By Eric Wemple
Washington City Paper

It’s been a fun week for watchers of the Washington Post. First comes Gabriel Sherman’s story titled “Post Apocalypse” in The New Republic, a wonderful read powered by some of the best quotes I’ve ever seen in a story about that paper.

Next comes Post Co. Chairman Don Graham, bashing Sherman’s piece for being “lazy.” An excerpt from the Graham’s slam:

Having read these stories for 40 years, I found Gabriel Sherman’s piece (”Post Apocalypse,” February 4) particularly lazy. Not much new here. His endless lead rehashes an episode now seven months old in which a screamingly obvious decision to enter the conference business was betrayed by poor execution. Respected news organizations sponsor dozens of conferences.

Graham had very compelling reasons for writing that letter, newsroom morale being first on the list. The whole “salons” disaster had a big impact on the operation, as did a monthslong renovation that left the newsroom scattered about the region. If The New Republic was going to deliver a broadside at the Washington Post, Don Graham was going to have something to say about it!

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By  Don Graham
The chairman of the board for ‘The Washington Post’

Times change in the newspaper business; technologies and perceptions come and go. There is so little one can rely on.

But there is this: Every few years, a writer for The New Republic or some similar magazine comes forward to announce the collapse of standards and journalism at The Washington Post.

Having read these stories for 40 years, I found Gabriel Sherman’s piece (”Post Apocalypse,” February 4) particularly lazy. Not much new here. His endless lead rehashes an episode now seven months old in which a screamingly obvious decision to enter the conference business was betrayed by poor execution. Respected news organizations sponsor dozens of conferences.

Your reporter tries to build this into a mountain. Having lived through the Janet Cooke episode in my second year as publisher, I do not see in this months-old issue even a respectable-sized molehill.

Mr. Sherman goes on: We have lost a respected reporter–a year ago! (but still have a newsroom full of great ones). Someone has told an insulting story about the editor (consult your files and those of your competitors for similar stories about Ben Bradlee and Len Downie–and for that matter, about Katharine Graham).

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“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

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With 2010 looming, it’s already time to look back at 2009 and enter our best work in the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild’s annual Front Page Awards.

These awards honor the best work of rank-and-file workers covered by a Guild contract. The work must have been published or publicly used in 2009, and any employee of one of our bargaining units is eligible to enter, as are at-large members. Also eligible are those who were Guild members last year but have since left their positions via buyouts, resignations, promotions, etc.

We also have Guild Service awards, honoring outstanding dedication to the workers and causes that the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild stands for.

The Front Page Awards honor the best work done by members in our bargaining units for their employers. All entries are free, and as many as three works may be entered in a single category. Two copies of each entry must be submitted to the judges and while published clippings are preferred, electronic versions, such as PDFs, are permitted.

Judges have the right to move entries into different categories, and also have the discretion to not confer an award in every category.

The Front Page Awards are open to all WBNG members, including those who do not work under a Guild-negotiated agreement. Guild members who win in their respective categories are eligible for the Grand Prizes in writing, photography and design.

If you were bought out, laid off, promoted to an exempt spot, or even dismissed during calendar 2008, you may still be eligible to enter as long as your submitted work was performed while you were under the Guild contract. If you’re still in touch with one-time Guild colleagues in this situation, let them know that they, too, can be winners.

But in order to win, you’ve got to enter. If you are entering material for consideration in other awards forums, such as the Pulitzers, you really should also enter it in the Front Page Awards.

All entries must be received no later than the close of business on Monday, Feb. 1. You can deliver them in person, or mail them, to: Front Page Awards, Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, 1100 15th St. NW, Suite 350, Washington, DC 20005. The handy, printable entry form should be attached to each entry. Please specify the category in which your entry is being submitted. You can also email a PDF of your work and the entry form to  nbanks@wbng.org. If you have any problems, please call the Guild at 202 785-3650 and ask for Nancy Banks. There’s been so much good work out there, we want to make sure it gets the recognition it deserves.

The Awards

Writing: Morton Mintz Award for Investigative Reporting; Bernie Harrison Memorial Award for Commentary; Frank C. Porter Memorial Award for Labor and Business Reporting; Criticism; Feature Writing; Headline Writing; International News Reporting; Local News Reporting; National News Reporting; Non-Daily Specialized Technical Reporting; Public Service Reporting; Sports Reporting; (Labor) Unit Publication.

Photography: Feature Photography; Local News Photography; National News Photography; Picture Story; Portrait Photography; Sports Photography.

