Rubout (21 page)

This Voyage Committee was meeting in another hotel room. I swear, we spent more time in hotels than a convention hooker. What was it costing the paper to sit in a conference room at the Greentree Inn in West County, and drink coffee and tea from big silver urns? We had a perfectly usable conference room at the
Gazette.
But that was downtown. Voyage Captain Jason said to change our minds we had to change our point of view. We needed to spend more time in the West County corridor we wanted so badly for the
Gazette.
As far as I was concerned, they could keep their corridor. I got stuck in construction site traffic on Highway 40 and crawled along the highway, fuming more than the cars. By the time I made it to the conference room, most of the committee was already seated at the table. Since it was a working day, everyone was in sober suits. The publisher was wearing a gray suit like all the other men, but his
was so expensive, it positively glowed. His cuff links alone could have bought any house on my street. The publisher presided at his end of the table, with the two corporate money men, Simpson Tolbart and Tucker Gravois, at his left and right hands. Georgia had the next seat down, and Roberto, the city editor, was on the other side of her. Across from them were the interchangeable yes persons, Brittany, Courtney, Scott, and Jeremy. Vonnie the Steel Magnolia was dripping lace at her neck and wrists to let the men know inside her sensible suit was a Southern belle dying to be set free. There was an empty seat next to her that I figured belonged to Charlie, but I didn’t see him. There he was, coming across the room with a china cup and saucer, bearing them like a chalice. He reverently set the coffee down before the publisher, then sat down at his place and raised his own coffee in a toast. “To a great man and a great publisher,” Charlie said. I expected the publisher to choke on the little toad’s flattery. But no, the man was lapping it up. He actually wanted—no, needed—that sawed-off slime to praise him.

Roberto rushed in to pour on more flattery, and the Steel Magnolia added her own honeyed words. “Really, sir, we are just sooooo lucky to have a publisher who cares.”

“Oh, yes,” the quartet of yes kids chorused.

I was afraid I’d need an insulin injection before this love feast was over. I looked at Georgia. She hadn’t said a word to debase herself like Charlie and the others, but she somehow managed to seem part of it. Georgia had an amazing talent. She could pass
as a yes-woman without selling out. No wonder she got the big bucks.

Only the arrival of Voyage Captain Jason ended the revolting display. Jason was wearing his uniform—a work shirt that no worker could afford, jeans, and work boots that never saw an honest day’s work. I was jealous, I guess. I wished I could think of a scam like this. I could call myself a consultant, but I’d never keep a straight face long enough to collect my half a million dollars. If I had a newspaper mogul and his court on the floor playing with Tinkertoys, I couldn’t resist saying “You flunked the moron test, ladies and gentlemen. If you were really fit to run a newspaper, you would have refused to play Tinker-toys. You, Mr. Publisher, know nothing about leadership. And the rest of you will do anything to save your miserable jobs.”

We would have all deserved that reprimand. After all, I got down on the floor and stuck wooden sticks into little round holes like everyone else. I couldn’t imagine what we were going to do at today’s meeting. Play Ring Around the Rosie? Chutes and Ladders? Jump rope?

When I finally bothered to tune in to Jason, I realized this meeting was actually instructive. “That’s why today, we need to have a serious talk about the newspaper’s needs,” Voyage Captain Jason said. “Our research division conducted a telephone survey of twelve hundred readers and nonreaders. It concluded that the
Gazette
is well read by persons fifty and over. They spend more than forty-five minutes a day reading the paper.”

Wow, I thought. Readers actually care about our
stories enough to spend three-quarters of an hour with them. This is good news.

“This is bad news,” said Jason, the consultant. “Most people won’t make a time commitment that large to a newspaper. The paper needs to develop a younger readership that will spend less time with the newspaper. That is the most effective way for the
Gazette
to have more readers. Also, advertisers want younger readers, not aging ones. The
Gazette
must run more stories about movie stars and pop music to appeal to younger readers. Younger is better, people. Younger is quality. Younger is money. Younger is what your advertisers hunger for. We must think younger, younger, younger.

