Congratulations are in order to Mark Zieman, who has been promoted from KC Star publisher to vice president of operations for parent company McClatchy Co.
Today, I want to talk about his leadership and also about the competition that is about to take place to replace him.
Zieman, 50, has had a very successful, upward-bound, 25-year career at The Star. The paper apparently has continued to do well financially during Zieman’s three-year watch as publisher, despite the bottom falling out of the newspaper industry.
I haven’t liked everything Zieman has done at The Star, but, in my opinion, he has earned this opportunity to prove or disprove himself at a higher level. He inherited a successful enterprise from previous publishers, including the late James H. Hale, and he has managed to hold it together, at least financially.
He has held it together almost entirely through cost-cutting, however. There’s less of the paper, literally, than there used to be, and there are far fewer employees, including quite a few valuable editorial employees.
I said that I haven’t liked everything Zieman has done. What bothered me most was that when the layoffs began three years ago, Zieman donned rose-colored glasses with each round of layoffs and issued statement after statement about how better times were just around the corner. That went on until earlier this year, when he struck a note more of resignation and hope, instead of certainty, about light at the end of the tunnel.
When I wrote about his cheery, public position, I said that I was losing confidence in him as publisher. That was probably an overstatement, although I’m sure that most, if not all, of the employees who have been laid off would express a similar sentiment. Also, as a retired reporter and assignment editor at The Star, I was looking at it through the eyes of someone who could have experienced the same fate, had I not gotten out two years before the axe started falling. (It was just plain luck that got me out the door, I have to admit, not prescience.)
Now, Zieman is going to be under more pressure than ever. He will oversee 14 daily papers, including The Star, in several states. McClatchy paid way too much — $4.6 billion — for the Knight Ridder papers in 2006, and they may never be able to pay off the debt they took on to swing the deal.
Last year, a Morningstar analyst wrote, “Our fair value estimate on McClatchy’s shares is $0.” (For the record, it’s about $2.75 per share now.)
The analyst said he believed that the balance eventually would tip from stockholders’ interests to creditors’ interests and that stockholders would be left empty-handed.
So, that’s the spare meal that Zieman will sit down to at McClatchy headquarters in Sacramento.
CEO Gary Pruitt and other top executives undoubtedly will look to Zieman for fresh ideas on digging out of deep holes. He will face expectations, probably, to devise plans to cut costs and somehow generate new revenue, perhaps through imaginative uses of the web.
So, I wish him luck. He’s definitely going to need it, and I think we can look for that graying hair to lose what is left of its dark luster within a few years — if McClatchy lasts that long.
***
Now, back at the ranch…several Star vice presidents, certainly would like to be considered for the publisher’s job. Among them could be Mike Fannin, editor; Chris Christian, v.p for circulation; Chris Piwowarek, v.p. for human resources; and Miriam Pepper, v.p. of the editorial page.
I think McClatchy will look closely at the prospect of naming a woman as publisher, which would guarantee Piwowarek (pronounced pee-va-vorek) and Pepper a close look. However, I think all of the people mentioned above are long shots for the following reasons.
Christian and Piwowarek because their kingdoms are relatively narrow. Pepper because her background is on the editorial side. Fannin because most of his background is in sports and also because it has come to light since he was named editor in 2008 that he has two d.u.i convictions and a 1994 misdemeanor assault conviction in Texas, where he formerly worked.
Another long shot, from the newsroom, would be managing editor Steve Shirk, who has provided steady and confident leadership in every post he has held in his approximate 35-year career at the paper. Working against him, however, is the fact that, like Pepper, all his experience is on the editorial side.
Without completely ruling out an inside promotion, I tend to think that McClatchy will bring in someone from outside. I think they will promote a current publisher at a smaller paper in the chain.
That’s what they recently did in Lexington, Ky., at the Lexington Herald-Leader. There, Rufus M. Friday, president and publisher of the Tri-City Herald in eastern Washington, will replace long-time Herald-Leader publisher Tim Kelly, who is retiring at the end of this month.
I think McClatchy will want to continue planting seeds of hope with its current publishers, on the outside chance that the company will find its way out of the long tunnel.
I have so much to say, but I’m not gonna do it. Thanks for laying out the issues, Jim!
Kate
From the 1950s: media out lets need to face the 21st Century by presenting the facts instead of editorializing straight news stories.
Falling Star, Sandy Ego’s Union Tribune (controlled by the Mid Western Hypocrites – Copley Incorporated) and the (frankly above average) Sacramento Bee: all have historically used their bully pulpit to spout nonsense. Like Time / Life, News Week, US News, Weekly Standard ……….
Award winning straight news and commentator Ruskin Hi – Lite
OK, Don, I do have to comment on your comments. There’s a difference between covering the news and editorializing. A paper’s editorial page is separate from its news operation. I know lots of folks don’t believe that, but it’s the truth. I just think that when news folks give the facts, if they’re not the facts some people want to hear, they say the news people are slanting the story. That’s why Fox is so popular, because it slants the story in the direction its audience wants, which really does a disservice to the audience and to democracy.
Now you’re warming up, Kate.
;)
I think you’re right — someone from one of the smaller papers will get a bump up, both because a smaller-property publisher will have the breadth of experience and because, sadly, most newspaper companies still have corporate DNA telling them no one can really understand their business like another insider.
A more intriguing choice: Bring someone in from a major digital property, and give him or her the keys. You’ve got strong managers in place at key posts in production, circulation and editorial — the publisher can and should be free to focus on the strategic future of the digital side.
We keep hearing print is the legacy product and needs to be managed it to a soft, smaller-footprint landing. Yet print veterans are still routinely promoted to lead what are increasingly multimedia operations.
Interesting idea on the digital visionary; that’s where the game is and will be for the foreseeable future.
Heh… you’re tellin’ the guy who’s trying to start a new print pub — I’m learning the lesson every day!
Greg, I still live in a cave and like to have the papers delivered to the entrance every day, rain or shine. So, let me know when you start publishing and maybe you can sell me a subscription!
Tend to think you’re correct re someone being promoted from one of the smaller properties. However I believe that will occur because McClatchy is looking for another Zieman; a corporate player who will eat any and all cost reductions (Zieman hands down) in order to get ahead, the end result of which will be but one of a stable of hyper-local USA Todays.
(Though if that also means the Star’s bloated, poorly designed and downright ugly web presence is overhauled, perhaps the matter could be considered a wash.)
However the above is based on assumptions that a) McClatchy papers manage to stem the average 20% subscription loss over the last 3 years, and b) find a way to reduce their nearly 2 billion debt load before the stock is further devalued from “junk” to “TP”.
Insightful observations, Nick…Fact is if the publisher — whoever it is — declines to eat the cost reductions mandated by Sacramento — he, or she, is out. Attrition has almost eliminated those editors and publishers who were willing to fight for adequate funding of the editorial side. Those people have either retired or gone off into academia.