Reading The Tennessean, one often encounters a never-ending succession of new things: New task forces to get readers more closely in touch with the paper. New sections designed to “better address readers’ needs.” New inserts. New columns. New columns announcing new columns and new sections.

Much of this is driven by the newspaper’s own marketing and advertising staff, though much of it is also driven by Gannett Co., which exerts a strong influence on the papers it owns.

Tennessean editor Frank Sutherland says some of his paper’s new sections and publications have been successes, although he acknowledges that there have been failures as well. “Some, such as the separate ‘Business’ section, the ‘Travel’ section, ‘FYI,’ and now apparently the ‘Life’ section, worked,” he says. “Some, such as Hot Ticket, didn’t. Sometimes a section didn’t get reader or advertising support or both.”

While his newspaper can’t cite a single major non-Gannett, national journalism award it has won in the last 10 years, Sutherland can point to an otherwise prolific level of activity at The Tennessean—much in the form of new editorial features and new company initiatives. Consider the following anecdote, related to the Scene by several staffers at the paper:

On Feb. 7, 2001, more than 100 Tennessean employees crowd into the second-floor conference room at 1100 Broadway. At a podium, publisher Craig Moon launches into a description of “Team Tennessean.”

The idea is that everyone at the paper should chip in and help out everyone else. If a production employee hears about a hot story, he should pass it along to the news department. If a features writer sees a “help wanted” sign in an Antioch restaurant, she should let her colleagues in classifieds know about it.

When staffers do something good along these lines, they earn points. The points can be cashed in later for prizes such as Tennessean golf shirts. The “Team Tennessean” contest, Moon explains, will end in a banquet, where those who have earned the most points will be honored.

Among the journalists, though, “Team Tennessean” is not well received. Many consider it a corporate fix that won’t scratch the surface of deep-rooted editorial problems. At Moon’s announcement, a veteran reporter wisecracks to a colleague: “Are you going to try out for the cheerleading squad at the banquet?”

The Tennessean has also taken part in these other initiatives, all introduced by its parent company:

♦ The “All-American” program, in which newspapers are judged, in part, on their minority staffing levels. From top editors to reporters to interns, Gannett newspapers are judged on whether their minority staffing levels reflect the percentages of minorities in their communities. Phil Currie, senior vice president of news for Gannett’s newspaper division, says “All-American” aims to ensure that “minorities are shown as part of the ‘mainstream’ of American life, not in some stereotyped role.”

Although Tennessean staffers say the concept is laudable, some editors say they spend an untoward amount of work trying to hire minority staffers away from other papers, which eats into the time they have to focus on good journalism.

♦ “Mainstreaming,” a nationwide Gannett campaign in which reporters are required to make an effort to quote minority sources when preparing a story. While some staffers applaud the concept, they are frustrated with its implementation. “It was essentially a dial-a-quote service,” one reporter says. At The Tennessean, one former editor, Bev Winston, compiled a book of minority sources as a reference for the newspaper’s staff. Frank Abernathy, a black lawyer and sports agent who says he is called “maybe nine times a year,” laughed when he heard that he was being used to fill “mainstreaming” requirements.

♦ The “Complete Community Coverage” model, an outgrowth of the now defunct, company-wide “News 2000” movement. This is a nationwide Gannett program encouraging newspapers to build readership by getting in touch with their communities, among other things. It encourages reader studies and has four stated core values: “upholding First Amendment responsibilities, reflecting and serving diverse readers, achieving high-quality journalistic standards, and ensuring credibility in content and integrity in news gathering.”

♦ “Ascertainment,” Gannett’s title for a program to, in Currie’s words, “understand what topics are of interest and concern to our readers.” “Ascertainment” requires reporters and editors to talk with community members to hear their views of The Tennessean. Editorial staffers are graded on their ascertainments in annual job evaluations, which affect salaries and promotions. One former Tennessean reporter recalls: “We’d bring these people into the newsroom, then ask them how we were doing and write up their answers. It’s the kind of crap they come up with at management retreats. It took valuable time away from reporting and writing stories, but we had to do it to get a good job review.”

Tennessean managing editor Dave Green says ascertainment is among “many things that are considered” in staff evaluations. “For a reporter, for example, we take into account accuracy, depth of reporting, writing quality, and a variety of other factors. Among them is whether the staffer has made efforts to deepen his or her understanding of our community and our readers, which is the basic definition of ascertainment.”

