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profile of the president 20 spring 2009 tae.asne.org The American Editor modern newspapering — shrinking profits, tight
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profile of the president
PHOTO BY KEVIN EISENHUT/ MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
Marty Kaiser at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
PUSHING FORWARD ASNE’s new president, Marty Kaiser, is a self-described news nerd, online and on paper, who honed his management skills in a ‘loony bin’ sports department and now guides a staff in Wisconsin that is piling up prestigious honors in tough times irst time I met Marty Kaiser was in February 1984. I was a 26-yearold sports reporter with The Baltimore Sun, covering high schools and looking for a promotion, and he was the new guy brought in from Chicago to shake up the sports staff. In those days, the Morning Sun was a lumbering big-city daily that needed a wakeup call. Walking into the sports department was like strolling into a baseball clubhouse on old-timers’ day. There was cigar smoke in the air, ashtrays on the desks and bottles of booze in some of the
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The American Editor
By Bill Glauber Bill Glauber is a general assignment reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Previously, he was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He also worked 25 years at the Baltimore Sun.
drawers. Marty pulled me into his office, which was about the size of a closet and attached to the wire room, and told me, “I don’t
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want you covering high school sports anymore.” I was liberated. Now, that’s the kind of guy you want to please, the sort of boss you’ll run through a wall for. And he’s the kind of boss you’ll turn to when you’re in a jam. Marty’s managerial genius is the ability to inspire confidence, play a hunch and put people in positions where they can succeed. He loves newspapers and the people who produce them. As editor and senior vice president of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he’s dealing with the all-too-familiar problems of
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profile of the president modern newspapering — shrinking profits, tight budgets and workforce reductions. And he does this while trying to inspire a staff to produce compelling stories for online and print. But here’s his secret: he’s still having fun, still getting a kick out of putting people in the right places and creating a great atmosphere in the newsroom. “The best newsrooms are where people aren’t afraid to speak up,” Marty says. “You want to hear from people. This is a good idea, this is a bad idea. You want to stir things up.” The incoming president of ASNE aims to take his message nationwide. He is eager to preserve journalism’s core mission of truthfully reporting the big issues and stories of our time while exploring ways to rebuild the industry’s business model. He says he wants to help with “news literacy,” teaching citizens the value and values of newspapers. He recognizes the importance of diversity, not just keeping newsrooms alive and refreshed with people of all ages and races that reflect the community at large, but also instilling a diversity of opinion. “The biggest thing is providing leadership through really turbulent times,” Marty says. He has boosters around the country, a network of colleagues and friends with shared experiences and shared ideals. Long ago, Marty was the sports editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, where his deputy was a young hard charger named Arnie Robbins, and his boss was managing editor Gregory Favre. “Marty cares about readers and cares about what they take away from that day’s paper: the stories, the photos, the graphics, the headlines,” writes Robbins, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “When it comes to ethical decisions, Marty reaches out broadly for advice, listens carefully, and then makes a decision, not on what might be the popular view, but what he believes is right,” writes Favre, Distinguished Fellow in Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute. “Part of his strength as a leader is that he doesn’t stifle opposing views and people’s creativity. And he hasn’t forgotten that in these difficult days that compassion and sensitivity are needed more than ever.” William Martin Kaiser, 58, was born in Milwaukee, raised in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka and schooled in daily newspapers in Florida. He has worked almost every job in the business, from copy boy to copy editor, running sports departments to
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Left, Marty Kaiser as a young boy in Wisconsin. Below, Marty, his wife, Claudia, and children, Emily and Wike.
running a newspaper. He and his wife Claudia, a business owner, live in Milwaukee in a graceful English-style home. His children live in Washington. His son, Wike, 27, works for a financial consulting firm, while his daughter, Emily, 23, works for an online marketing firm. In some ways, newspapers are in Marty’s blood. His uncle, Jim Bellows, was a legendary editor in New York, Los Angeles and Washington. “I was a newspaper nerd who spent allowance money to buy newspapers,” he says. “I’d cut up the newspapers and lay
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them out, create my own little newspaper.” He graduated from George Washington University with a degree in sociology but he ended up working where he felt most comfortable, in a newsroom. As a kid in the business, he started his career in Florida at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Clearwater Sun, eventually supervising sports writers and editors, some of whom were nearly twice his age. He even worked a stint as a public address announcer at an automobile drag strip raceway. In 1977, at age 26, he hit the journalis-
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profile of the president Left, “Although I have received tons of journalism guidance in my career from Gregory Favre, here I am getting cooking instructions from him.”
