“Newsrooms” Items

Newsroom Stress, 1995

Stress in the Newsroom: A Snapshot from 1995

In July 1995, the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) conducted a survey to assess the levels of stress experienced by editors in American newsrooms. This was a follow-up to their 1983 study.  The 1995 APME Stress Survey offered a look at the emotional, physical, and professional tolls borne by editors at a pivotal time in media history. The report was chaired by Peter Bhatia, who was then at The Oregonian. [The following is a summary generated by AI.]

The world of journalism in 1995 was beginning to feel the tremors of the digital era. Pagination software was being introduced, newsroom resources were shrinking, and economic pressures were growing. But even amid these shifts, the most powerful insights from the survey remain deeply human: the pressures of responsibility, the desire for excellence, and the personal sacrifices made in pursuit of the truth.

Here are a few key findings that stood out:

A Job That Challenges—And Overwhelms

  • 90% of editors were highly committed to their work, and 62% felt highly challenged.
  • Yet only half reported having a sense of control over their responsibilities.
  • Editors were spending an average of 52 hours per week at the office, with an additional 5 hours at home.

What Fueled the Stress?

  • The top stressors: workload, understaffing, deadline pressure, and lack of resources.
  • Editors reported being “locked in” and feared being unable to change their lifestyle.
  • New pagination technology, while promising efficiency, increased stress for 67% of those who implemented it.

Mental and Physical Health Impacts

  • 41% of respondents had experienced a health issue due to job-related stress.
  • Hypertension (17%) and ulcers (9%) were among the most reported conditions.
  • Nearly half of editors said their job was “highly stressful,” with three-quarters experiencing high stress multiple times per week.

Stress at Home

  • 76% said their family was exposed to public scrutiny because of their editorial role.
  • Editors found it difficult to balance their jobs with family commitments, especially in dual-career households.
  • Marital conflicts, sleep disruption, and emotional burnout were common themes.

Coping Mechanisms

  • Editors turned to reading, music, exercise, humor, and spending time alone to decompress.
  • Alcohol and tobacco use were notably on the decline
  • Few turned to professional therapy—less than 10% reported seeing a counselor or therapist.

A Snapshot of a Changing Era

This survey, compiled and analyzed by Bardsley & Neidhart Inc., is more than just a stress audit—it is a time capsule of journalism at the edge of digital transformation. Editors were not only managing newspapers; they were managing expectations, shrinking budgets, changing technologies, and the growing emotional weight of their public roles.

As we look back from 2025, it is striking how many of the issues from 1995 remain relevant. Today’s media leaders still wrestle with technological change, financial pressures, and the challenge of maintaining editorial standards.

? Read the full 1995 APME Stress Survey here

Big City Newspaper: Chicago Tribune in 1975

The Chicago Tribune Marketing Department, sometime in 1975 [my guess] produced a guide to the newspaper for the educational services department of the company. It was a look, written for consumers [young ones] about how the Tribune was created — from reporter to editor to presses. The guide even had instructions on how to fold a newspaper page into a pressman’s hat. What’s nice about this guide is the photographs of so many of the people I remember working with. [And it does have a picture of me looking at a picture page.]

The Tribune at this time was publishing both morning and afternoon editions.  We called it the 24-Hour Tribune.  There were even t-shirts. Here’s a bit about that unique time:

In 1974, the Chicago Tribune became a 24-hour newspaper with fresh editions morning, afternoon and evening. The shift from being a morning newspaper to the24-hour publication cycle meant that The Tribune was available whenever a reader wanted it.

The publishing cycle begins in late afternoon with the Green Streak edition which contains late stock market quotations. Next off the press is the Midwest edition, designed primarily for circulation outside Chicago and suburbs.

The Three Star Morning Final comes next–it’s the edition you’ll find delivered to your doorstep in the mornings. The Four Star Morning Sports Final follows; you’ll find it on the newsstands in the morning with the night’s sport results. The Five Star Morning Turf Final is available later in the morning. Completing the 24-hour publication cycle is the afternoon 7 Star Final for afternoon home delivery customers and afternoon newsstand sales.

The publisher at the time of publication was Stan Cook; the editor was Clayton Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick was the person who hired me in 1972. There a nice picture of Bill Jones, one of the best editors at the paper during my tenure. Jones, who became managing editor, died way too early at age 43.

