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The Inquirer style is exhaustive. When the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant had a near meltdown in 1979, the paper assigned more than 80 staffers. Reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele spent more than a year preparing last November's series about nuclear waste. Some readers wonder, however, why the paper also gives its in-depth treatment to the fate of the African rhinoceros. Roberts encourages his staff to be like writers for The New Yorker, relentless in pursuit of even esoteric interests. At times, the Inquirer's self-conscious creativity has led it to shortchange local news. Says Associate Managing Editor James Naughton: "It used to be said that we covered Karachi better than the neighborhood of Kensington. But with the Bulletin gone, we are obligated to keep more of a local record."
St. Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg (pop. 240,000) may be one of the slowest news cities in America. The median age of the population in two census districts that make up downtown is 73; life is so sleepy that the Times sometimes has to fill its local news pages with reports of kindly neighbors and lost dogs. Many editors would count themselves blessed not to contend with chronic turmoil, but the Times goes looking for news. Locally, the paper has taken on power companies, banks, oil-supply speculators, home-repair con artists and even that most sacred of cows, the University of Florida football program, the last in stories that exposed academic irregularities. Reporters Charles Stafford and Bette Orsini won a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for examining opera tions of the Church of Scientology. Lucy Morgan wrote a series that tellingly demonstrated links between public officials and drug smuggling, and Peter Gallagher has written a succession of tough but balanced stories about the perils of overdevelopment. The paper is especially generous with travel budgets: the witty theater critic Tom Sabulis frequently reports from Broadway, while Foreign Editor Wilbur Landrey roves the world.
Longtime Publisher Nelson Poynter sought to preserve the paper's high standards by creating a unique ownership arrangement: voting rights to the controlling stock belong to the top executive, who names his successor. Since Poynter's death in 1978, that power has been held by Eugene Patterson, 60, who has paid equal attention to quality and viability: last year the parent company, which also controls Congressional Quarterly, made a profit of about $18 million, of which $4.5 million was returned to the employee profit-sharing plan.
The Times was a pioneer in its bold handling of color, graphics and design. Perhaps an even more important accomplishment is that it has been an academy for gifted reporters who hone then" craft, then move on to bigger pay and livelier cities. In the past few years, Times alumni have got showcase jobs in Denver, Dallas and Washington, and especially on the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Patterson's heir apparent, Editor Andrew Barnes, says of the exodus, "I'm told I should feel complimented, but I resent it. We've populated the world."
The Wall Street Journal