Trib’s Business Blunder
But last week O’Shea said it wasn’t so. “Basically,” he told me, “what it came down to was that David was doing a very good job of executing a bad idea. The bad idea was mine.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The Tribune put a high value on visual uniformity when it redesigned itself two years ago. A key element that Metro, Sports, Business, and many lesser sections shared was a column running down the left side of page one, a head shot of the author at the top. The front section was the big exception; no column was allowed to squeeze out one of the world’s most important news stories. O’Shea said it turned out that the public wants to read financial news the same way it reads world news–straight, with no frills or distractions. As for Greising’s column, the readers surveyed said they’d find it wherever the Tribune put it. “Ninety-five to 98 percent say, ‘If you put it on page two I’ll go there to read it.’”
Page one? Page two? Does it matter only to a prima donna? Greising didn’t think so, and neither did the Business staff. Consumer research notwithstanding, newspaper people know that where a column runs sends a message about what the paper thinks of it. Page one says to the reader: He’s our best. He’s important. He’s a reason to stop at this section. To the writer it says: You’re good enough to set an agenda and sell the newspaper. All a column on page two says is, if you happen to run across this you might think it’s interesting.
At the end of last week Karwath called the week a “whirlwind.” The staffers who’d complained to me about Greising had brought up some other beefs, and I asked Karwath about them.
As an outsider, I’m not about to nail an editor for consorting with someone he hasn’t even hired. His staff’s willingness to hold such a thing against Karwath suggests that he’s not the Tribune’s most popular boss; it doesn’t help that he put in his own time on the dark side, working in Tribune marketing before returning to the dignity of the newsroom. What some Business reporters suspect about O’Shea’s mysterious readership studies is that Karwath asked for them, expecting them to show what a good job he’s doing. But Karwath says, “It wasn’t me.” He’s pretty sure the first study was launched before he took over Business.
For example, last week the House Appropriations Committee voted 40 to 25 for a budget amendment that would keep the FCC from enforcing its new rule allowing TV networks to buy more stations. The next day the New York Times carried an 884-word article and a cheerful William Safire column covering the development. The Tribune posted two substantial articles on-line, one from Reuters, the other from the Tribune Company’s Los Angeles Times. But in the paper itself, where Jim O’Shea’s research says readers like to find out what’s going on, there were four paragraphs from the Reuters piece–a total of 124 words–buried inside the Business section.
