Al Neuharth and I go back to Little Rock in 1987, when I was a 30-year-old reporter at The Arkansas Gazette. Gannett's colorful CEO visited at least once: I recall seeing a catering truck pull up to the loading dock to unload great quantities of silver service pieces for some sort of dinner he was to host.But it was much more recently, April 2004, when we clashed, sort of, during the Jack Kelley scandal engulfing USA Today. I thought he was using his weekly column in the paper to undermine the top editor, Karen Jurgensen. She wasn't blame-free. But I resented Neuharth's obvious piling in -- especially when the overly tanned and rested media mogul wrote this outrageous column just four days before Jurgensen quit. That led to a fairly public exchange on Romenesko, which I was able to unearth just now from Salon's archives. Here's how Salon (nice job!) described the whole sordid episode on April 16, 2004, in full:
Blame the boss: USA Today founder Al Neuharth blames Jack Kelley's "new bosses" with global ambitions far from the paper's initial "down-home" intentions for the shamed reporter's misdeeds. "Real or self-imposed pressure grew to grab new readers and prizes. Kelley's deceptions from faraway places followed, spanning 10 years," he writes. (USA Today) "Oh, the irony!" USA Today reporter Jim Hopkins writes in a letter to Romenesko. "In 1987 -- just five years after the paper was founded -- Neuharth himself announced the launch of Jetcapade, billed as 'a seven-month assignment that will take Al Neuharth and a small news team to six continents and more than 30 countries.' Bonus irony points: Accompanying Al on that trip to record every scintillating moment was, of course, Kelley himself."Jeepers. I'm amazed I didn't get sacked for writing that!
Neuharth is 83 as I post this. And he's still writing his weekly USA Today column.
[Image: Friday's USA Today, Newseum]
What Al, has done under the table, when he was the CEO, of Gannett, can not be compared, to the misdeeds, of a Jack Kelley?
ReplyDeleteWhen Newharth was CEO he would jet in and the prep for the visit was excruciating. Executive secretaries of small Gannett spent sleepless nights fearing the paper or their bosses would be docked because the town didn't have a five star hotel. And OH! the wine list. Stocked in the room, high dollar had-to-order stuff that may or may not be consumed. In Muskogee, the executive assistant got the hotelier to repaint Newharth's room a more pleasing (and fresher) color.
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