Gene Roberts, former managing editor of The New York Times who now teaches journalism at the University of Maryland, says he has heard of editorial initiatives similar to The Tennessean’s. They are there for a reason, he explains. “These new editors don’t really care about the board of education or the city council. More and more people, as a result, get alienated. Then the corporate response is to get more reader-friendly, which insults the intelligence of the reader. So a lot of newspapers are into corporate sloganeering. It’s bullshit.”

Two-time Pulitzer winner Eric Nalder, an investigative reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, says that “weighty bureaucracies” are one of the most prevalent obstacles to quality journalism today.

Meanwhile, The Tennessean’s new publications—which critics say also pull the paper away from the fundamentals—continue to roll off the presses. Or at least they seem “new.” Sometimes they’re the products of relentless reorganization of old sections of the paper.

On Jan. 12, The Tennessean changed the format of the “Weekend” section. The new “Weekend” product, a Friday tabloid, includes a new-movies feature that consists of essentially the same content that used to appear in a Friday movies section launched in January 1999—until that feature was canned.

“Weekend” also offers lots of entertainment listings and music reviews. As a result, it appears to be in competition with another Tennessean product, the stand-alone free publication called Rage, which was launched Oct. 26, 2000. The pocket-sized guide is published on Thursdays and contains the same type of content as “Weekend.”

Both “Weekend” and Rage are the latest Tennessean initiatives to target entertainment. Those efforts have previously included two separate weekly publications that were distributed free. The first was a tourist publication for country music fans and other visitors to Nashville, called Hot Ticket. It was published for a short while during 1994 and 1995 before being unceremoniously shuttered.

There was also On Nashville, another free paper with arts and entertainment articles—some of which were later repackaged in The Tennessean—designed to go head-to-head with the Scene for readers and advertisers. The print version launched in January 1999 and folded in October 2000, the week before Rage was first published.

The newspaper’s “Women” section underwent a similar evolution. In September 1999, in response to market research that indicated women wanted more news about issues pertaining specifically to them, the product was launched. According to the inaugural issue, “ ‘Women’ was created for you. The busy woman. The woman with a family. The woman with a career. The woman in search of a relationship.”

The advertising for the new section didn’t develop. So this March, “Women” was folded into the new, enlarged “Life,” a tabloid insert in Sunday newspapers whose debut was heralded on billboards and in other media. Sutherland wrote a front-page column announcing the section.

Among those disheartened by the section’s arrival was Todd Olson, associate artistic director for the Tennessee Repertory Theatre. He and others in Nashville’s arts community share a concern that opinion surveys are driving these editorial decisions, which have meant less focus on the arts. Olson says he is “mystified” that The Tennessean has scaled back its arts coverage “for the sake of readership polls.”

And what about Gannett’s response to the Internet? Seeking to capitalize on the popularity of the Internet, The Tennessean in September 2000 launched “e,” a decent-looking, six-page section about all things related to cyberspace. The money-losing feature, consisting mostly of Gannett News Service copy, lasted just six months. It was folded into the “Business” section in March.

Then there is “Shortcuts,” a full-page compendium of shorter news stories launched in July 1995. This page runs three times a week and is the editorial department’s response to market surveys indicating readers want more short stories. Since it began, Green says, the page “has continued its focus of providing information to save time, money, and stress. There have been changes and improvements. We’ve added features and dropped others.”

Some Tennessean staffers see the constant consolidation and creation of new sections as part of a drive to produce a cheaper newspaper using less newsprint.

Moon acknowledges that The Tennessean’s advertising, marketing, and circulation departments had roles in the creation of many of the paper’s editorial sections. “All our departments have input on these issues,” he explains.

Gene Roberts says that the reliance on market research in newsrooms across the country leads to “formulaic” newspapers, “instead of having reporters dig into what is actually happening in the community.” Particularly at chain-owned newspapers, he says, “the constant adherence to polls and reader surveys controls the news as opposed to the news itself.”

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and co-author of the new book The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, argues that “you just can’t ask citizens to be assignment editors from a list of static choices.” Speaking about newspapers in general and not specifically about The Tennessean, he says that the problem with most market research today is that it offers limited choices. “This works well if you are asking people if they prefer red or silver sneakers,” he explains. “But in newspaper journalism, the market research tends to impose artificial constraints on what the news should be, based upon what a limited number of citizens reacted to from a limited number of choices.”

—Willy Stern