Al Neuharth

How this interview came about...

In March, Judy Yeck, the college receptionist, handed me a phone message to call Al Neuharth at home in Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Neuharth wanted to let me know that he was going to retire as a trustee of The Freedom Forum on his 75th birthday, March 22, the first day of The Freedom Forum board’s meeting in Cocoa Beach

A week later, on March 16, the day The Freedom Forum announced his retirement, we had a conversation about journalism and journalism education. We talked about the kinds of things he would make sure that students understood. We talked about things on which faculty need to focus.

This issue of the Alumni News is a good one in which to publish an interview with one of the significant players in the history of the mass media.

The following is that conversation. I transcribed the tape and asked Dick Thien to edit it. On two occasions, Thien was the editor of newspapers that were selected by outside judges as the best of Gannett. He was one of the handful of editors who developed USA TODAY. He worked many years for Neu-harth, and I thought his editing and layout of the conversation would be vital in communicating the appropriate emphases in the conversation.

I found Neuharth’s insights on target. I found Thien’s editing perfect.

Will Norton Jr., Dean

'You just have to make your way'

Will Norton: What difference did growing up on the northern plains make for you?

Al Neuharth: When you grow up in middle America, particularly in a rural area, you develop a sense of values different from what you might get in a metropolitan area because everybody knows everybody. You’re all neighbors, if not friends. You have to help each other out because there isn’t the government or some agency around to help.

You just have to make your way. As a result of that, the work ethic is much stronger, and you learn values that pay off for you later on.

Tell us about your mother.

My mom was a real tough, wiry, little German woman. She was widowed when I was 2 years old and my brother was 8. My father died as a result of a farm accident. She had a romance or two and a proposal of marriage that she tested out on us, and I didn’t particularly like, so she just decided to go it alone.

She went through the depression and the dust bowl days in South Dakota, working at whatever she could get. My father had left her a small house that was paid for and a few hundred dollars, but she took in laundry and did sewing and did house cleaning to make a few bucks. That’s how she survived until my brother and I were old enough to get part-time jobs while we were going to high school.

She always said that you have to make your own way. She did it in a wonderful way. She always was in good spirits, even though times were tough. I didn’t realize at the time how tough they were, but she raised a couple of boys as a single mother in a way that was terrific.

She enjoyed the results of that in her later years because she lived to be 86, and my brother and I were able to have her come visit us and travel and see some of the country. She enjoyed some of her later years.

Did this affect your view of equal opportunity?

Of course. In South Dakota in the 30s and 40s, there were two categories of people who were victims of discrimination — women and Native American Indians. When the Works Progress Ad-ministration provided jobs for unemployed men during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt days, wages were posted: $5 a day for men, $3 a day for women. That was a federal policy, but in South Dakota no women were hired, just men.

I saw that discrimination. I saw how Mom had to work twice as hard or more than the guys did and make less than half as much money. I didn’t think that was right, and I’m sure that has affected my view of equal opportunity and equal pay.

You were listed as one of the 1,000 most important people of the last millennium. What is it about you that enabled you to make such a difference?

That’s silly. I saw that list. There are some great people on it. I don’t belong on that list. I’ll take it, but I don’t deserve it. Any author, whether it’s a columnist or an author of a book — or in this case the authors of this book about the millennium — can pick anybody they want and include them.

I’m grateful for that, but I don’t belong on that list of 1,000 people.

What were your career objectives as a student at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, S.D.?

I wanted to be both rich and famous and thought that I might be able to do that in journalism. I had seen in high school and then in college that the editor of the local newspaper was an important big shot in any community or on any campus. In my little town of Alpena, S.D., where we moved when I was in the fifth grade (it had been my mother’s home town), the two people in town who owned the biggest houses were the only lawyer in town and the owner and publisher of the local weekly newspaper. So I had this idea that you could be famous and maybe make a fortune and have an awful lot of fun as a journalist.

