I had expected Galvin to go slow during his first few weeks as publisher. That would have been the prudent thing to do, especially for a new arrival who couldn’t be sure where the rocks and shoals were hidden. But I had misjudged the man once again. He was like a light switch—either on or off; he didn’t have a middle point. The newspaper instantly became his life—he seemed to have no family, no other job, to have never experienced the joys and miseries of running a big enterprise like this—and he was relentless in proposing new ideas, strategies and gimmicks. He embraced the institution and began to shake its foundations, just as he had promised. He seemed convinced that without such shock therapy, it would never change.
He arrived each morning at seven-thirty—the first person in the building, usually, except for the janitors and the security guards—and spent the first hour just reading the paper. He would circle articles with a yellow pen and fire off notes to people. “Loved your cops story!” “I’ve read that Bosnia story before!” “Why don’t we cover stock-car racing?” He gathered the senior staff each morning at nine-thirty to brainstorm, and it turned out they did have a few good ideas—all except Moran, the adman, who was wise enough to understand that it was time to pack it in. Galvin called in consultants too, and asked them to review the paper’s recent performance. And he began wandering around the building, dropping in on reporters, press operators, the nice old ladies who took classified ads on the telephone. The first question he asked was always the same: “How can we sell more newspapers?” He stayed late into the evening, talking to the copy editors and the nightside news aides and the pressmen—waiting most nights until the presses began rolling. Newspapers are easy to love, and it was obvious that Galvin was smitten.
He began to make changes, too—ones that people could see. The first thing to go was the family shrine in the lobby. The day after he arrived in the building, workmen began removing the statues and portraits of the various Hazens and Crosbys who had guided the paper for the past ninety years. He supervised the job in person—with his tie off, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his biceps—while the laborers hauled the tons of historic debris outside to a big truck. The families grumbled, but they didn’t want the memorabilia either, so it was sent to a warehouse in Waldorf, Maryland, pending further instructions.
Galvin then began tearing down the walls, quite literally. He wanted to open up the newspaper’s lobby and turn it into a sidewalk café. That seemed to me, at first blush, a completely ridiculous idea, but he was insistent. “Let’s invite the world in!” he admonished me. “It’s time for our people to stop hiding behind their desks and live a little.” So the contractors blew a hole in the glass-and-steel facade big enough to create a new open-air atrium, three stories high. Out front, Galvin decreed there would be a huge awning, as colorful as a circus tent, beckoning the public to come join us. He had the construction crew working day and night and spent much of the time with them, badgering and kibitzing.
When the heavy construction was finally done, Galvin gave the workers a giant banner and told them to drape it across the new atrium. The banner had been a secret project—he hadn’t even told me about it. It proclaimed in huge letters the Sun’s new slogan: GET REAL! That was the message. He would snarl it to editors who brought him stories that were too long or too boring. He would use it to push the production department to print more papers with the late baseball scores. He loved his slogan and repeated it continually. He even ordered fifty thousand buttons bearing the new credo. He wore one everywhere he went and was disappointed, though not surprised, when the staff failed to wear them too.
I SAW THEM TALKING in the cafeteria. They were sitting over by the window, in a corner. Maybe Galvin thought nobody would notice them there. They were eating salads off plastic trays. He was in his shirtsleeves; his upper body looked huge, and I thought to myself that he must have those shirts made specially for him, so they didn’t pull. Candace caught my eye and motioned for me to come to their table. I think she realized that everyone was watching them. She had a guilty look on her face, as if she’d been caught shoplifting.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Candace wants more money for foreign news,” he answered peevishly. “She’s being a pain in the ass. I told her we won’t sell a single extra paper in Falls Church because of our coverage of the Indonesian debt crisis, but she won’t let it go.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked him. She was sitting there pertly, mouthing the word money over and over.
“Give it to her,” answered Galvin with genial resignation. He liked having his pocket picked, at least by her.
“Do you understand him?” I asked when he had left the table.
“I think so. He has a short attention span. He’s easily influenced by the last person he talks to, so I try to make sure it’s me.”
“He’s in love with you,” I said.
“No, he isn’t. What makes you think so?” That was her one blind spot, I thought at the time. She didn’t understand the effect she had on men. It was a common failing of beautiful women. They were so conscious of themselves, they found it difficult to see how the world appeared to someone else.
“It’s the way he looks at you. You’re his prize. I sometimes think you’re the reason he bought the paper.”
She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in town. “You’re nuts,” she said. “Nobody makes Sandy do anything.”
SANDY GALVIN HELD HIS first meeting with the newsroom staff a few weeks after he took over. He was uncharacteristically nervous beforehand—asking me what he should wear and whether he should tell an opening joke. I told him to look serious and be serious—this was the staff’s first real chance to see their new publisher and hear what he really wanted. They were scared. Newspaper people liked to pretend they were open-minded, but when it came to their own affairs, they were intensely conservative. They hated change. So the fewer gimmicks, the better.
