The following is the speaker's script of a talk given on June 5, 2008 at the Annual Meeting of the Concord Historical Society by Mike Pride, who retires on June 30, 2008, completing thirty years as the Editor of the Concord Monitor.
In the news business it doesn't pay to look backward. But, as an old man of my acquaintance once said in a different context, "My future is behind me. " At least to the extent that editing a daily newspaper was part of my life, this is true of me. So as I look forward to my new future as a freelance writer, researcher, historian, apprentice cook, traveler and more attentive spouse - as a pursuer, in other words, of a life of creative leisure - I am honored tonight to share a few thoughts with this august group on my 30 years at the Concord Monitor.
I have been thinking a great deal about history this year as I near completion of one book project and move more deeply into another. One of these may be familiar to you: We are turning the Monitor's "My War " series into a book. These are oral histories of men and women, most from Concord and vicinity, describing their experiences during World War II. I have learned a lot about the art of interviewing doing this project. I have also learned how vast the world is and how varied were the ways the war engaged the generation that came of age around 1940.
The other project is more conventional and more challenging. During the coming months I will try to resurrect a Concord editor named George Gilman Fogg who knew Abraham Lincoln and served him. I became interested in Fogg when I read his epitaph in Blossom Hill Cemetery. He died in 1881. His epitaph reads:
"A faithful advocate of equal liberty and exact justice to all men without distinction of race or color. "
The challenge in this project will be to bring to life someone I can know exclusively through letters, newspapers and documents. My own progress as an editor was very different from George Gilman Fogg's. I was not an activist - unless you take the term to mean an activist for fair, thorough, human journalism that gives all segments of the public an opportunity to express and read many viewpoints. My agenda was to make the Monitor a mirror to the community and a forum for diverse opinion, not an exclusive vehicle for any particular point of view.
I differed from Fogg in another way as well: I was an inside guy. I had a public face, as any editor would in a community Concord's size, but it wasn't my essential face. My main job was to tend to business inside the newsroom: to bring talented journalists to Concord and to coordinate their good efforts to cover the community.
So, how did this all start? Why did I come to Concord, and what did I hope to find? When Tom Gerber, my predecessor as editor of the Monitor, called me in August 1977 to ask me to apply for a managing editor vacancy, I was the 31-year-old city editor of the Tallahassee Democrat. I had been a city editor for nearly five years.
City editor is the greatest job in any newsroom. You are the second person, after the reporter, to know a thing. Your job is to figure out what the news of the day, to help reporters get to the right assignments, and to edit their stories. By editing, I mean shaping more than copy-editing. The reporter keeps you apprised as the reporting progresses, and if things go as they should - that is, if there is time - you help the reporter decide what the news is and how to write it. You have a grasp of what all the reporters are working on and how the daily local report for the front page is coming along. The heart of the job is your duty to produce a strong local report seven days a week.
I loved my job in Florida, but for both professional and personal reasons, I was interested in the Monitor. Professionally, the managing editor job was a move up. Tom Gerber was handling the editorial pages only, and the Monitor was looking for someone to run the newsroom.
Personally, although I was almost a lifelong Floridian, I had always wanted to live in New England. After World War II, my parents moved to Florida from Connecticut. My maternal grandfather was born in Bedford, New Hampshire, and three of his sisters, including my wonderful Aunt Sal, who had been Louie Wyman's legal secretary, still lived in Manchester.
Monique and I had two children and wanted to have at least one more. We had already decided Florida was not a kid-friendly place. Our hopes were that Concord would be a family town with good schools. Everyone I spoke with assured us that this was the case, and so it proved to be.
My first day at the Monitor was Jan. 24, 1978. I had driven up through a snowstorm. There was no rear-window defroster in our Toyota Celica, but fortunately I had a lot of our belongings in the back, so the car was heavy enough to make it through the drifts. The blizzard of '78 occurred soon afterward. We Floridians got a crash course in winter. We loved it - except for the cost of heating the house the Raineys were trying to sell on Auburn Street, which we rented for four months while looking for a house of our own.
Before I speak about what I discovered at the Monitor, I should run through some of the people who were in office and in power at the time. This may provide perspective to those of you who have been here longer than I have. John Henchey was the city manager, Marty Gross the mayor. Meldrim Thomson was governor. Warren Rudman was not yet a U.S. senator, but his friend Tom Rath was attorney general, and David Souter was about to become an associate justice on the superior court. You'll notice that this list is all men. The idea of women in positions of power was still foreign, although much of the real work of the Legislature was already being done by women. Susan McLane, Caroline Gross and Liz Hager, to name three, were active in this arena. And William Loeb was at the helm of the Union Leader, which was the strangest newspaper I had ever seen.
