AADL Talks to Mary Morgan

Thu, 10/20/2011 - 4:57pm

Before she started the Ann Arbor Chronicle with husband Dave Askins, Mary Morgan worked at the Ann Arbor News where she served as Business editor and later oversaw the Opinions desk. Mary recalls what attracted her to Ann Arbor and the News and she contrasts a typical mid-1990s day in the newsroom with running her online-only news site. She touches on some of the challenges of working the Opinions desk under News Editor Ed Petykiewicz; how the News responded to major changes in the industry; and the decision by Booth Newspapers to close the paper in 2009.

Transcript

• [00:00:00.00] [MUSIC PLAYING]
• [00:00:05.21] AMY: Hi, this is Amy.
• [00:00:06.55] ANDREW: And this is Andrew. And in this episode, AADL talks to former business and opinions editor for the Ann Arbor News Mary Morgan.
• [00:00:15.62] AMY: Before she started the Ann Arbor Chronicle, Mary Morgan worked for the Ann Arbor News. In our conversation, Mary talks about life at the News before the internet reshaped the industry, the challenges she faced working the editorial desk, her thoughts on Ann Arbor News editor Ed Petykiewicz, and the closing of the News in 2009. So what brought you to journalism?
• [00:00:37.19] MARY MORGAN: Wow, so we're going way back. I actually took a bit of a circuitous route. I went to high school at a very large-- had a very large newspaper. So I was editor there. And when I went to college, I didn't really want to be locked into the journalism track. And it was sort of like a trade school thing where you went to journalism school and that's what you did.
• [00:00:59.45] So I got a more liberal arts degree, and kind of went away from journalism for a long time, and circled back around about 10 years after I graduated from college. Took a freelance job at Rochester Business Journal because I was interested in learning more about business at the time, frankly. And I could write. And I knew sort of what reporting was all about. And that experience was a bit of an apprenticeship, which I think is really valuable compared to going to school for it.
• [00:01:32.18] So I was interested primarily through the writing, and just sort of an innate curiosity. And I think that that's actually a skill that's undervalued for anyone who wants to get into journalism. That you basically have to be interested in what's going on in the world around you. And you have to be able to be observant and curious about life.
• [00:01:53.88] And so that's sort of how I got back into it after I was into it at a younger age. And then I got to Ann Arbor because I was really looking to move closer to my family. I grew up in Indiana. My parents were getting older. And so I started looking in larger markets. I was thinking maybe Chicago or St. Louis.
• [00:02:12.09] And I came to Ann Arbor actually as a practice interview. It was kind of like, OK. It was my first interview offer in the job search. And I wasn't really interested in coming to Ann Arbor.
• [00:02:23.24] I'd never been here. I didn't know anything about it. Seemed like a small town. Kind of a sleepy small town from what I knew. And so I came here, and I just really loved the town.
• [00:02:33.53] I had a great impression of the newspaper, the people that I interviewed with. And ironically, at the time, they were pitching it as a growth potential. So I was interviewed as a business reporter. And it was going to be adding to the existing business staff. So--
• [00:02:54.00] AMY: What year was that?
• [00:02:54.89] MARY MORGAN: This was 1996. So it was a time when they were expanding, which in hindsight was just hysterical. But so I ended up taking the job here, as a business reporter, and moved here, and have been here ever since.
• [00:03:10.99] ANDREW: What was it that seemed appealing from that interview about the paper?
• [00:03:15.63] MARY MORGAN: The newspaper seemed to be, as I said, in a growth mode. So there were opportunities that I didn't think I would have at a larger institution. When I started doing some research about the newspaper and coverage, I started reading copies of the paper. They actually started sending them to me. Because they didn't have a website at the time.
• [00:03:40.14] And I was struck by a letter to the editor by Lou Rosenfeld, who has since left the city. But he was talking about how frustrating it was for him to see coverage of internet companies and technology companies that were not in the Ann Arbor area. That were picked up by the wire stories that were being run.
• [00:04:05.50] And that he knew there was such a flourishing tech community in Ann Arbor. But nobody was covering it, and the Ann Arbor News should cover it. And it struck me at the time because I was interviewing for a business reporter position to cover technology. If I went to a larger newspaper, I would probably be a cog in a wheel and there would be very much-- there were expectations of me. And I wouldn't really have fertile ground in which to do my own thing in some ways and make a difference. Pretty quickly.
