Editor Urges More "sex, Comedy, And Tragedy"

News Reporters Rebel Against Sensationalism
by Derek VanPelt

"We're not going to give up. We're still trying to drag them into the 20th century before we get to the 21st. " - Willard Hatch, administrative officer Local 22, Newspaper Guild

The Detroit News may face a libel suit by the Newspaper Guild's Local 22, the union which represents its reporters and most of its editorial personnel, if management refuses to retract an unprecedented internal memorandum from News Editor Mike McCormick to his six copy editors directing them to increase emphasis on "sex, comedy, and tragedy" on the front page of the News.

McCormick ordered his staff on June 8 to come up with "at least one, preferably two or three, stories on 1A that will jolt, shock, or at least wake up our readers." As examples, he cited three recent front-page items headed "Nun Charged With Killing Her Baby," "Prison Horrors Revealed," and "They Chummed Together- and Died Together," plus a recent column by Pete Waldmeir which described the rape and assault of a couple after an auto accident on Detroit 's near west side.

Waldmeir's column, which McCormick said "should have been on the top of IA," "was an example of just the horrors that are discussed at suburban cocktail parties," according to the News Editor.

"We are aiming our product at the people who make more than $18,000 a year and are in the 28-40 age group," the memo said. "The stories that appeal to this group," McCormick went on, "should be obvious-they won't have a damn thing to do with Detroit or its internal problems.

"Look for sex, comedy, and tragedy," he concluded. "These are things readers will talk about the next day-and that's what I want."

The memo, which News management has defended and refused to disown as policy, has provoked a major rebellion among the daily's reporters and editorial staff. "Three fourths of our reporters were embarrassed, ashamed, and upset by it," according to Willard Hatch, administrative officer for Local 22 of the Guild. "They felt that it compromised their credibility and undermined what ethics are left at the News."

A week after McCormick's memo was written, copies were in the hands of several major local news media, but all chose to ignore it until Mayor Coleman Young took up the subject in a June 22 speech to the Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"Nobody expects any of the news media to flack for the city," said the Mayor, "but trying to titillate suburban cocktail parties with front page horror stories is not the proper role of the press.

"Bumps we can survive," he concluded. "Walls built of front page horror stories will defeat us all."

The News responded on its front page the next day with a defense of McCormick's directive by Editor Martin Hayden, characterizing it as a "continuing search for a single Page-One story or picture each day which would attract and grip readers because of its dramatic value."

Hayden denied that the memo constituted a policy statement, said McCormick was not a policy maker, and pointed out that ten other editors are involved in page one makeup.

He also charged the Guild with attempting to use the memo to extort concessions from management. "The Newspaper Guild," he maintained, "procured a copy and held it for several days, while it sought concessions from the News on other matters in which union officers were interested.

"When this ploy failed," the Editor asserted, "They released it to the mayor and to other press media."

The Guild's version, however, is quite different. They bear no special ill will toward McCormick himself, a "nice guy" who had been made News Editor only weeks before - without any public announcement, strangely enough - and who they consider "a flunkie of management."

Guild leaders fear that the memo does represent a dangerous trend at the News, if not an official policy. They point to the paper's frantic efforts to head off the Free Press in the current neck-and-neck circulation war, and to management's targeting of suburban Oakland County as prime expansion territory.

The News, which jumped out in front of its morning rival in 1960 after buying out the old Detroit Times, has seen its lead eaten away year by year until, at this point, it's anybody's guess who sells more papers.

The quality of the paper, and the morale of its staff, has been declining at a steep rate since 1973, when the News cut back on its reporting staff, reduced its spending, and stopped keeping pace with wage increases at the Freep.

On the McCormick memo's evident endorsement of a sensational approach to selling newspapers, one veteran media watcher commented, "They seem to be grasping at straws."

Editor Hayden is retiring next spring, and News management has been flying in prospective replacements from all over the country in recent months. According to close observers, however, nobody seems to want the job.
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News Rebellion
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In the meantime, the News has launched an out-state morning edition to try to compete directly with the rise of the Freep. In addition, News editors have copied many successful Free Press features and attempted to hire away numerous reporters from the morning paper.

The News, like its competitor, has of course focused its circulation drive on the populous and affluent white suburbs, the target of McCormick's "sex, comedy, and tragedy" stories. Guild sources speculate that the News Editor consulted with Managing Editor Burt Stoddard and the all-important circulation department before firing off his ill-fated missive. And some say that Stoddard intervened to keep Publisher Peter B. Clark from firing McCormick.

According to the SUN's sources, there is good reason to believe that News management intends to eventually dismiss McCormick, but not until "the dust lies down."