Loeb still wrote front-page editorials. In headlines, Union Leader editors referred to homosexuals as Sodomites. At least two reporters, Warren Pease and Jon Prestage, were known to be hatchet-men. In 1978, when Loeb wanted to run Tom McIntyre out of his U.S. Senate seat, he printed the same story on the front page again and again. It was about how McIntyre owned a condominium in Florida. Often these stories were accompanied by grainy pictures of the condo complex. And it worked.
I was new to this brand of journalism, so I asked my Aunt Sal why in the heck McIntyre had lost. He seemed like a perfectly fine senator. And although I later came to admire his opponent, Gordon Humphrey, for his integrity, though not most of his views, in 1978 I saw him as - not to put too fine a point on it - extreme, intense and unknown. "Well, " said Aunt Sal, "McIntyre didn't live in New Hampshire anymore. "
The Monitor newsroom was a challenge. It had been without a managing editor for eight months. The staff was 18-strong, and most of them were unhappy about something, including my arrival. The State House reporters seemed to be at war with Gov. Thomson's office. The paper regularly ran stories critical of the governor without even asking him or his spokesperson for a comment. The Republicans in power hand-fed the Union Leader news that no one else got, so each morning our political editor came to the news meeting with a stack of clippings from the U-L. The question was which U-L stories we were going to rewrite for that day's Monitor.
Through conversations with staffers and critiques, I tried to establish standards for improving the paper. Several people quit, which robbed the Monitor of experience but gave me an opportunity to hire people who were not only good journalists but would also serve as examples of the kind of journalism I expected. The paper had no news budget at the time, but the publisher, George Wilson, told me I could increase newsroom spending by 33 percent over 1977 spending. So I had a lot of support for good journalism. I never again got to increase the news budget by a third, but over many years we increased the Monitor staff to a peak of about 45 full-time equivalents.
I want to pause and give you a sketch of George Wilson. George was in his early 40s when I arrived. He had married into the family that owned the Monitor. His wife is the former Marily Dwight. Her father, Bill Dwight Sr., the longtime publisher of the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, bought the Monitor in 1961. George was super-bright, super-articulate and super-committed. He urged me to see the Monitor's size as a virtue, not a hindrance. Professionally, he said, I could do anything here I could do anywhere else. I thought this might be the sort of propaganda you always hear when you're being recruited, but in time I came to believe it.
George did not want the Monitor to see itself as a foil for the Union Leader. He asked me before he hired me if I believed in "advocacy journalism, " meaning journalism in which the paper used its news columns to push a point of view. It was easy to say no because I had grown up in Florida journalism, which I saw as engaged but fair - engaged with the community but fair to all points of view. That is what I strove for at the Monitor. Somewhat naively, until I saw Loeb's paper, I thought "advocacy journalism " had died out in the 19th century.
Thus I had come to a rare place in American journalism, a newspaper where newsroom autonomy meant exactly that. George was sometimes unhappy with stories we did, but he always stood by them. More than once we reported stories that resulted in car dealers pulling all their ads, for example. This had painful financial consequences, but George never uttered a discouraging word.
We were aggressive in trying to keep our reporters off the witness stand and in pushing for open government, even when this entailed unpopular stands. George never flinched when Bob Hohler decline to testify in a murder case in which he had interviewed the suspect for a Monitor story. That case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. George and Marily lived right across the street from Steve and Christa McAuliffe, and yet he supported our joining large news organizations in seeking information about the shuttle disaster that the government had declared private. These decisions cost tens of thousands of dollars. By this time we had a news budget, but legal expenses came out of the admin budget, not ours.
When Tom Gerber retired in 1983, I became editor of the Monitor, with control over the editorial pages as well as the newsroom. I quickly learned that even here I had autonomy. Only once in the several years that George and I worked together as publisher and editor was there ever internal strife over an editorial position. This happened during a year in which I was away on sabbatical as a Nieman Fellow. The issue was the endorsement in the 1984 presidential race. I mediated the dispute long distance, and the unfortunate result was an editorial nominally endorsing Walter Mondale whose content consisted mainly of praise for Ronald Reagan.