“Also, we need women readers. Young, childbearing women. Not old, postmenopausal women. Advertisers find younger women desirable.”

Charlie snickered. “I do, too.”

Jason frowned and went on. Charlie grinned at the publisher. His role as public sexist was to speak for those men who wouldn’t dare talk like that anymore—but still thought that way. Charlie’s only punishment was a frown from Jason. His reward was an amused smile from the publisher.

“To get these desirable younger women,” Jason was saying, “the
Gazette
should devote more stories to fashion and child rearing.”

I groaned inwardly. This was the same old stuff. Surely the publisher must realize he’d paid for this message before, and it hadn’t added any readers. But, no, the publisher was staring at Voyage Captain Jason as if he’d just come down from the mount with two stone tablets. Jason was still laying down the
law. “Furthermore, in order to increase profit potential, the paper needs to reduce costs the only way possible: by reducing staff, first through attrition and then through agreements with the union.” He meant union-busting and forcing older employees into early retirement or, in the case of Monahan, early death. Well, the
Gazette
was already sailing into that swamp. I could see by the smile on the publisher’s face that Jason was speaking his language.

“I’d like your input, people, before we go any further,” Jason said.

Tolbart the money man spoke up first. He looked extremely pleased with himself. “The
Gazette
is already implementing some of the steps you mentioned to maximize profit potential. We are giving our people strong incentives to retire. . . .”

Like rotten hours and transfers to wretched assignments.

“And we will be bringing in a strong team of negotiators for the next Guild contract, a Sun Belt law firm that specializes in negotiating pro-publisher newspaper contracts.”

Translation: They break unions.

“Excellent,” Jason said, sending Tolbart to the head of the class. The publisher gave a small nod of approval, like a Roman emperor sparing a gladiator’s life. That nod was all it took. Everyone jumped in, eager to agree with Jason. No one questioned anything he said. The Steel Magnolia talked about how the
Gazette
was sponsoring certain Gen-X concerts coming to town, being careful to avoid any lesbians or controversial (i.e., interesting) musicians. Also, the paper was easing out of sponsoring the mammogram
education program at the local hospitals, because the
Gazette
name should not be associated with disease. She named six or seven other ways to offend or bore those coveted female readers, then sat down to general approval.

Charlie said prototypes of the new Go Away section the
Gazette
planned to launch were being shown to focus groups and advertisers and had received high rates of approval.

Roberto quickly slipped in, “One of my newer reporters has just announced she’s pregnant, so maybe she could do a freelance column on motherhood for our women readers.”

Charlie grabbed the floor back. “Good idea, Roberto,” he said, the way you’d pat a dog for retrieving a Frisbee. “I’m sure we can find some freelance money in the budget for a project like that. Have her write some sample columns.” Then Charlie smiled at me, always a bad sign. “And what about you, Francesca? You dress better than any other woman at the
Gazette.
Maybe you could write a fashion column. I bet Wendy could scrape another thirty-five dollars a week out of the Family budget for you. And it would be no trouble at all for you to write about clothes since you wear them so well.”

Thirty-five bucks for another day’s work. What an insult. It made me angry. “That’s my qualification, huh, Charlie? I’m a woman and I wear clothes?”

Georgia began coughing loudly, her way of warning me not to fall into Charlie’s trap. She was right. Her coughing fit gave me a moment to cool down and think. While Roberto fetched Georgia a glass of water, I considered the situation. I doubted if Charlie
was really interested in a fashion column from me. He just wanted to get me to shoot off my mouth in front of the publisher. He’d forget the idea after the meeting. If he didn’t, all I had to do was turn in some really bad samples. The important thing was not to make this into a major confrontation.

“Charlie, that’s an interesting idea,” I said, and smiled sweetly. The remark about being a woman and wearing clothes was just a joke, folks. I’m a humorist, remember? “Naturally, I’d like to take some time to consider it so I can turn in the best possible column for our Family section.”

