Column

No room for tycoons

As other newspapers get gobbled up, our independence is protected.

By PAUL TASH
Published August 5, 2007

Nelson Poynter, who created the modern St. Petersburg Times, once observed, "I haven't met my great-grandchildren. I might not like them."

Last week, the descendants of the man who owned the Wall Street Journal agreed to sell that company to Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon.

Mr. Poynter would not have liked that. He believed fiercely that newspapers should be independent and rooted in their communities. To keep this one from falling into the hands of a larger corporation, he created a unique ownership structure that could outlive him.

Essentially, he gave away his life's work.

When Poynter died in 1978, he left the St. Petersburg Times not to his wife or his daughters, but to a school. Now named for its founder, the Poynter Institute draws on the profits of the newspaper and related publications to provide journalism training and programs that reach people around the world.

But Poynter left control of the company to the man he picked as his successor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor named Gene Patterson, who would select his own successor when the time came. Gene picked Andy Barnes. Three years ago, Andy picked me.

When Poynter announced his intentions, his lawyer sputtered that Patterson could decide to sell the Times and pocket all the riches that Poynter was giving up. As the story goes, Poynter cackled in triumph: Let the lawyers rely on pages of numbing prose; life ultimately depends on trust, and he would trust Patterson.

We are now into the third "generation" of the system that Mr. Poynter created. So far, so good. The Times has grown well beyond its origins in St. Petersburg to become Florida's biggest newspaper. We are creating new vehicles, both print and electronic. Nobody in my job wants to be the person who let things unravel.

Yes, these are challenging times in the news business, especially in Florida, where the moribund real estate market is dragging down the economy. But thanks to Mr. Poynter, this organization is built to weather a rough stretch.

Meanwhile, the perils he foresaw are coming to pass in other places. Some chains that gobbled up independent newspapers have discovered their own mortality. Knight Ridder, one of the proudest names in newspaper publishing, is no more.

And families, as the Wall Street Journal discovered last week, have a way of losing commitment to the founder's creation, especially as their ownership splinters with each successive generation. Admirably, the Graham family at the Washington Post and the Sulzberger family at the New York Times have resisted that tendency.

But the Bancroft family could not maintain ranks against the powerful temptation of Murdoch's offer, which was nearly double what the company's stock had been trading for on the open market. The Wall Street Journal, with 33 Pulitzer Prizes, will join a corporate stable that includes the New York Post, Fox News and Homer Simpson.

Personally, I will reserve judgment on what Murdoch will mean for the Journal. Presumably, he did not buy a trophy property to use as a spittoon. Murdoch has plenty of money, and he says he will put a lot of it into the newspaper.

His critics worry that Murdoch will "tart up" the Journal, or use it to advance his far-flung business and political interests. Murdoch has big investments in China, for example, and it would be a bitter shame if the Journal lost its edge in covering the human and environmental cost of China's economic excesses.

And so, to cover their embarrassment about taking Murdoch's money, the Bancrofts have negotiated an agreement that calls for the Journal to get a "Special Committee" - note the capital letters - of five eminent journalists and leading citizens to protect its editorial independence from its new owner.

The committee's charter runs on for 15 pages of numbered paragraphs, starting with the first "whereas" and finishing with provisions for any lawsuits that may get filed as a result. It is dense with that dialect of English that only lawyers love.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the guy who writes the checks usually gets to call the shots, and Murdoch is no shrinking violet. During the negotiations, he rejected the Bancrofts' original proposal as an insult, and that language was replaced with a version more to the liking of the new owner.

Besides, the great-grandchildren of the Bancroft family have overlooked what Nelson Poynter saw clearly when he provided for the future of his St. Petersburg Times: Contracts are a poor substitute for character.

[Last modified August 7, 2007, 00:21:45]