The staff gathered in the new atrium. It was a cool October morning; the wind was gusty, and fallen leaves occasionally swirled up from the billowy piles along the sidewalk and into the lobby. Galvin had decreed that, just this once, the lobby would be closed to outsiders so that we could hold our family meeting in private. Folding chairs had been arranged in a great semicircle around the podium, but as usually happens at such events, there was a crush of people sitting at the back, while the first few rows were empty. Galvin grabbed the microphone and announced that he would personally pay fifty dollars to the first person who sat in the front row. There was an immediate surge of people to the front, and Galvin handed the winner a crisp new bill. That took care of the seating problem.
A little after ten-thirty, Galvin began his speech. He was dressed in a simple blue suit, immaculately tailored, as always, but not flashy. He looked a little anxious, I thought, but that was probably good—it made him seem more “real.” I was standing behind the podium with the other assistant managing editors—my new colleagues! Candace Ridgway was next to me. “He looks like he’s auditioning for the part,” I whispered. She nodded, and I could see that she was worried too. He had never run a newspaper. These were her people; she wanted to protect him from their oceanic ill will, but she couldn’t.
“Good morning,” said Galvin. A few dozen voices reflexively answered back, “Good morning!”—as if it were a mass reeducation camp. He looked out at the stone wall of faces. “Are we having fun yet?” he asked teasingly. Nobody answered, until finally someone in the back shouted out, “No!”
“Well, lighten up, for God’s sake!” He looked back in my direction and winked. He’d promised, weeks before, to deliver that line at his first staff meeting, but I’d assumed he was joking. He turned back to his wary staff. “This business should be fun. Otherwise, what’s the point? We don’t pay most of you enough to put up with being miserable.” I looked out at the audience. The few people who had any visible reaction were rolling their eyes. They instinctively mistrusted him. Galvin
didn’t care; he suspected already that most journalists were fools.
“You don’t know me,” Galvin continued, “and I’m sure many of you are worried that I’m going to rock the boat. So as we begin our life together, I want to reassure you on that score: You’re absolutely right! I am going to rock the boat. Because I’m convinced that without a little rocking, the boat is going to sink.”
“Welcome aboard the Titanic!” croaked a wiseass in the back.
“Whoever said that, gets a raise,” said Galvin, beaming. “Because this is the Titanic! That’s my message to you: We’re in trouble. Forget about business as usual. The newspaper you love—which pays your salaries and provides medical care for your kids—is mortally wounded, and without help it may die. How do I know that? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? This man isn’t a journalist. What does he know? And you’re right, I’m just a businessman. This newspaper’s distinguished past has absolutely no relevance for me—all I care about is the future.”
“How’s he doing?” I asked Candace. She knew the crowd.
“If he wants to scare them, he’s doing a good job,” she whispered. “They look terrified.”
“All I can do is look at the numbers,” Galvin went on, “and here’s what I see: The Sun’s circulation has fallen every year for the past eight years. The declines haven’t been huge—a few thousand fewer people reading the paper each year—but they add up. What’s really scary is when you compare our losses in circulation with the growth of this region. Total population in the Washington area has increased fiftyeight percent in the past ten years. Yet over those same ten years, the Sun’s circulation has actually declined by about twelve percent. Did everybody get that? Population up fiftyeight percent; circulation down twelve percent.
“Now, what would you say about a business like that—that was selling fewer of its products each year, even though the market was growing by leaps and bounds?” There was silence in the great atrium. The loudest sound was the GET REAL! banner snapping in the breeze. “Come on, all you smart journalists. What would you say about a business like that? I want an answer.”
“It’s in trouble,” said the man in the first row who had won the fifty dollars. He must have felt he owed Galvin something.
“It’s dying!” shouted the new publisher. “Not a quick death, but a slow one—which is a horrible way to go. And I promise you, if the Sun continues on its current path, in ten years it will be dead. People will get their news other ways—from television, from the Internet, from radio, there are lots of possibilities. But they won’t keep buying a newspaper that is so stuck in its ways that it doesn’t even realize it’s bleeding to death. No, sir. They won’t buy a newspaper that bores them, just because it’s distinguished. Sorry, but life’s too short.”
“Jesus!” whispered Candace. “Where’s this headed? Mass suicide?” But I knew that Galvin was playing with them.
“How long do you think advertisers will put up with this situation?” he queried the group. “I’ve been talking to a lot of them the past few weeks, so I know the answer. Not very goddamn long! They will continue to advertise in the Sun as long as we are the best way to reach people who buy groceries and automobiles and furniture. The magic number is fifty percent. They will continue to advertise in the Sun as long as we reach at least half the households in this area.
“But do you know what our actual circulation penetration was last quarter? Do any of you museum-keepers want to hazard a guess? It was forty-seven percent, and falling. We are dying, I’m telling you. The advertisers all liked the Hazens and the Crosbys, and they’ll like me too. They think we publish a fine newspaper. But as a way to sell things, it’s a dinosaur. It’s heading for extinction.”
