By Staff
A few moments this week have turned my thoughts to my short (so far) and tumultuous (but in a good way) career in the newspaper business. The first was the anniversary of my coming to Michigan to join the Leader team. The second was the retirement of my "arch-nemesis."
I've been in the newspaper business in one form or another for 10 years now, having started as a photography intern and a department head at my college paper and moving on to professional reporting before stepping into management. My career has been on a constant upswing, which I'm grateful for, but has also required enduring a lot of hard work, stress and personal conflicts.
One of the most stressful points in my career came when I first met my "arch-nemesis."
He was a reporter at another paper owned by our parent company, where I worked for two years before coming to Leader Publications. He had been there for 21 years at that point, and didn't relish taking orders from some punk editor 35 years his junior.
I had very distinct plans that were radically different from how things had always been done there – things that I knew from my previous editing job would improve our product to better-serve our readers. But because he was comfortable with the old ways and because I'm not always subtle in the ways I direct change, we immediately butted heads.
From Day One, he bristled at my changes and was very vocal in his opposition; something which, when you're younger than half your staff and new to a tight-knit community, makes change difficult.
Several aspects made him an "unfireable" employee, not the least of which was his weekly column, which had been a staple of the product for more than 20 years, and the love many of our older readers had for his reporting. He would take shots at me in his weekly column from time to time, and, respecting his creative freedom, I'd leave them in during the editing process. Keeping my ego out of the leadership equation was something I had to learn if I was going to survive my time there.
I pushed many changes through despite his opposition, and the paper was better for it. Our readership held strong and we diminished the impact of a competing daily product in our market.
But it wasn't all thanks to me.
When you're as stubborn as I was – and I still am to a certain degree – it takes someone like that reporter to learn a few important aspects of being a good leader:
– A leader doesn't always have the best ideas. Indeed, the best changes we made grew out of discussions with the whole newsroom; even when the idea was mine first, the nuances and small pieces that ultimately made it successful came from the group.
– A leader's opinion isn't the only one that matters. When you are given a lot of free reign as an editor and you have a desire to make sweeping changes, sometimes you spend too much time thinking about how it will impact your operation, rather than the readers, who are more important.
– Doing something just because it's the way someone you admire does it doesn't necessarily make it the right thing to do. I greatly admired the editor of the daily newspaper in my college town, and wanted to do things like his paper did. It took some time to realize that what works in one market won't necessarily work in another.
Because my changes were challenged, I had to justify them more thoroughly in my head, and had to prioritize them. Being a good leader is tough when an employee constantly challenges you, but in the reporter's case, it wasn't because it was personal – it was because we both thought we had the answers to serving our readers in the best way, and often times those answers conflicted. As our working relationship improved and he started to hear positive feedback about the changes, he started to open up to the "new" ways.
We were two stubborn, bull-headed people, and our disagreements often escalated to heated arguments, but by the end we had drawn an unspoken line. We would never be able to call each other "friends," but we reached a level of civility that I didn't think was possible after my first few weeks there.
On Thursday, I sent my "arch-nemesis" an e-mail, congratulating him on 24 years of dependable reporting and wishing him good luck and good health in retirement. I didn't expect a reply, but I got a nice e-mail back, and a thanks and compliment about my time as an editor there.
Sometimes an unexpected thanks is the best kind.