If you were beginning your university days today, would your goals be different? What would be the principles by which you would make your career decisions?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I’m 75 now, and if I were in my early 20s and on a university campus with the hindsight, I might put more emphasis on the substantive aspect of it rather than the emphasis on the fortune. May-be that’s easy to say when you don’t have to worry about having enough bread on the table or a roof over your head. In my early years, I probably pushed too hard too fast for that next step on the ladder because it meant salary in-creases. It didn’t always give me the kind of job that I enjoyed the most or would have been most productive at.

For example, the most fun I have had in the newspaper business has been in the newsroom as a reporter, a city editor or a managing editor. One reason I went into general administration is that my wife and I had two children. We needed to make more money, and there was more money to be made on the general administration side of the newspaper.

Now I was lucky because I was able to keep my finger in the newsroom as well. Later on, as I moved up the administrative ladder and made more and more money, I kept more of a finger in the newsroom. But I was fortunate because there are so many in our profession who divorced themselves from the news side of the news business in order to make it in a bigger way financially on the business side.

That is an unfortunate thing. I didn’t go all the way, but I would have had more fun and been more productive if I had been strictly a news and editorial person all my life.

You are a person with a vision for grand projects, and you often become involved in all the particulars early on. Then at an appropriate time you seem to be able to turn the project over to a capable associate. Would you talk about how you do that?

I’m either totally hands on or hands off. If you have an idea or a vision or a project or a goal, you ought to put all of yourself into it until you are sure that it has succeeded or is headed in the right direction toward success. But you can’t do it alone, and you can’t call all the shots forever.

So, once you are at the point where what you hope, or your dream or your goal is achieved or achievable, then you ought to get out of the way and let other younger — and often more able — people run the show. That’s why I’ve retired so many times. This is my fifth retirement from a key job in the last 15 or 20 years.

I’ve done it for two reasons. One, because there were younger people ready to be my successor. Two, because I felt that I ought to have hands on or hands off, and I had had my hands on projects long enough. So it was somebody else’s turn.

But you also keep the door open to come back and be involved if the project needs it, don’t you?

When I say hands off, I mean by that that I have officially disassociated myself first as president of the Gannett Company, then as chief executive of the Gannett Company, then as chairman of the Gannett Company and USA TODAY, then as chairman of The Freedom Forum, now as a trustee of The Freedom Forum. That doesn’t mean that I have become disinterested in any of those things. Far from it.

I am interested and some of my successors might say I am too involved in some of those projects after retirement as I was before. But it is a different role because I don’t have the direct responsibility. Those who succeed me and then call the shots can either listen to me or not as they wish. But I certainly don’t lose interest. I don’t go away.

The things that are important to me, that I’ve been involved in during my life, I continue to be involved with. But I don’t have my hands on the button. Once you are a non-voting member and have resigned from those kinds of positions, then people either pay attention to you because they think you know what you are talking about, or they don’t. When you have the position of authority, they’re inclined to pay attention to you whether you know what you are talking about or not.

One of the things about you is that you stay focused on something no matter what extraneous material might be distractions for many of your colleagues. How did you train yourself to do that? Give advice to a student or a recent graduate on how to focus in on what is important.

You have to decide what’s important to you, and that cannot be too many things at one time. I have always been more comfortable and more charged up by focusing on one or two major things than on a lot of little things. When I do that, I refuse to let myself become distracted from those few big things.

There are a lot of little things that happen to us every day that can throw us, send us into a funk, or have us upset or depressed or bored. Any of those feelings just get in the way of achieving what your real objectives are or ought to be.

Early in life I learned that it’s silly to waste your time on those diversions and that you need to focus in on what’s important — and not too many of those things at one time.

You’ve hired well throughout your career. What guidelines have you followed when hiring?

In the news side of the news business, the No. 1 thing I look for in anybody is curiosity. I look for men or women who ask questions all the time about everything, night and day, at home or away, at work or play, socially as well as in a business way because they’re curious, and they want to know. Journalists have got to have that curiosity about everything. They have to want to soak every bit of information they can about a broad, broad range of subjects. In the newsroom or in the business side of the media business generally, I insist that people do at least an honest day’s work for a day’s pay, or maybe more. I want them to put everything they have into it and will enjoy it.

