The Richmond Times-Dispatch is making big changes at its newsroom, and a lot of people are unhappy about it. Unfortunately for the T-D, Style Magazine, the Richmond weekly that has taken delight for years in tormenting the city’s dominant media player, has taken the lead in covering the story. Not surprisingly, the slant has been mainly negative.
A new era started at the Times-Dispatch when Tom Silvestri, a former business editor who was promoted through the ranks at Media General, took over as publisher. Silvestri immediately put his imprint on the newspaper by overhauling the editorial/opinion page to give more prominence to state and local issues (see “RT-D Battles to Stay Relevant“). About a year ago, he also hired ex-Marine Glenn Proctor to replace retiring Executive Editor Bill Millsaps (see “Who Will Gather the News? A New Force in Richmond“).
Things percolated quietly for a while without any dramatic changes. Then Greg Weatherford wrote a cover story in the July 12-18 issue of Style about the “uncomfortable silence at the Richmond Times-Dispatch” (see “Truth and Consequences“). Weatherford picked up on the fact that Proctor was blunt, even harsh, in his critique of the T-D’s news product, that management had instituted a gag order on reporters, and that Silvestri had refused to be interviewed for the article, but he offered little context to suggest why management was doing what it was doing.
Since then, the resignation of Managing Editorial Louise Seals (see “Was T-D Exec Forced Out?”) and the abrupt termination of long-time free-lance columnist Randy Fitzgerald was more grist for the rumor mill. But the outside critics are missing the bigger story: Silvestri and Proctor obviously are trying to raise editorial standards at the newspaper. And that entails some house cleaning.
Although the T-D has a number of excellent writers and reporters, the newspaper has a reputation, even in its home town, of mediocrity. Style Magazine can take pleasure at poking its big, bad rival, as one would expect a spunky, competitive tabloid to do, but I’m sympathetic to Silvestri — and that’s not just because he was my boss when I was publisher of Virginia Business. He’s trying to change the culture of the T-D newsroom. That’s hard enough in any organization, even harder in an organization of journalists who all regard themselves as independent thinkers, and downright daunting in an environment in which stagnant ad revenues translate into constant cost-cutting pressure.
If I were in Silvestri’s place, I wouldn’t have talked to Style Magazine either. It was a no-win proposition. After years of negative stories from Style, he had no reason to expect that the magazine would treat the newspaper any differently than in the past. As for the gag order on the news staff, admittedly, it does seem a bit hypocritical: Journalists are big proponents of transparency for others. But looking at the situation from Silvestri’s perspective, I can’t blame him. It would be highly detrimental to allow malcontents to carry on their battle with management in the pages of Style. No other CEO would tolerate it, and there’s no reason for Silvestri to do so either.
I have a lot of old friends in the T-D newsroom, and I don’t want to see them treated shabbily. But as a regular reader of the Times-Dispatch, I want to see higher editorial standards. I want to see Silvestri and Proctor succeed. I hope they can pull off their changes without trashing newsroom morale.
Update: Jason Roop, Editor of Style, gives a spirited defense of the weekly’s coverage of the Times-Dispatch in the comments section of this post.
Update II: Editor & Publisher weighs in on the resignation of Managing Editor Louise Seals and the dropping of Randy Fitzgerald’s column.
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