The Guild doesn't have much hope for reversing the sensational emphasis indicated in the McCormick memo, but "we hope that making it public will have a cleansing effect," says Guild officer Hatch. "At least we can show the public where it's at."

Many Guild members were reportedly wary of releasing the memo at first, but relented when management cold-shouldered their concern.

Upon learning of McCormick's directive from enraged copy editors, Hatch asked for a "general review meeting" with management. Contrary to Hayden's casually-dropped accusations of a "ploy," according to Guild officers, no other topics were discussed; a general review is held for the sole purpose of discussing issues of mutual interest, not to raise contractual questions or grievances.

According to the Guild, the essence of management's position, as conveyed by News Labor Relations Manager Caleb Atwood, was to defend McCormick's memo and refuse to disassociate themselves from it, leaving Guild representatives with the impression that management might indeed let it stand as policy.

"Management instead attempted to interpret the language of the memo," according to a Guild source, "implying that certain portions of it didn't really mean what they said." The Guild then asked to have someone rewrite the memo so as to clarify its meaning, but was rebuffed.

Hatch informed Atwood that if the News refused to retract the memo and disown it as policy, the Guild would make it public. After three days with no positive response from management, the Guild membership, at its regular monthly meeting, voted to release the memo and sent copies to Mayor Young, the NAACP, the Urban League, the Free Press, the Michigan Chronicle, and others.

The Guild's lawyers are presently drafting a letter to Editor Hayden asking again for a retraction; if there is none, they plan to file against the paper for libel on the basis of Hayden's charges, which they say amount to accusing the Guild of "extortion and blackmail."

"I'd be surprised if they retracted it," says Hatch. "Management at the News operates a lot like the Nixon White House. They perceive all their critics as the enemy. Rather than admitting they were out of bounds, they'll continue to stonewall."

Sensationalism, of course, is nothing new at the News-nor, to give everyone their due, at the Free Press either, although the morning paper gives its sex and violence a glossy coat of corporate liberalism, while the News (sometimes referred to as the "Police Gazette") has never had the guile to be so subtle about its lowest-common-denominator journalism. So it's almost appropriate that the News should become the first to get caught openly advocating it.

In recent years, two great traumas seem to have shoved the hapless News management farther to the sensation-mongering right. After the 1967 rebellion (referred to in both dailies, of course, as the "riot"), the News instituted its "Police Blotter" column, which trafficked so blatantly in crime and racism that the paper was obliged to discontinue it after widespread protests from the black community. It was replaced by an equally obnoxious and ill-fated "Crime Scoreboard," which listed the daily numbers of crime victims by race.

Following the 1968 strike which shut down both dailies, angry News executives, vowing "never again," bricked up its most vulnerable windows, installed retractable metal grates on the rest, and built their fortress-like Sterling Heights plant.

Thus fortified against invasion by their own employees, sealed off in their executive suites from the protests of the unwashed horde of reporters who make their paper for them, the policy makers at the Detroit News look out at a city and a world whose changes grow more unfathomable to them with each passing day, groping in the dark for a way to "jolt, shock, or even wake up" a population which seems less and less interested in what they have to say.

Perhaps, gentlemen, they've already awakened - and you're the ones who have gone to sleep.

Insert:

From the desk of Mike McCormick
Detroit News

When you have occasion to layout or revise 1A, please bear the following in mind:

We are aiming out product at the people who make more than $18,000 a year and are in the 28-40 age group.

Keep a lookout for and then play -- well -- the stories city desk develops and aims at this group. They should be obvious: they won't have a damn thing to do with Detroit and its internal problems. A fine example is Waldmeir's column on the bottom of 1A Monday. I think it should have been on the top of 1A.

While it dealt with Detroit and its horrors, it went beyond that. It was an example of just the horrors that are discussed at suburban cocktail parties. Notice I said suburban -- that's the $18,000 plus and 28-40 group.

What to do when city desk doesn't come across? Go to the wires. I want at least one, preferably two or three, stories on 1A that will jolt, shock or at least wake up our readers.

Go through the last few weeks of the Early Edition and you'll see what I want: 'Nun charged with killing her baby', Prison horrors revealed', 'They chummed together -- and died together'.

Sure, we've got to cover hard news -- but you've got the whole rest of the paper of all but the very hardest of hard news. Look for sex, comedy and tragedy. These are things readers will talk about the next day -- and that's what I want. I want 'em to talk about The News. I don't care if we step on toes or piss people off or make them laugh or cry. If we get them talking about our product I think our circulation will pop. Up!

That's what it's all about. An questions, ideas or anything for that matter, come and talk to me. In the meantime, use this as your guide.

Mike