Trib Buys Out Writers, Sells Out Readers
This is, by and large, a story of fortune smiling generously. Cawley and Povich are both in their late 40s. Both were being recalled to Chicago and neither wanted to come. “I want you to understand I have no animosity to the Tribune. It’s just a matter of I wanted to stay in New York,” said Cawley, sounding blissful. “This little window of opportunity opened. Elaine Povich told me about it. I decided to give myself two weeks to catch my breath and then look for a job in New York.”
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Margolis, about half a year from turning 55, said he was thinking of retiring then anyway for what he called an “existential” reason–discovering what he can do in life besides write an op-ed column before “I get too old and decrepit” to try. “One of the greatest jobs in the world” shouldn’t be done forever. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the young reporters don’t think I’m an irrelevant old twit. And they may be right. It’s certainly true that no one should be a columnist too long.” So he plans to retreat to some land he owns in Vermont and probably write a book, possibly teach, and perhaps contribute to somebody’s coverage of the ’96 elections.
“There’s clearly some imperative to reduce staff. And if you reduce senior staff you’re reducing higher-paid staff.”
“I worked at the Tribune 30 years,” Maclean told me. “It wasn’t hard to pull the trigger.”
His former staff discerned an undercurrent of admission: perhaps critics who’d complained that the Tribune was too often outreported–on stories as big as Dan Rostenkowski and Mel Reynolds–were right. Here’s a long excerpt from the memo:
“And we must find ways to give the reader the mundane information they need and do not receive from multiple sources. Forget to remind them that it’s time to set the clock back and you will quickly learn what is really important to them. That’s what my new assignment is about.”
