News CEOs and the Question of News Experience

Why a lack of cultural familiarity is a big risk

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

I’ve been struck recently by how many news organizations are naming people to CEO jobs who have no meaningful news experience. I’m not opposed to this as a blanket rule, but I do think it’s a major risk, and this week I want to explain why.

The heart of the matter is an issue of culture. Newsrooms are unusual places. They have their own mores, and ideally a set of shared values and motivations that set them a bit apart. Most of the people in them, for instance, could be making more money doing something else, but have been drawn to journalism as a creative outlet, or because of the thrill of discovery or by the lure of a collaborative enterprise. Some want to do no less than change the world.

Not just any business

Above all, most journalists recognize—especially after the travails of the last 20 years—that journalism is a business, but they see it as not just any business, hardly interchangeable, not merely the creation of widgets, not by any means just a way in which to generate enough revenue to cover expenses. Very few, even in quite profitable for-profits, find profit much if any of a motivator.

For many years and in many news organizations, top business leaders were drawn from those with editorial experience of some sort. Family-run companies frequently made sure that rising scions did a tour in newsrooms, and others identified what they considered promising business talent in young reporters and editors.

More recently, business leadership was increasingly found in newsroom-adjacent roles ranging from legal to advertising sales to marketing and audience, in which jobs they had learned about, and felt, newsroom culture. Some CEOs came from financial control roles, although, at least in my experience and observation, this was not an easy fit.

But the business crisis of the press in this century laid bare the fact that the editorial leadership of many news organizations had long been world class, while their business leadership had been less that, sometimes woefully less. It therefore seemed to make sense to look farther afield, particularly as the task of business management became ever more challenging.

In the process, however, I think some of those choosing these new business leaders themselves forgot about the special nature of the news business. It won’t be enough, for instance, at least in most cases, for someone who aspires to run a news organization to recognize the importance of the role of the press in democratic governance—although that ought to be essential. Beyond that, I think, they ought to love news itself, and to be a sophisticated and frequently delighted consumer of it.

What it takes

If someone comes with no experience in a newsroom or newsroom-adjacent role, they also ought to have a demonstrated capacity for cultural adaptation, be someone who will want to, and will make an effort to win over the newsroom over which they preside.  They certainly shouldn’t be the sort of leader who expects the newsroom to “come to them,” especially not someone who expects this just because they are the boss.

This cultural adaptation will take many and varying forms, but it must include a reflexive sympathy for journalists in necessary struggles with government and business for more information, more access and transparency, more candor and less dissembling. For executives with experience on the other side of these struggles, the conversion needs to be quick and clean.

Failing such adaptation can be extremely corrosive. Examples would include CEOs who even privately express reflexive sympathy for aggrieved subjects of coverage with whom they may identify, or who internally weigh in against efforts to broaden transparency and access as burdensome on corporations or public agencies. In short, given that press relations are often inherently and unavoidably adversarial, it’s critical that a news company CEO understand where they stand between “us” and “them.”

More subtly, a CEO without news experience may not grasp how large of an asset is newsroom morale, or how much sapping it may cost an enterprise. Such issues can become particularly tricky in a unionized environment— especially one in which there are no profits over which to haggle, either because the organization is a nonprofit, or because it is no longer profitable.

As I said at the outset, I do not mean by all of this to set a hard and fast rule against the appointment of news CEOs without news experience. I can think of a small number of exceptional leaders who have proved especially adaptive and culturally sensitive. But such people are rare, and boards and others, I believe, should not take too much comfort from their success. If you are looking for a news company CEO, you should focus on candidates who know how newsrooms work and feel.