By Raechal Leone
American Journalism Review
Published: 9/26/2006
Excerpt:
When David Westphal, former managing editor of the Des Moines
Register, met with McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt about a job, Pruitt
pledged McClatchy would grow. Eleven years after that meeting at
corporate headquarters in Sacramento, Pruitt has made good on his
promise in a big way. McClatchy in June acquired Knight Ridder and its
32 daily newspapers (12 of which it immediately shed), making it the
second-largest newspaper company in the country.
For Westphal, who had run McClatchy's Washington bureau since 1998,
that meant an eightfold increase in his staff. He oversees the combined
bureau, now one of the larger ones in Washington. Located in the former
Knight Ridder offices downtown, it has 120 employees, most of whom used
to work for Knight Ridder. A relative handful -- 14 -- made the four-block
trek from the significantly smaller McClatchy bureau in the National
Press Building. ...
... At a time of falling newspaper circulation and newsroom layoffs,
Westphal's situation is rare. "If you're running a newspaper bureau in
2006, it is an unusual day when you find yourself with a dramatically
increased number of people," says Butch Ward, a distinguished fellow at
the Poynter Institute and a one-time managing editor of the
Philadelphia Inquirer, a former Knight Ridder paper. Westphal, he says,
must decide how to use his larger pool of resources, and "the question
he will wrestle with is, 'How much Knight Ridder culture do I embrace,
and how much do I ask the people of Knight Ridder to simply adapt to
our way of doing things?'"
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