I don’t suffer lazy people gladly. At the pace I’ve set for myself, there hasn’t been room for that. So the work ethic is a terribly important thing.

Then two adjectives that I would apply to so many people that I’ve worked with is honesty and loyalty — honesty in everything they do, and loyalty to whatever it is they are doing, not necessarily to one person but to an organization, or a project or an objective that they’re in-volved in.

What do you consider your major achievements?

I don’t know. I’m only 75. It is a little premature to judge that. So far I suppose I would be dishonest if I didn’t say the founding of USA TODAY may be the single biggest accomplishment that my associates and I have had. I say single accomplishment because that’s one project, one product that was developed by a lot of us, and it worked.

On the other hand, when I look back over 50 years or so, my good fortune was in working with a wonderful range of people, as diverse as this entire nation in terms of women and minorities, people with different religions, different backgrounds, different geography, different philosophies, different politics and being able to offer them all equal opportunities to perform and achieve for themselves. In the aggregate, I feel better about that than I do about USA TODAY. Those people number in the thousands. I feel better about that than any one single thing that I could point to, such as USA TODAY.

So in some ways that would be the achievement in your career that brought fulfillment but never made the news in the same way that USA TODAY did.

The cumulative effect of working with people and providing opportunities and encouraging diversity is terrific. But no one single thing that you do in that field grabs any headlines, nor do I ex-pect them to. It is not a headline that you hire a non-white person or that you promote a woman, unless it is a really key position. That does not get the kind of attention that a major project like a USA TODAY gets.

What have been some of the disappointments in your career?

I’ve screwed up so many things that I could write a whole book on big and little failures. I go on. I pick myself up and dust myself off and start over quickly. But I don’t forget those failures.

I’ve made some big booboos that I should have been able to pull off. In my autobiography (Confessions of an S.O.B.), I wrote about a few of those. One was a real opportunity for the Gan-nett Company to acquire the CBS network. At that time that would have been the biggest media deal ever put together. I screwed that up. I mismanaged the negotiations. My big ego got in the way. That was a huge disappointment and a huge failure on my part.

I can name dozens and dozens or hundreds of smaller ones, all of them disappointing. But because I learned at an early age back in South Dakota that failure is not fatal, I brush off those failures or disappointments and go on to something else. I don’t forget them, and I don’t necessarily forgive myself for having screwed up, but I move on.

Are there heroes in your life?

There are lots of heroes in my life. In my profession, in my personal life, in my military career, there is no one person who I can say is my biggest hero or who had the biggest influence on my life except my mother. My older brother had a great deal of influence.

Gen. George Patton in the Army during World War II was a terrific hero of mine. I was fortunate enough to serve in Patton’s Third Army in Germany during the late stages of the European part of World War II. I would have followed that guy on foot all the way to Moscow because I liked the fact that he won battles by getting the best out of everybody who was working for him. Now he was criticized a lot for being too tough on some of the GI Joes like me, but I didn’t buy that. He was my hero, and he still is. I saw the movie “Patton” I guess 10 or 11 times. In the military, he was more of a hero to me than Dwight Eisen-hower, whom I also admired. But Pat-ton was my No. 1 hero during my four years of military service, which were my formative years.

In the media business, my hero was Jack Knight, who was the CEO of the Knight newspapers. Because he was an editor above all else and still knew about the business side of the operation, he became my hero. I said, if I have to deal with numbers like he had to deal with numbers, I would not let go of my newsroom ties. When I was city editor and assistant managing editor there and then assistant executive editor of his newspaper in Detroit, my eyes would light up when he walked through the newsroom. He taught me more about all around good newspapering than anybody I’ve ever known.

What advice would you give journalism faculty today? You know about all the controversies that are swirling. What two or three statements would you make?

I don’t want to get into any controversies on campus. But the faculty of journalism schools or journalism departments must teach students that for them to make a mark in journalism, accuracy comes above all else. I include fairness in accuracy.