Georgia beamed at me. A good answer. So I kept going. “I think any women’s coverage should be well thought out,” I said. “I’m really concerned we think the only way to get women readers is to give them fashion and child care. That’s 1950s thinking. Women are interested in more than these tired, traditional topics. Frankly, if they want fashion news, they buy
Vogue,
and if they want child care information, they can read a parenting magazine or buy a book by an expert. If the
Gazette
wants more women readers, the paper needs more women leaders who know what interests their gender.”

I could hear Georgia making choking noises, but this time everyone ignored her. Everyone, including the publisher, was listening to me intently. That was good. The publisher surrounded himself with yes-people. He needed to hear someone tell him what’s really happening. If he knew, I was sure he’d want to fix it.

“We have never had a woman managing editor. No woman has ever headed up an important department
on the news side.” (I didn’t mention the women who’d slept with Charlie and been promoted. Everyone knew who they were and what talents they’d used for those jobs.) “We have men in charge of the financial page, the news side, editorial page, sports, the art department, the photography department, the Sunday roto magazine, and the copy desk. The only place where the
Gazette
has women editors are the female ghettos, features and food. If you want more women readers, hire more women editors and reporters. Women know what women want to read. It’s that simple.”

Georgia, my mentor, was signaling frantically for me to shut up. I couldn’t see why. I wasn’t angry or ranting. I was listing some well-thought-out reasons. Sorry, Georgia, the publisher needed to hear this.

“What’s wrong with our readers being fifty?” I asked. “Most of the male management in this room is fifty and older—so is our Voyage Captain Jason—and I’m sure none of you consider yourselves over the hill. Why say that about your readers? The boomers are turning fifty now. They have plenty of dough and they spend it. They’re different from previous generations this way. They like to spend their money as they age. There are surveys that back up what I’m saying. We need to make advertisers understand this change.

“Anyway, just because readers are young doesn’t mean they’re stupid or they want junk. If they want to read about celebrities and music, there are magazines devoted to those topics that do it better than the
Gazette
ever will—or they can look the subjects up on the Internet. Heck, they can download music
and see great movie promos on the Net. We can’t compete with that. We don’t have to. Young and old readers want the same thing from their paper: interesting, well-written news stories, features that are entertaining, and think pieces with an original point of view. Instead, we’re giving them warmed-over wire service.

“Another thing. We’ve gone crazy on this local news stuff. Look at today’s front-page story: three kids who died in a car accident in Macon, Missouri. That’s terribly sad, and it’s news, but it’s not frontpage news. It doesn’t give our readers much of a world view. St. Louis is a sophisticated city. The people here travel, they read, they watch CNN, and more and more, as they get disaffected with the
Gazette,
they subscribe to the
New York Times.
They want to know what’s going on in the world, and we barely tell them. We treat them like a bunch of isolated Ozark mountaineers who haven’t been down from the hills in fifty years.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t cover local news?” Charlie asked, an expression of horror on his face.

“Of course we should do local news, but we should make our coverage hard hitting. It takes time and money to get good local stories. We need to let people know what city hall is trying to pull, what’s happening behind the scenes at the county council, and why our downtown is practically a ghost town. Readers love local stories with bite.”

The whole audience was staring at me. They must be fascinated. What the heck, why not go for broke?

“But we need more writers to do that, and right now we have more editors per reporter than any
newspaper our size in the country. If successful newspapers don’t need that many editors, why do we? Besides, some of these editors are good reporters, but they are not trained to manage. Now, they write memos. They could write stories. Why not give them a raise and a title and put them to work writing well-researched local stories? We need more writers, not less. Think of the money we could have spent on staff if we hadn’t hired these consultants.”

Oops. Maybe I went a little far with that remark. But I was pleased I got that speech off my chest. My mentor, Georgia, had quit signaling frantically. Now she was staring at the conference table. I sat down, feeling good about myself, as Voyage Captain Jason would say. It must have been a thought-provoking speech. There was a long silence, until Voyage Captain Jason took the helm again.