Art: Advertising Design; Editorial Cartooning; Illustration Design; Labor Promotional Campaign; Marketing and Promotion Design; News Graphics Design; Web-Site Design.

(A separate non-editorial Front Page Award is given for Customer Service Professional of the Year.)

Individual Grand Prize winners will be selected from among the winners of the individual Front Page Award categories. You do not have to submit separate entries for the: Bill Pryor Memorial Grand Prize for Writing; Bill Pryor Memorial Grand Prize for Photography; John Albano Memorial Grand Prize for Art.

If you have questions, contact Front Page Awards Committee Chair Mark Gruenberg (202-898-4825 or press_associates@yahoo.com).

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By Adam Bernstein

Washington Post Staff Writer

Marcia Slacum Greene, 57, a tenacious Washington Post editor and reporter whose assignments included politics, housing and social services and who saw journalism as a way to humanize and illuminate the lives of the marginalized and voiceless, died Jan. 4 at her home in Washington. She had complications from pancreatic cancer.

Marcia Slacum Greene/facebook

Mrs. Slacum Greene spent 26 years at The Post before retiring in July as city editor. She had earlier been assistant District editor for politics and government, where she helped

oversee the paper’s award-winning series about the discovery of excessive levels of lead in the city’s water supply. She also had been a reporter on the Metro projects team, a unit that focused on long-term investigative or in-depth explanatory topics.

In 2002, she was the first to get an extensive interview with Mildred Muhammad, who explained during a four-hour conversation how her ex-husband, sniper John Allen Muhammad, transformed “from a loving husband to an angry, controlling man.”

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By Bruce Nelson

Guild Sector Rep.

The tenacity and feistiness that marked Deborah Howell’s career in newsroom management also served her well as a Guild leader. She could pound on the table and cuss a blue streak in defense of an issue that was important to her. But because belligerence alone doesn’t always work, Deborah made sure her strategic repertoire was always well stocked.

She led a Guild bargaining committee during testy negotiations at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune back in the 1970s. It was 3 a.m. and a settlement was beginning to emerge. There was only one unresolved matter.

The Guild wanted higher raises for a small group of low paid clerical workers. Management was resisting, betting the farm – correctly – that the Guild wouldn’t strike over that issue. Deborah was crestfallen. She had championed this cause for months, her voice hoarse from flinging endless arguments that seemed to go nowhere.

As dawn approached, the company negotiators sat patiently waiting for the Guild’s surrender on this final issue. Deborah’s hands slowly brought her head to rest on the bargaining table. A conference room that only minutes earlier had been filled with her amazingly versatile conjugation of the f-word was now enveloped in an eerie silence.

Deborah slowly raised her head to the full upright position. She just sat there for a minute or two, playing to the power of uncomfortable silence as she made eye contact with every member of the management committee. When she finally spoke, her voice was so soft that company negotiators had to lean their heads forward to hear. Each word was delivered at a slow, measured clip.

“There,” she said, “is. . . nothing. . .left. . .for. . .me. . .to. . .do. . .but. . .cry.” She said nothing else. The management representatives watched a tear or two trickle down Deborah’s face before they got up and left the room. They came back 30 minutes later and agreed to the higher raises for the lower paid workers.

This was hardly a seminal moment in a career comprised of executive editorial leadership roles at Knight-Ridder, Newhouse and the Washington Post. But it was vintage Deborah Howell – always focused on the goal, comfortable with her true grit persona, but equally in touch with a softer side.

Her tragic death is being met with an outpouring of grief from literally hundreds of journalists whose lives she so vitally affected and shaped. They weren’t simply “content providers” or “FTEs” to Deborah.

She called them “friends” and “family” and she meant it. It was a simple formula to her – you get good journalism by hiring good people and working with each of them to make them even better, the best that they can be. That strategic repertoire of hers was always filled, from harangues to hugs.

I was working for the Guild in Minnesota during the early 1980s when Deborah was Executive Editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Every once in a while, I’d get a complaint about her from one of our members.

I made it a practice to do nothing for at least 48 hours because I knew there was a good chance that she would reach further into her bag of strategies. It was not at all unusual for Editor Howell to call an underperforming reporter’s story a “piece of shit,” and then show up at her house the next morning with a tin of hot muffins and an idea or two on how to improve her work.

So I did what I always did when I worked with Deborah – threw away the old rules and wrote new ones. In this case: Never file a grievance before the muffins come.

No, the newspaper business isn’t what it once was and there is no turning back. But Deborah Howell left a couple of important lessons for those struggling to create the new business model: manage people, not just budgets, and have more than one strategy.

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