Press
A new editor brightens the look and style of a venerable daily
As she stood on the receiving line at her 1950 wedding to Marshall Field IV, whose family owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the debutante whispered hopefully to one of the paper's editors, "Now you have got to give me a job." But it was not until 15 years later, after she had divorced Field and headed north to Alaska in a station wagon, that she at last broke into the ranks of working journalists, as librarian of the Anchorage Daily News at a wage of $2 an hour. She was not impelled by financial needs; she just had her mind set upon having a career. The next year, she married Lawrence Fanning, a former Field deputy, and together they bought the Anchorage paper.
After his death in 1971 left her as owner, editor and publisher of the tiny (20 employees), unprofitable Daily News, Katherine Fanning proved her mettle. She guided the paper to a 1976 Pulitzer Prize for exposing the statewide influence of the Teamsters Union and weathered a succession of financial crises before selling control, at "a modest profit," to the California-based McClatchy chain. So when Fanning left Alaska in May to take on the job of editor of the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor—making it the most prestigious top-editor post in American newspapering now held by a woman—fellow news executives predicted that she would bring her brand of vigorous change to the venerable (founded 1908) but stodgy daily. The Man itor commands an elite following for its international coverage and political analysis and enjoys unusual access to news figures because of its reputation for fairness. But the paper has been losing circulation, and perhaps influence, for more than a decade; it runs a $10 million annual deficit.
In her first few months, Fanning has quietly shuffled editors, pushed for more investigative reporting and sharpened the editorials. This week her reshaping of the Monitor takes an even more dramatic turn: starting with Monday's edition, the once gray tabloid will sport a radically revamped layout and a new and bigger type face, and its number of daily pages will jump from 28 to 40. Page One will carry several stories, including a feature to be typeset with ragged right edges; the second page will become primarily an expanded index; the rest of the paper will be structured into distinct sections, each with its opening cover page. Says Fanning: "We are attempting to fit into the fast pace of life. People cannot pore through a paper these days."