Galvin paused and surveyed the room. The audience looked shell-shocked. Harold Hazen had never made a speech like this in his life. He didn’t believe in talking about business in front of the editorial staff; it was undignified. Galvin reveled in it. Business was life—the raw human energy that made the serious, abstract stuff bearable. But he could see that they were dazed, nearing the point where they would stop listening.
“Have you heard enough bad news yet?” he asked. This time there were cries from the multitude. “Stop!” “Enough, already!” Even Candace and the other AMEs were shouting.
He took a step back from the podium. That sly half smile was on his face for the first time that morning. Let us conspire together, it said. Most of his new colleagues had never seen it before, but I knew what was coming. The gravitational force field of his charm had been deployed; he was going to draw them all in.
“So, what’s the good news?” He paused as if he was waiting for someone, anyone who liked, to answer the question and offer an alternative vision of where the paper should go. But there was only silence.
“The good news is that we can change. And we are going to change. We’re going to move from being losers to winners, and we’re going to do it in a way the world can measure—by gaining back the circulation we’ve been losing these past ten years. We are going to defy the conventional wisdom of the newspaper industry, and grow.
“I am so confident we can succeed that I am making a bet. It’s a pretty damn big bet too—I just invested a billion dollars in this newspaper. And the bet is that the Sun will increase its circulation by two hundred thousand over the next two years. That would put us over a million daily—and back over fifty-percent penetration. Gains like that are unheard of in the newspaper industry—they would make us the most successful paper in America. But I think the Sun can do it. Now, is anybody prepared to join me?”
The room was quiet. They were stunned, I think, by the boldness of what he was proposing. Noble failure had become part of the culture of the newspaper business. The idea of flamboyant success was foreign to most of these people. Galvin looked around and shook his head. How were they going to climb the mountain if they sat on their hands?
“Okay,” he said. “To make it easier for you, I’m going to sweeten the bet. I am prepared to set aside a portion of my stock to share with all of you—the newspaper’s employees. That stock is now trading at fifty-two dollars a share. If we can achieve my goal, the value of that stock will double or triple. As co-owners, we’ll all make money. If our bet fails, we all lose. What do you think of that?”
There was some applause, finally. The prospect of making money will do that, even for a roomful of journalists. I couldn’t help smiling. It was like being conned by an expert.
He took questions after that. An older man who identified himself as the Newspaper Guild shop steward jumped up immediately. He didn’t have a question so much as a rebuttal: Galvin’s stock-ownership plan was just a cover to allow him to cut wages and benefits. The Guild would fight to protect employees from the machinations of the new boss. Galvin had a disarming answer. He’d love to cut labor costs, he said—they were too high, in his opinion—but he couldn’t. They were covered by long-term collective bargaining agreements. As for the stock, any employee who didn’t want it was free to say no. Another questioner wanted details. How would Galvin raise circulation by 200,000? What could possibly lure so many new readers to the paper?
“Fun!” answered Galvin. “Surprise. Passion. And a bingo game!” That was the first public hint of Galvin’s love affair with contests. It turned out he’d had his consultants do a study of circulation gains by the major British papers in the 1990s, and a big factor had turned out to be contests—lotto, bingo, poker, football and basketball pools, crossword puzzles—all paying cash prizes to the winners. People loved them, and the Sun would have the best in the world.
Finally, one of the older reporters asked what I took to be the essential question. “This is all very interesting,” he said. “But what if we don’t want to do it your way? What if we don’t trust you, and we think you’re going to wreck the newspaper? What should we do then?”
There was no politic way to answer that one, and Galvin didn’t try. “You should look for
another job,” he said.
AFTERWARD GALVIN WANTED TO know how he’d done. It was endearing, this new self-consciousness. I told him he’d done fine, but that he had set himself an impossible goal. He could not possibly add 200,000 new subscribers to the paper in two years. There might be 200,000 extra households out there, but they were all busy watching television; he was setting himself up to fail. He seemed surprisingly unfazed. Two years was a lifetime away to him. If his bet was a loser, he would figure something out later. The issue was now.
“What did Candace think of my speech?” he asked.
“How should I know? Why don’t you ask her yourself?” I was tired of being an intermediary. If they could dance together, they could talk to each other too.
“She won’t answer. She says I’m her boss now, and it’s not appropriate. What kind of nonsense is that? If the publisher can’t talk to the foreign editor, what’s the point of owning a newspaper?”
I told him not to worry. “Nobody wants you to succeed more than Candace does. If she’s being careful, that’s why. She’ll relax. We’ll all relax. Even you.”
I SAT AT MY desk in my new office and watched the people scurry past my door. There were so many of them. News aides, copy aides, reporters, secretaries, assignment editors, copy editors, art designers—and they all worked for me! It was absurd, on its face, that they were under the nominal supervision of a reclusive creature of anxiety—a man who did not open worrisome letters, did not return problematic phone calls. I stared at the shiny brown finish of my desk—it was like staring at a muddy river on a hot day. It was teak, polished each night by invisible workers who emptied the trash and stacked my magazines and newspapers in neat piles.
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