Above, Jan. 1998 Marty at the Super Bowl in San Diego with son, Wike, 16 years old at the time. “Unfortunately, the Packers lost to the Broncos.” Marty says. Right, Halloween 1994 — prepared to greet trick or treaters.
tic big time: the Chicago Sun-Times. He landed right in the middle of a new golden age of sports in Chicago and within two years was running the department, a hotbed of talent after the Sun-Times and the old Chicago Daily News combined staffs. This was the Sun-Times in its glory days, boasting the likes of John Schulian, Mike Downey, Phil Hersh, Randy Harvey, Ron Rapoport, Jerome Holtzman and Richard Justice. When he wasn’t helping put out the paper, Marty was sitting in a lunchroom listening and trading barbs with The American Editor
columnist Mike Royko. Schulian, who went on to write scripts in Hollywood, writes that with all that talent at the paper, “you’d think that all Marty had to do was push buttons.” “But the Sun-Times sports department, as terrific as it was, was also a loony bin,” he adds. Schulian says one writer was a minister who often asked Marty to get down on his knees and join him in prayer. The horse racing writer argued with the high school writer over which one of them had the larger readership. Another writer fretae.asne.org
quently had women he met on the road mail him their underwear at the office. Marty was relentless and intense. But the guy who was even more intense and probably had the biggest temper was Schulian. “I broke at least one telephone with my fist and raged at the heavens over whatever injustice I thought was being inflicted upon me,” Schulian writes. “The only person I never lashed out at was Marty.” During the 1981 World Series, Marty, through another editor, asked Schulian to write an early column that would hold for the first edition and then get subbed out. Schulian refused. Around 20 minutes later, Schulian’s phone in the press box rang. It was Marty. Years later, Schulian recalls the conversation. “I hear you’re not writing an early column,” Marty said. “Hell no,” Schulian replied. “Early columns are crap. I don’t write crap.” “Nobody’s asking you to,” Marty said. “But we need an early column.” “Well…” Schulian stammered. “You’re an hour from deadline,” Marty said. “Better get started.” The column was written. “Marty was the same with everybody,” Schulian writes. “He never flinched at the craziness or the runaway egos.” In 1982, when Royko published “Sez Who? Sez Me,” a collection of his columns, he signed the book to Marty, by saying, “Anybody who does your job as well as you do it, ought to be named state — no, national — Director of Mental Health.” What made Marty leave Chicago was the sale of the Sun-Times. Like many of his colleagues, he decided it was time to move on, and he wanted an opportunity run more than the sports department. It was February 1984 when Marty showed up in Baltimore. He was there to rebuild the sports department with the promise that once that assignment was accomplished he would be promoted and be responsible for news areas. But before he could make any big moves, the pro football Colts pulled up stakes in the middle of the night and moved to Indianapolis. Losing the NFL team could have derailed Marty’s plans. But he turned the Colts story into an opportunity, directing the paper’s coverage and leading metro and national reporters in addition to sports reporters to cover the story. He then scoured the country to bring in top sports writing talent and got immediate results, as the paper picked up Associated Press Sports Editors’ prizes, including being named one of the best sections in the spring 2009
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Above, Marty is introduced to the staff in January 1994 when he was named managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal. Left, On a panel at the 2001 APME convention at Miller Park in Milwaukee with Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and baseball great Hank Aaron.
country, in his first year. Those were fun, free-wheeling times. John Eisenberg, brought in from the Dallas Times-Herald, was set loose, sent around the world in search of great sporting tales, from the Great Alaska Shootout to the World Track and Field Championships in Rome. “Marty said go to town and shake it up,” Eisenberg says. It was the copy desk that was shaken, though. Eisenberg’s penchant for stashing the game score a few graphs down drove some of the copy editors to distraction. “I get a call from Marty and I said, ‘Marty, the desk is on me; what am I doing here?’ Marty paused and said, ‘Don’t worry about it, just do your thing.’ He was the ultimate writer’s editor,” Eisenberg says. Eventually, Marty switched from sports to news and rose to associate managing editor. Sandy Banisky, who was then a top reporter covering City Hall and eventually 22
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became the paper’s deputy managing editor, recalls how she would go to Marty to hash out problems. “He was the guy who would listen, looking rather solemn, and then crack a gentle joke that would cut through whatever anxiety I was dragging around,” she says. Banisky, now the Abell Professor in Baltimore Journalism at the University of Maryland, recalls agonizing for days over whether to leave the paper for a job in local TV. Marty listened, and finally, with a little smile, told her, “Well, if you go, be sure to get a lot of money.” Marty made his move back to the Midwest in February 1994, to become managing editor of The Milwaukee Journal. One of his first hires was Garry Howard, then a young deputy sports editor working for the Philadelphia Inquirer. At first, Howard brushed aside Marty’s calls. Finally, Howard relented and came to Milwaukee for a job interview, which cointae.asne.org
cided with a basketball game featuring the local Bucks against the Portland Trail Blazers. One of Howard’s childhood friends, Rod Strickland, played with the Trail Blazers. So did NBA star Clyde Drexler. After the game, Howard brought Marty into the locker room to meet Strickland. Drexler came over, talked with Marty and said he was impressed that The Journal was going to hire an African-American editor to run the sports department. “When Marty hired me, I became the only black sports editor in the country,” Howard says. “With Marty, race never came up.” Within 16 months of his arrival in Milwaukee, Marty helped guide the merger of The Journal with the morning Sentinel. It was a painful experience: jobs were cut and careers were ended as the two staffs became one. In early 1997, Marty became editor and senior vice president of the Journal Sentinel. George Stanley, the Journal Sentinel’s The American Editor
