 Departing from the norm
By BOB BRINCEFIELD
TPA President 2010-2011
I was aware one of the duties of the TPA president was to write a monthly column for the Texas Press Messenger, but when Ed Sterling told me I also needed to come up with a moniker for the column, it put me into something of a quandary. Unlike my recent predecessors who went to college and majored in journalism to prepare for a career in newspapers, I got a job at a newspaper in order to pay my way through school.
I am not a journalism school grad, nor have I ever earned a living as a reporter, photographer or editor. I have covered city council and school board meetings, walked the sideline at a few football games, taken photographs and written a weekly column for 21 years, but I generally don’t think of myself as a journalist.
The TPA executive committee and board of directors took a departure from the norm in selecting as their new president a guy who has spent his entire career on the business side of a newspaper. Before you start thinking the column title I chose presumptuous, let me provide some background on its origin and why I selected it.
For five days during the summer of my senior year in college, my hometown in the Midwest exploded in a violent civil disturbance. Forty three people were killed and more than 1,100 were injured. Members of the National Guard and the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, N.C., were called in to quell the violence.
A year and a half later, following my graduation from college, I was a new circulation district manager working in many of the same neighborhoods where the violence erupted that hot summer night in 1967. Contracting with youth carriers required conducting in-house parental interviews, explaining the administration of the routes and the wholesale/retail relationship, collecting newspaper bills for the week’s newspapers and helping the carriers make their profits.
One afternoon, as I was descending the stairs of a carrier’s home, I noticed a small group of men standing near my vehicle. I remember feeling my adrenalin level begin to rise and thinking this could get a little dicey, when I overheard one of the men say as I approached, “He’s the paper man.” I did not know which man identified me as such and could not recall ever seeing any of the men before, but the declaration seemed to lighten the atmosphere.
Actually, I was surprised any of them knew who I was or what I was doing in their neighborhood. I was well aware I was an outsider, a visitor in a different culture, and I conducted business in that manner. I came and went quietly and tried to operate below the radar screen, a background player if you will. As I was driving away I knew I had not been issued free pass for future travel, but for whatever reason, I felt a sense of validation for the approach I had adopted while working in the neighborhoods.
A decade later when Carol and I moved to Texas, once again I found myself working in a very different business environment and culture. I had left the largest afternoon circulated daily newspaper in the country and was starting a management position in the circulation department of one of the smallest dailies in the state. Actually, one other guy and I were the circulation department. I was an urban guy from a large metropolitan area in the Midwest learning to adjust to a close-knit small community in rural Texas. The reference of “paper man” quickly turned into “that man at the paper.”
The newspaper was distributed by adult carriers and the collections for the subscriptions were handled by the newspaper’s office staff. It was a de facto voluntary pay system – at best. There was not any correlation between the residences being thrown a newspaper and the people paying for a subscription in place. The tedious process of reconciling delivery tapes of rural routes with names and mailing addresses of rural customers without the advantage of 911 numbers took more than nine months. But I learned more quickly than that the degree to which customers’ tempers can reach when they are required to pay for something they had previously received free, sometimes for years. They were a minority, but a very vocal one who felt they were entitled to the newspaper. The low profile approach I adopted proved to help; I was glad they did not know the paper man.
While thinking about what I would write for this column, I began thinking about my approach in business over the years. I think my management style found its roots in the inner city neighborhoods in which I started. I am comfortable in a support position, behind the scenes. Years ago, I learned from Jim Boone, who was mentored by Carmage Walls, profit is not a four-letter word. A healthy profit margin provides the foundation for acquiring and retaining quality journalists, purchasing the technology and equipment they need to practice their craft and afford them the freedom to maintain their professional integrity while doing so.
I enjoyed the role as coach for the kids, helping them to be successful in their first business enterprise. Later, as my role became less hands on I took pride in being a part of the process to provide resources for news, advertising and production staffs to better do their jobs so the communities we serve get the best newspapers they can afford.
A paper man is how I see my new role with TPA – when I asked Ed what I should write about, he said to write about business – so that is what I will do. As important a service as our newspapers provide to our communities, at base and bottom they are businesses and doing what it takes for our businesses to continue to be profitable will insure all of our futures for the long term. |