• [00:04:35.87] And I felt like the opportunity for a growing business section, in an area that was clearly under-covered, so that there hadn't been anybody else who had done this before. That it was an opportunity for me to grow and to make a difference. In a way that I didn't feel I could in a larger market.
• [00:04:53.68] So that's really what was attractive to me. And I also liked the people. I'm a Midwesterner. And so Midwesterners, they have a certain sensibility. And I could feel that here.
• [00:05:05.87] I really liked the town itself. So in addition to the newspaper opportunity, I felt like Ann Arbor had a lot of things going for it that I hadn't realized until I started looking at it a little more closely. The university connection. All the things that come with having a university town. But it's still small. But you have the cultural offering and things most people cite pretty regularly. And that was appealing to me too.
• [00:05:28.45] And being close to what I thought was a really cool metro area of Detroit. I don't think I've taken advantage of that as much as I thought I would. But that's an attraction too.
• [00:05:39.45] AMY: So you wrote about business for a while. You also covered the University of Michigan. And eventually, you made it to the editorial desk. Can you talk about why you made that transition? I think you said somewhere that, that was the ultimate position to have, the editorial position. You didn't want to do anything after that. Anything else.
• [00:05:58.34] MARY MORGAN: Well, it's kind of funny because when I interviewed, I think one of the reasons why I actually got the job in the first place is because I interviewed with the editor-in-chief, Ed Petykiewicz. I don't know if you've had the chance to meet him. But he's this really tall guy who is very intimidating to a lot of people.
• [00:06:15.46] And for whatever reason, we just struck it off. And he asked me in the interview what I wanted to do, sort of a long-term goal. And I said, well, I'd like your job eventually, or to be publisher. And it was kind of snotty because at that time I was thinking, I don't really want this job anyway. So I haven't got anything to lose in this interview.
• [00:06:33.83] So part of my motivation for changing jobs within the news, and part of the reason why I like the paper, is because I tend to do something for a while and then get a little restless. And so, I had been business reporter for a few years. And I was thinking, I feel like I've done not all that I can do, but I'm looking for something else that will be challenging to me.
• [00:06:58.81] So that's why I moved to the University of Michigan position, when it was open. And then the business editor position came open. They had never had a full time business editor before. So I was hired into that position.
• [00:07:14.00] Then, and then did that for a few years and felt like, OK I'm interested in doing something besides business. And the editorial pages were really a place where you could-- again, I felt like there was a lot opportunity to make a difference. It would engage me with the entire community. It would be a position, if I wanted to do something else, I would have that option. But I really felt like, once I started doing it for awhile, and I saw what was happening at the newspaper, I didn't really feel like being editor-in-chief or publisher for this publication was something that I wanted to do.
• [00:07:50.94] So I loved being opinion editor. I think that it was a great job. Especially at the time, when I was there, where there was so much more interest in-- at the paper-- in getting readers involved. So I was able to expand the amount of op-ed pieces that we ran. We used to run a lot of wire editorials and a lot of wire opinion pieces. And I cut that way back and used a lot more local content.
• [00:08:20.42] So again, it was a kind of an opportunity to do two things that were a little bit different. And it was a great job. I got to meet a lot of terrific people in the community.
• [00:08:31.08] AMY: What were some of the challenges?
• [00:08:32.93] MARY MORGAN: Well, the challenges are that you're the point person when anybody gets pissed off. Right? So you're the person that people call. And you're the one that gets accused of-- whatever the opinion, whatever the editorial is.
• [00:08:51.79] At that time, they were unsigned, which is pretty traditional. But we had an editorial board that would make those decisions. And so even though sometimes I might not have agreed with the ultimate opinion, I might have had to write the editorial. And I would certainly have to field the questions that came in and talk to people.
• [00:09:10.79] And that was very challenging because you never really knew what would-- sometimes you knew-- but oftentimes, you wouldn't know what would spark people's anger. So that was just a challenge. It was a challenge to deal with some of the regulars, that are the ones that constantly call, constantly contact you, come in.