I've gone on about George Wilson because even though he is retired, his spirit still thrives in the way we operate. This is really important to the Concord community. As I'm sure you know, newspapers are struggling. Intelligent ownership that cares about the community has the best chance to find a way into the future.
Geordie Wilson, George's son, is now publisher of the Monitor. Felice Belman, with whom I have worked for 20 years on and off, is my successor. And Tom Brown, whom George hired 20 years ago to run the Monitor, is George's successor as president of the parent company. Tom was my boss when the new Monitor building was built, when we switched from afternoon to morning publication and when we started a Sunday paper. He's a solid leader - and, even more important, a positive person. The challenges are huge, but the Monitor's values as it moves into the future are intact.
Probably more than any editor in the Monitor's history, I tried to keep the community at arm's length. I served on no boards in town and joined no organizations other than the New Hampshire Historical Society, where I did research in my spare time. I avoided friendships with people in power. My children went to school here and we went to the same church for 25 years, so I had a wide array of acquaintances. But it was always important to maintain the ability to judge news affecting people I knew just as I judged news affecting those I didn't know.
One consequence of this distance between the editor and the public was a certain arrogance on my part, especially when I was younger. I remember Marty Gross calling me one Saturday morning to say that although an editorial I had written in the paper was well enough argued, Concord did not need an OLYMPIAN editorial on that particular subject. And he was right. Part of the education of a journalist is learning not only what to say but how to say it.
Especially when the Monitor was downtown, I did get to know many people. There was no front desk at 3 N. State St., so people simply walked in off the street, up the stairs and directly into the editor's office. One time, a powerfully built man in a tank top came babbling into my office. I couldn't tell what he was angry about, but he was angry. Suddenly he disappeared from view. I stood and looked over my desk, and there he was doing one-handed pushups right in front of me, the veins straining in his neck.
Even presidential candidates sometimes just wandered in - Fritz Hollings strutted in and told me, "I have a bubble in my schedule. Can you possibly see me now? " Pete du Pont stopped by one midday when the press was about to roll. In that day's edition, I knew, was a humorous editorial that placed the presidential candidates at various venues around Concord for the First Night celebration - George Bush at an upscale men's clothier's, Al Haig at the Army-Navy surplus store, Gary Hart breathing heavily on the window at Thorne's. Du Pont we had placed at a local delicatessen, Schemerhorn's, between the nut rolls and the fruitcakes.
I had plenty of contact, of course, with letter writers - regulars and irregulars - written contact and direct contact. Robert Schweiker came to see me whenever he was mad about something, which was at least a couple of times a week. And, of course, David Wells was a regular. You had to be careful with David. He seemed to be a gentle soul, but when he wasn't on his meds, he sometimes lost track of the boundaries of civil behavior. Once he came dressed in tinfoil. Another time it was bumper stickers. O my god, I thought, how is he ever going to get those bumper stickers off.
David once went to the police station trying to get arrested for indecent exposure. He had on no tinfoil, no bumper stickers - he was stark naked. The only problem was that the window where the attendant sat at the entrance to the police station was just above waist-high. So to the woman there, David Wells was just another guy who had taken off his shirt on a hot day. He had to jump up and down to make his point.
Another guy who came to my office often was Dan Poling. He was in a wheelchair and could barely move. Cerebral palsy had badly affected his speech. To listen to him, you needed time and patience. But I tried, and a few years after I met him, his persistence about being heard publicly led to his election as a Concord city councilor. I learned a lot from Dan Poling about prejudices I didn't know I had.
And then there was the desk clerk at the run-down Howard Johnson's down on South Main Street. She came in one day to tell us about two regulars at the motel - a couple - the Vadeboncoeurs - who, after many years, had been released from the state hospital with no life skills and no community support. Each month, they received their welfare payment, checked into the Howard Johnson's and ran through their money in a week or so. The rest of each month they lived on the street.
This led to a Monitor series - several series, in fact - about the human consequences of a cruel public policy. The state hospital was simply dumping the mentally ill on the streets. Because the hospital was here, a great many former patients stayed here. By our count, more than 1,400 such people were living in Concord. Our stories hastened the development of a community mental health system.
This was one of dozens of examples of members of the public coming forward to help us do our job. Still, because I avoided close ties with movers and shakers, there were several years when my closest friend outside the newspaper was Ray Barham, a murderer at the state prison. Whatever problem I had, I could confide in Ray. He was wise, discreet and frank. He didn't hesitate to tell me I was being thin-skinned or stupid.