There was a generation of journalists who came off campuses back in the days of Watergate, most of whom thought they had to be a (Bob) Woodward or (Carl) Bernstein to be rich and famous. That resulted in a wave of cynicism in journalism that we still have not fully come out of. But that is changing because there are more faculty teaching — and more students accepting — the fact that you can do well by yourself and your profession if you are accurate and fair above all else. That does not mean that you shouldn’t be skeptical.

There is a difference between cynicism and skepticism, and the era of cynicism that followed Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein damaged journalism greatly.

Would you add anything to that if you were giving advice to journalism students?

I would tell students to develop a curiosity about everything going on around them. I would encourage them to be generalists rather than specialists at this stage of their lives. I would encourage them to learn a little bit about an awful lot of things. I’d rather have a good liberal arts major who has sufficient journalism background to get the basics than someone who majors just in journalism and has a minor.

A college campus is where you ought to introduce yourself to many subjects so that you know a little bit about almost everything. Later on, you can supplement that by specializing if that is what seems best for you.

You have a perspective on what people ought to do in their teens, their 20s, their 30s, their 40s and 50s, etc. Would you comment on that?

In your teens, play all you can and enjoy life. That doesn’t mean you can’t do some work, too. Teens and pre-teens are a time when you ought to be al-lowed to really enjoy life.

In your 20s, learn all you can.

In your 30s, take all the risks you can. Don’t worry about how much a job pays you, but take jobs that go down the bumpy byways rather than the superhighways. The bumpy byways can be much more fun and, ultimately, more rewarding. In your 30s, you still need to learn all that you can. When I was in my 30s I became much too concerned about money. I wish I hadn’t because my career might have taken a somewhat different direction and, I hope, been just as successful.

In your 40s, earn all you can.

In your 50s, teach all you can.

In your 60s, remember there’s a time to leave as well as a time to lead.

Thereafter, enjoy all you can.

The important thing is to take risks ear-ly, when you are young enough so that if you screw up, you can learn something from it and still pick yourself up and start over again.

What major news story do you think journalists will cover during the next century?

I have no idea. I haven’t the vaguest idea. It is impossible to predict whether it will be domestic or international or in space. Right now, with instant and constant global communications, it is impossible to predict what will happen 50 years from now or 100 years from now.

The real frontier still is space, the universe. I’m disappointed that we haven’t been as aggressive in exploring that frontier in the last 20 years as we were during the 60s and during the Apollo and the Moon landing programs.

It is entirely possible that the big stories before the end of the next century will come to us from the universe rather than from the world as we know it.

What are the major challenges for journalism during the next millennium?

To try to satisfy this tremendous hunger for information that exists all over the world now. It doesn’t matter where you go now, whether it is in poor countries like India or developing major nations like China or small countries in Africa or anywhere in the world, there is this hunger for news and information.

Part of that is because of the web. It is because of the satellite, the fact that there now are no longer any barriers. Governments can’t keep out news. So the more that people see or hear or know, the more they want to know. That’s an insatiable appetite. You’ll find it all over the world.

The challenge for those of us in the news and information business is to satisfy that tremendous hunger for news and information. If we do that, we’ll not only do well by ourselves career-wise, but that will be a terrific service to the world.

Is there something that you are willing to say that you are afraid of?

I’m laughing because I’ve never thought about that. No. I’m certainly not afraid of old age. I’m not afraid of illness. I’ve been lucky.

I was fortunate because as a teenager I was in the Army. I served four years, and once you’ve been through that you’re inclined not to be too much afraid of other people or of physical violence. Then I went broke in my first business venture. Once you survive that, you realize that failure is not fatal.

I haven’t been afraid of things as long as I can remember.

You sound like you are optimistic about the world in which your children will live.

I certainly am. I just think the opportunities for mankind, and particularly for people in the news and information business, are far greater than at any time in my lifetime.

I’m an optimist by nature. That doesn’t mean that I just wear rose-colored glasses. But I believe that there is far more reason to be optimistic about the world in general and each individual’s place in it as we approach the year 2000; far more than there was at any time in the 75 years that I’ve been around.

Is there something you’d like to say that we have not given you an opportunity to discuss?

I think you have done your homework. You have covered a great variety of subjects, and I have enjoyed talking about them all.