profile of the president managing editor, says Marty tells him not to bemoan how things were years before but to just look at the situation and figure out “how to do great journalism with the staff we have.” “He knows how to push and encourage people to do better work,” Stanley says. His management style hasn’t changed much over the years. He delegates authority, giving responsibility to reporters, photographers and editors to produce the best paper possible. He is eager to discuss stories, headlines and photos. But the final product is a team effort. “Marty is a word geek down to his socks,” says Kathy Schenck, assistant managing editor in charge of the copy desk. “Nothing warms a desk chief’s heart more than seeing your editor’s eyes light up when he finds an answer in ‘Garner’s Modern American Usage.’ ” Marty is equally adept at analyzing budgets and working with senior-level management. Elizabeth “Betsy” Brenner, who took over as Journal Sentinel publisher in January 2005, says she knew of Marty’s reputation as a top editor. “I was in awe of him,” she says. Brenner says editors and publishers “have to be in sync, finish each other’s sentences, read each other’s minds.” She and Marty quickly learned to complement one another. “He’s guarded, absolutely focused on the work,” Brenner says. “He has a wonderful sense of humor, but you have to scratch to find it. I’m an easy read. He isn’t.” Brenner, executive vice president of Journal Communications Inc., says Marty doesn’t take himself seriously “except in the core bedrock of journalism.” Shortly after Brenner arrived in Milwaukee, the departure of several circulation department executives, and a resulting lawsuit propelled the newspaper itself into the news. Brenner says Marty told her, “I don’t want anyone to beat us on a story about us.” He assigned the story to one of the paper’s savviest business reporters, Rick Romell. “It was uncomfortable, and that’s OK,” Brenner says of the coverage. Over the years, Marty found happiness, a sense of satisfaction and an elusive Pulitzer Prize. In 2008, Journal Sentinel reporter Dave Umhoefer was awarded the Pulitzer in local reporting for a six-month investigation into the Milwaukee County pension system. In many ways, these are the best of times journalistically at the Journal SenThe American Editor
“Marty was the same with everybody. He never flinched at the craziness or the runaway egos.” John Schulian tinel. Reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger received a Polk Award for their coverage of potential toxins found in everyday consumer products such as “microwave-safe” plastics and baby bottles. Dan Egan continues to zero in on the region’s greatest natural resource, the Great Lakes. Mark Johnson, a two-time Pulitzer finalist, focuses on one of the state’s great scientific tales, stem cell research. Columnist Dan Bice turns up the heat on politicians, school board members and business leaders. Marty was named Editor & Publisher’s Editor of the Year for 2009. A few days after the announcement, the newsroom got together and threw a party for Marty. The staff compiled a video to honor Marty, featuring pranks, inside jokes and thanks. But overriding it all was a sense of respect for what Marty achieved in Milwaukee and what he has meant to those who work for him. In the background, of course, was the continuing economic plight that faces almost every newspaper in the country. Despite the honors, the paper has endured tough times. Marty has presided over a shrinking newsroom — about 50 jobs were cut with three voluntary buyouts since 2007. “Marty has been brutally honest with everyone throughout this difficult process,” Brenner says. “He has honored commitments to people. He hasn’t sugarcoated the aftermath of this. No one could say they didn’t know what was likely to happen.” And yet, there is a sense of optimism, of pushing on. He isn’t finished putting his stamp on the Journal Sentinel. “I am the luckiest editor in this country to work with people in this newsroom,” Marty says. “When I became editor in 1997, I never thought I’d be in the same job 12 years later. But it is a new job all the time.” ❖ tae.asne.org
A closer look Born: Milwaukee. Grew up: Winnetka, Ill. Wife: Claudia, president and founder of an interior design and contracting company. Children: Son, Wike, 27, senior associate with a financial consulting firm, Washington, D.C.; daughter, Emily, 23, online analyst for a social media marketing firm, Washington, D.C. College: George Washington University, B.A., 1973. First newspaper job: Delivering Chicago newspapers. Fifty papers a day, $3 a week. Second newspaper job: Copy boy, Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Strangest job: Announcer at an automobile drag racing strip, Bradenton, Fla. (I know nothing about cars.) Books on my nightstand: “Comedy At The Edge” by Richard Zoglin and “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk. Movies I can’t stop watching: “This is Spinal Tap,” “Animal House,” “Slap Shot,” “All The President’s Men,” “Chinatown” and “The Commitments.” Music I love to hear: Jazz (John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Miles Davis) and R&B (old school). Proudest moment: When I grew to really understand just how fortunate I was to have the parents I had. My father, a CPA, views the world through a practical business mind. He is also calm and optimistic. He’s still playing tennis and has clients at 87. My mother, who died from ovarian cancer 11 years ago, was nurturing and creative (the most beautiful gardener) but terribly focused. She didn’t tolerate much down time. Her philosophy: “You don’t get anything done sitting around alone — you reach out to other people in life and make things happen. That’s how a good life is lived.” Their combined support was amazing — they also shared a tremendous sense of humor, which goes a long way in this life. The calm, practical optimist married to the creative, energetic helper — I’ve relied on these values my whole life. ❖
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