Of course, readers are famous for that, too. You just have to learn when to listen to them - and sometimes it isn't easy. Some years ago, our former editorial page editor, John Fensterwald, wrote an editorial criticizing local dentists for doing too little pro-bono work. The next day half the dentists in town called John or me to tell us how wrong we were. Even though John was always meticulous and careful in reporting his editorials, I began to wonder if he had made a mistake this time. That Sunday at church, I ran into a dentist I knew. He had read the editorial, and he said without a blink, "No, you got it right. From my experience, that's the way things are. "
Rather than tell more war stories, I want to leave you with two points. One is internal - inside the Monitor - the other external.
The internal one is simply to describe the regime I tried to establish in the Monitor newsroom. The driving idea was to hire good people and give them the freedon to do their work. Freedom and support - whether support meant instantly making a five-figure decision to rent a helicopter to get journalists to a big story or covering a reporter's back when the subject of a story became unduly threatening.
The No. 1 quality we sought in journalists was that they be nice people. There were three reasons for this. First, we were going to be working together at close quarters for as long as that reporter stayed at the Monitor. Second, the community would rather deal with nice people than nasty ones. Finally, news sources, from tipsters to high public officials, are much more likely to speak with nice people than with the other kind.
It is true that many of the reporters and photographers we hired used the paper as a career stepping stone. But not before our community - and the Monitor - benefited for years from their work. The last time I looked, five Monitor reporters in my time had gone on to win or share a Pulitzer Prize. Dozens who did not win the Pulitzer Prize were equally talented.
Although we occasionally get complaints about our journalists coming and going, in truth a good many stay. They provide the continuity and steadiness that beginning journalists lack. Felice Belman got her first Monitor byline 20 years ago - the same year as our recently departed photo editor, Dan Habib. Other key leaders - Hans Schulz, Mark Travis, Ralph Jimenez - started at the Monitor more than a quarter century ago. We also have a corps of experienced hands producing the news - Annmarie Timmins, Ric Tracewski, Charlotte Thibault, Ken Williams.
It's going to be difficult in the future to maintain this balance between veteran journalists who stay at the paper and bright reporters and photographers who come to the Monitor, work for three or four years and move on to a metro. That said, I already see young leadership rising on our desk and within our reporting staff. And if we can replace some of the reporters who leave for bigger newspapers and other pursuits, the Monitor will remain strong.
Finally, I want to talk about changes in the community over the years. Monique and I did find what we were looking for here. Concord is not only a family town that cares about education; it is also a progressive small city where remarkable people make impossible things happen.
One of the first series we did when I came to the Monitor was on a dumpy, rundown theater on South Main Street. It is now the Capitol Center for the Arts. Eagle Square, Carter Hill Orchard, Red River Theatres, the Concord Community Music School - none of these was here in its current form in 1978.
Concord is a testament to good city planning and clean government. We all complain about Loudon Road, but having the mall and the big boxes clustered there has kept Concord a bustling commercial center. It has also allowed the downtown to develop a personality of its own - one that is constantly changing.
Consider also the development of the Concord Hospital complex. Or the state office park on the old State Hospital grounds. Or New Hampshire Technical Institute. Or the Museum of New Hampshire History. Or Capital Commons. Or the art school. Or Carter Hill Orchard. All these represent progress and perseverance. They bespeak a bright future. They are the fruits of a can-do attitude and a committed citizenry. This is a city that is never in a hurry to bring any idea into being, but that is good: It means the best ideas are fully vented in the community and, eventually, realized.
I look around and I am amazed at all that has happened on my watch. I am amazed that while pursuing these cultural and commercial ventures, the city has also maintained its well-deserved reputation for stewardship of the environment and prudent generosity toward those in need.
By "on my watch, " I mean that the Monitor has tried over the years to strike a balance between preservation and community improvement. I worry that the Monitor faces difficult challenges and that the community does not appreciate our role as deeply as it should. But I leave the newsroom in good hands, and I have never regretted coming here - and staying here.
Nor do I regret, now that it is about to happen, becoming a footnote in the long, lively tradition of journalism in Concord. It is a privilege indeed to add my name to the history of such a storied printing town and political center. I will always be grateful for readers who did not hesitate to speak their mind and who generously allowed my voice and the many other voices of the Monitor into their homes for my 30 years at the keyboard.
Thank you very much.