If you want a look at what it took to produce a daily newspaper, this is a good guide. For me, it is fond memories.

Pagination and a Look Into the Future of Newspapers

In 1999 I was asked to contribute to a book about pagination being published by the Society of News Design and the Association of News Editors. You can download the entire book from here.

At the end of the article I made some “bolder, out-on-a-limb” predictions:

  • Design as a unique job function in newspapers will slowly dissolve into other editing responsibilities.
  • Editing will encompass more than the technical aspects of copy editing and take on more responsibilities for the entire infopacks.
  • Computers will automatically handle most of the routine production responsibilities, freeing editors to do lust what we have always wanted them to do – make journalistic choices on behalf of their readers and the community.
  • Most, if not all, maps and charts will be produced by software. There will be fewer artists at newspapers doing “art work.”
  • The presentation of information will be of such importance for the organization that the senior editor with such responsibilities will report to the publisher.

I like my final paragraph:

Newspapers are on the verge of freeing themselves from the limitations of their production equipment. While I would not predict the end of newsprint as we know it, the era of print-centric delivery is coming to an end. We need to look beyond technology to find the solutions to organize and motivate our workforce for the new millennium. If we are successful, this is the last pagination book you will ever read.

Technology and Pagination

In 1999 the Society for News Design and the American Society of Newspaper Editors published a book about how managers could more successfully integrate new technologies into their newsrooms.  This project include a number of chapters from the leading technologists in the newspaper industry, including:

  • David M. Cole
  • Heidi de Laubenfels
  • Olivia Casey
  • Ed Kohorst

While pagination, strictly speaking, is an outdated technology, the concepts about workflow and organization are still very valid. 

I wrote about Embracing Change when it came to future technologies. There were a few things I got right:

  • Working at home, even doing newspaper design
  • Always connected to a network
  • Using databases to edit and present content
  • Constant feedback on what consumers are reading

“You May Need to Rethink Your Whole Organization”

I wrote an article the American Society of News Editors [ASNE] in October 1996 about how organizations need to rethink their structures and workflows when the introduce new technologies, such as pagination. Here’s my lead:

Pagination is an “old” technology. More importantly, pagination will not help a newspaper in the “new media” landscape of today. What’s really important are the opportunities of a publication database system. We can develop all the online, fax, and other new media products in the world, but unless we are lucky enough to be hiring dozens of new employees over the next ten years, we need to figure out better ways of using our existing resources of staff and equipment.

The article was based on a speech I gave at a Seybold Conference earlier in 1996.

Chicago Tribune Photo Request Form, 1985

An example of the Chicago Tribune’s photo request form used in 1985. Picture assignments were made through the picture assignment desk, either in the main city room or in the suburban Hinsdale, IL, bureau. Assignments were requested by either the reporter working on a story or by the source editor who is handling the story.  However, according to note Howard Finberg wrote in 1985, “the picture assignment editor of the picture editor controls photo assignment traffic and determines which story takes precedent when time and manpower are short.“

Changing The Chronicle’s Visual Image. Or Not.

In late 1986, I wrote a memo to the paper’s publisher (Richard Thieriot) and editor (William German) urging a discussion about the design of the San Francisco Chronicle.  It was a memo deeply rooted in understatement as both Thieriot and German saw little need to change the appearance of the newspaper. I urged a gradual approach, an evolutionary method of updating the typography and design of the newspaper.  Part of the argument for change involved addressing the weakening economic aspects of the paper.

However, now is the time in which we must look ahead and decide on the type of newspaper we wish to present to our current readers over the next several decades. And we need to decide on what type of paper
will be necessary to attract new readers among those who live in the Bay Area but do not read The Chronicle.

While change would eventually come to the paper, the reaction to the memo was mostly silence.

I did like making this point about the importance of design:

While design cannot keep readers, but it can attract them to the paper and let the content and editing hold them. We are missing out on readers who move to the Bay Area from other parts of the country who are accustomed to a more organized, easily readable design in their daily newspaper.

To the casual reader, the images in the memo aren’t very dramatic.  However, if you knew the Chronicle from that period, you would remember they were still using wavy rule boxes around photographs.  Yuck. Kudos to John Sullivan for his work on the prototype pages.

