . .

"But few seem giddy about the possibility of Kerry II. In the words of strategist David Axelrod, who worked for Kerry running mate John Edwards, 'The odds of him getting the nomination again are very dubious. This is an unforgiving business.'

" 'The thought of him running again is depressing,' party operative Eric Hauser said. 'Most people I know want new faces, not a shopworn candidate.'

"Kenneth Baer, former senior speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore, said, 'A lot of us bit our tongues during the campaign last year. We didn't want to be critical. But he blew it. He ran a horrible campaign. And he shouldn't think that the people at his rallies were fervently for him. They just hated Bush.' "

Some new Newsweek numbers on Bush:

"Only one-third of all Americans (33 percent) approve of his proposal to create investment accounts under Social Security, the poll found, while 59 percent disapprove. More Americans (44 percent) trust Congressional Democrats with managing the 70-year-old program. The poll also found that, with the exception of his handling of terrorism and homeland security, his approval numbers are down across the board. . . .

"His approval ratings are negative on the federal budget deficit (29 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove), health care (34 percent to 56 percent), the economy (42 percent to 51 percent) and the situation in Iraq (41 percent versus 54 percent). And on the heels of a Senate vote to pave the way for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the president's rating on the environment is also at a low point (41 percent approve, 45 percent disapprove). On terrorism and homeland security, however, Bush enjoys a comfortable margin of support. Fifty-seven percent of Americans say they approve of his work on these two issues while only about one-third (35 percent) disapprove."

I bet Kerry is poring over the poll right now.

Lots of libs have been taking shots at Paul Wolfowitz, but Michael Lind in Salon may be the most poetic in his denunciation:

"The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank, following his commission of a long and costly series of blunders as deputy secretary of defense in George W. Bush's first term, comes as no surprise to those familiar with his career. Wolfowitz is the Mr. Magoo of American foreign policy. Like the myopic cartoon character, Wolfowitz stumbles onward blindly and serenely, leaving wreckage and confusion behind.

"Critics are wrong to portray Wolfowitz as a malevolent genius. In fact, he's friendly, soft-spoken, well meaning and thoughtful. He would be the model of a scholar and a statesman but for one fact: He is completely inept. His three-decade career in U.S. foreign policy can be summed up by the term that President Bush coined to describe the war in Iraq that Wolfowitz promoted and helped to oversee: a 'catastrophic success.'

"Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years."

I always wanted to be perfect at something.

Columbia Journalism Reviewpicks up the tale of the newspaper industry's heroine of the moment:

"Until this week, few people outside southwestern Minnesota had ever heard of the Free Press in Mankato, a prize-winning daily with a circulation of about 22,000. Then, on Monday, the newspaper itself made news. Editor Deb Flemming told her staff she would eliminate herself from the roster rather than cut two reporting jobs in the newsroom to meet a new, more draconian budget imposed from above. 'By eliminating my position, it allows more reporters on the street,' she said.

"On April 9, she walks.

"Flemming, 50, is just the latest newspaper editor to feel the heat to cut costs, as corporate owners squeeze hard to improve the bottom line. Flemming's bosses decided her staff of 30 (which includes 13 full-time reporters) was too large, in excess of what some in the industry -- those folks who have reduced journalism to formulas -- say is necessary to do the job: 1 to 1.2 full-time employees for each 1,000 newspapers in circulation.

"That kind of cookie-cutter approach, said Flemming, ignores the fact that the Free Press covers eight counties, three colleges and a rapidly growing community with a vibrant economy and arts scene."

I hope I'm not boring anyone with this continuing debate over women in punditry (and if I am, just hit the scroll button), but I continue to see provocative posts. Here's a National Review piece from Catherine Seipp

"I think what's really missing from the op-ed pages is not more women writers but more real diversity among those writers. I can't think of any major female columnist who brings the perspective of raising children without the safety net of a full-time staff job and/or a comfortably employed husband -- in other words, someone with firsthand knowledge of life beyond the small, privileged circles of the media elite. But then I suppose that's what I would say, since that describes me. Still, I don't think I'm the only one to notice that the problem with the mainstream media is less that it's liberal and more that it's just plain elite.

"The big names among the XX-chromosome set of opinion writers (Ellen Goodman, Anna Quindlen, Molly Ivins, Maureen Dowd, et al) are all employed by major media corporations and haven't had to worry about where their next dollar is coming from for years."

The Nation's Katha Pollitt scoffs at the hard-to-find defense:

"Come April, the Times will have seven male op-ed columnists, plus Maureen Dowd. Not to worry though, Dowd writes, there are 'plenty of brilliant women. . . . We just need to find and nurture them.'

"Oh, nurture my eye. It may be true that more men than women like to bloviate and 'bat things out' -- socialization does count for something. So do social rewards: I have seen men advance professionally on levels of aggression, self-promotion and hostility that would have a woman carted off to a loony bin -- unless, of course, she happens to be Ann Coulter. But feminine psychology doesn't explain why all five of USA Today's political columnists are male, or why Time's eleven columnists are male -- down to the four in Arts and Entertainment -- or why at Newsweek it's one out of six in print and two out of thirteen on the Web.

"According to Editor and Publisher, the proportion of female syndicated columnists (one in four) hasn't budged since 1999. The tiny universe of political-opinion writers includes plenty of women who hold their own with men, who do not wilt at the prospect of an angry e-mail, who have written cover stories and bestsellers and won prizes -- and whose phone numbers are likely already in the Rolodexes of the editors who wonder where the women are."

Jeff Jarvis, acknowledged white male, doesn't like the framing of the argument:

"What with all the heated talk about whether there are enough women on op-ed pages and in blogs -- and precisely how many is enough, by the way? -- Chris Geidner, the law dork, looks at the shelf and finds few books by women. This could go on all day -- every medium imaginable doesn't pass one test or another.

"But why are race and sex the only tests? Once upon a time in America, wouldn't the test have been whether there are 'enough' Irish or Italians or Germans or Poles or Catholics or Jews? These days, shouldn't other tests be whether there are 'enough' gays or lesbians or rich or poor or suburbanites or urbanites or educated or uneducated or disabled or addicted or divorced or immigrant or Muslim or Hindu or Asian or Hispanic or homeless or fat or. . . .

"All this talk about quotas counts us as masses. That is not only inaccurate, it is essentially insulting. It refuses to recognize our individuality. This is a medium of individuals."