How the Arizona Republic Installed its 2nd Gen Pagination System

One of the most read newspaper industry technologist is David Cole, who published “The Cole Papers.”  In 1997 he sent one of his reporters, John Bryan, to write about how Phoenix Newspapers replaced its first generation of pagination with a new system from CCI Europe.  One of the reasons we selected CCI in 1995 was its ability to hold items in a publishing database. Here’s one of my quotes from the article.

Chief among the Republic strategist is Howard Finberg, longtime industry pundit, designer and evangelist who professes to be interested in pagination only as a means to an end.

“We don’t want to paginate anymore,” the paper’s director of information technology said. “I believe in publication systems that slice information into smaller and smaller pieces,” which can be used by an infinite number of information “products,” such as a web site, CD-ROM or whatever comes down the pike.

The article described how we made the transition [not quite complete when the reporter visited] and our vision for the future of newspaper publishing.

The New Newsroom

One of the challenges for newsrooms in the 1990s was the introduction of pagination technology.  While it was clear that pagination equipment would change how the newspaper would be produced, many managers failed to recognized that installing the new software (and the computers to run it) was an opportunity to rethink the workflow of how a newspaper is produced.

At 1993 Seybold* conference in San Francisco, I gave a talk titled “The New Newsroom.” The subtitles on the PowerPoint reflected my focus:

  1. How technologies are changing organizations.
  2. How organizations are changing technologies.

I argued there was a need for a new type of worker and that managers should worry more than print — audio, fax and video.  Remember, online services were just starting.

My last slide called for “techno-evangelism” and finding the leadership within the newsroom to make the changes needed.  And is a foreshadowing of my future, the slide had these bullet points:

  • Teaching yourself.
  • Teaching your staff.
  • Teaching your boss.
*Seybold Seminars was a leading seminar and “the premier trade show for the desktop publishing and pre-press industry.

How a Graphics Editor Works at the Chicago Tribune

The first edition of the journal of the Society of Newspaper Designers (SND) featured excerpts of a speech I gave the the organization’s first convention.  The gather was held in Tribune Tower, in a meeting room called Campbell Hall (if memory serves).  That meant we probably had no more than a couple of hundred folks in the room.  The editors of Design took a transcript of my speech and turned into an article.  However, I didn’t know any of this until publication.

Reading it over today still gives me lots to cringe about — I was a bit arrogant.  OK, I was a full of self-importance about this new role.  The Chicago Tribune was the leader in informational graphics.  And I was the Graphics Editor.  I wished I had remembered to talk about how this was a team activity, not a solo sport.

However, I still like my conclusion, that all of the work we do is about making it better for the audience:

You can have the prettiest looking graphics in the paper and it doesn’t mean anything  if  it doesn’t  communicate with readers. That’s the most important thing as far as the Tribune and the graphics editors go. If we’re not communicating  with  the reader, we’ve lost it all. It’s my job to go for it.

Not sure what I was going for, but I guess we did.

Here’s the article from Design

Draft report pages from the July 2011 ASNE and American Press Institute survey of newspaper editors

ASNE-API Leadership Survey, July 2011

This is the draft report of a joint survey by the American Society of News Editors and the American Press Institute, dated July 20, 2011. Invitations went to 1,830 editors at about 1,400 daily newspapers, 50 online-only news sites and the deans of 100 accredited journalism schools. One hundred five people responded — nearly half of them from papers with circulations of 50,000 or less, which is where most American dailies live. Respondents rated 27 statements about content and audience, leadership and development, and organization and operations. ASNE planned to use the findings to shape training for top editors over the following 12 to 18 months, beginning with a regional workshop in Lexington, Ky., in October.

The framing of the report is a tension the authors return to again and again — editors who are determined and editors who are worn down:

These are editors focused on two things. Philosophically, they are committed to their fundamental, First Amendment roles. Pragmatically, they will do what it takes to weather the industry’s transformation as it struggles in the new “print dollars to digital dimes” world.

The three top-ranked opportunities or challenges: maintain quality writing and editing despite budget and staffing cuts (83.8 percent called it “very important”); redefine roles, strategies and tactics for moving newsrooms from once-a-day publishing to continuously updated, 24/7 news; and exploit mobile opportunities to distribute content and build audience.

What gives the document its bite are the unattributed editor comments:

“It’s time,” wrote one editor, “for newsrooms to focus on finding ways to do fewer things well, instead of doing everything poorly.”

“Too many interruptions, distractions,” wrote one editor. “Not able to put together a stretch of time that’s long enough to focus and complete anything that can’t be accomplished in five minutes. … I can get a lot of things started, but it’s becoming harder and harder to see them through to successful completion.”

“We are all in this same leaky boat together and it’s time to let go of our old ideas about labor and management. We all need to start building a new ship — and fast.”

The draft press release attached to the report quotes Linda Grist Cunningham, vice chair of ASNE’s Leadership Committee; Carol Ann Riordan, interim executive director of the American Press Institute; and Mizell Stewart III, editor of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press and chair of the Leadership Committee.

“The affirmation that editors can stay focused on good journalism as they wrestle with spreadsheets and new technology isn’t unexpected,” said Linda Grist Cunningham … “But it certainly is reassuring.”

The report ends with the question it can’t answer:

The question remains: Which will prevail? The determination to succeed, to beat back the naysayers? Or the resignation that comes with fear, inertia and a mourning of the loss of the past?

Reading this in 2026 — fifteen years later — the survey is a useful marker of where newsroom leadership thinking stood at the start of the mobile era. The priorities the editors named are no longer strategic questions; they were settled by events. What remains strikingly current is the complaint that there is no time to think, and the one editor who predicted the tablet future and wrote, “This is the generation of transition.”

Typed 1996 memo from Phoenix Newspapers reporting on a CCI Europe seminar about newsroom technology and reorganization

Technology and a New Newsroom: 1996 Memo

In October 1996 Phoenix Newspapers was invited to a CCI Europe seminar on how news organizations were changing and what technology they would need next. This memo is my report back to John Oppedahl, the senior editor of The Arizona Republic, with copies to Chip Weil, Mal Applegate and Pam Johnson.

The company in the room was good: senior executives from the Chicago Tribune, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, the Orlando Sentinel, De Telegraaf of the Netherlands, Ullstein Verlag of Germany, Politiken of Denmark and the Helsingin Sanomat of Finland, plus CCI’s management team led by managing director Carsten Christensen. Gunther Bottcher of IFRA facilitated. CCI wanted to use what it heard to plan its own direction for the next two to five years, and to shift from an engineer-driven company to one focused on customer needs. The newspaper people at the table liked that idea a great deal.

My summary came in two parts. The good news was that Phoenix Newspapers wasn’t out on a limb:

PNI’s vision of an integrated and fully connected system is a concept shared by all of the participants and being implemented at those newspapers today.

The not-so-good news was that getting there would take a great deal of work — and most of it wouldn’t be technical:

Not only technical or system work, but striving to address issues of how we organize, train, and deploy our workforce.

The workforce piece would be the toughest, with or without union considerations. We were fond of our journalistic traditions and our workflow, and the org chart was easy to manage. But business processes would have to change if the technology investment was going to pay off:

Flying a jet between two cities 50 miles apart is a waste of equipment.

Much of the memo is about the new newsroom. The seminar group predicted a shift toward “content teams” organized around products rather than coverage areas — closer to the way we had already built advertising sales teams. That meant more skills, more training, and an end to the unspoken single-task job description: I’m a copy editor, I don’t write; I’m a reporter, I don’t edit. With no expectation of hiring beyond existing staffing levels, the goal was multi-skilled specialists.

The day of the “designer only” is coming to an end.

The idea I still like best here is the difference between re-purposing and pre-purposing — deciding early that a story will be written for and published in multiple mediums, rather than pushing it through the production system for print and then reusing it. Which also means tracking and archiving every element. Hard enough for print, as I told Oppedahl. Add video, audio and other data types and it gets harder.

The section on communication tools holds up too. E-mail worked one-to-one, but broadcast a request on deadline and most people ignored it, assuming it wasn’t meant for them. What the newsroom needed was closer to shouting a question across the room:

This communication model is a “many-to-many” system that allows everyone to join the discussion.

I pointed to PNI’s Lotus Notes discussion databases as proof we already had the technical ability. What we lacked was the cultural shift. The memo closes with a short list of other issues — content management, production management, user interfaces, and system manageability, where I wondered whether the network computer might replace the personal computer.