• [00:09:35.02] In some cases, you have to be very much a people-oriented person, and be able to enjoy that to some degree. But certainly, it was also challenging on many days, as well. And also just, I think, challenging in terms of being frustrated by not being in a position to do some things that I felt really needed to be done. And I think a lot of people at the News felt that way.
• [00:10:01.09] Particularly, in the final years, where the Ann Arbor News had no control over its website, for example. So you had constant frustration with what was happening with that separate organization even though it was branded Ann Arbor News. And it had our content. We weren't really able to make any changes. And it was just really awful so that was very frustrating and challenging too.
• [00:10:26.79] ANDREW: Can you talk about those editorial board meetings, and like the process of deciding what you're going to write about. And were there just huge arguments in every meeting? Is that what every meeting was?
• [00:10:38.72] MARY MORGAN: That would be so much more dramatic. That would be a great story to tell. When I was there, there were basically three of us on the editorial board. So me, Ed Petykiewicz, the editor-in-chief, and Laurel Champion, who was publisher at the time.
• [00:11:00.55] There were discussions. I would never say we had a discussion that was particularly heated because our personalities were not such that we were table bangers. And we would really, on very rare occasions really, there were disagreements. Typically they were centered on endorsements for political candidates, when we would have different perspectives.
• [00:11:24.68] And I would also like to say for the record, as I do in every single interview that I've done about this, I was not there when the paper endorsed George Bush. Just to make that clear. Because that was a very big controversial decision that made the previous opinion editor.
• [00:11:45.39] But essentially, I would be responsible for coming up with a list of possible topics that we might want to weigh in on one way or another. We would meet once a week.
• [00:11:57.62] Sometimes, not all three of us would be there. And so we would do some discussion by email. A lot of times, frankly, the publisher would not particularly have a strong opinion on anything, and would just say whatever you guys want to do is fine with me.
• [00:12:16.64] And like I said, a lot of the issues were not particularly controversial. And if there were ones, we would thrash it through.
• [00:12:27.53] I was kind of surprised when I started the process. I felt like there would be a lot more engagement from more people and from those two people. And I think that during my tenure oftentimes there were other pressing things on the business side for the publisher to be dealing with. I mean, in hindsight, I think that's probably especially the case.
• [00:12:50.84] So there was not particular drama to those meetings. One of things that I'm glad to see change and one of things I advocated for but not successfully, was to bring other people into the editorial board process. Because I felt like it was so small. And it was such a very narrow collection of perspectives. That it would really benefit us if we could bring in people from the community, which I mean many other editorial boards do. And now annarbor.com does.
• [00:13:24.40] But that time, Ed and Laurel were not interested in expanding in that way. So it was just the three of us.
• [00:13:31.84] AMY: What about other stories that you covered just as a reporter or in other fields? Anything stand out?
• [00:13:39.26] MARY MORGAN: Interestingly, a lot of the things that stand out for me don't have to do with my traditional beat. So a lot of the stories that I remember are not business stories. Part of what we had to do at the News, as a reporter, we would be in rotation for other beats. So we'd do weekend shifts and cop shifts from time to time.
• [00:14:01.54] So a lot of my more memorable stories actually have to do with you know I went on a drug raid in Ypsilanti. Where it was this huge barn growing hydroponic pot. That kind of thing-- you know, I'm white, I'm middle-class, don't usually get into these kind of situations.
• [00:14:20.50] So it was really kind of great opportunity to see some of those aspects of life that I wouldn't have otherwise encountered. I got to do some investigative work with a local bank. That was a little bit cloak and dagger, which was really interesting for me to experience a little bit of drama in my job.
• [00:14:46.97] But day to day, I was not an adrenaline junkie. I think that a lot of people get into the news business because they're just juiced on that kind of-- no offense, but I view it as kind of a male thing. And a lot of times, it was almost like people weren't engaged unless there was something. There was a fire. There was an ambulance to chase. There was a major drug bust.
• [00:15:14.80] There was something that was really exciting, like the blackout in 2003, for example. That was clearly memorable because it had such a broad impact. It was a national story that we were working in the dark. And then really very much doing things. Everybody was pitching in and doing things that we had never anticipated doing without electricity.
• [00:15:40.14] But I was not really in it for that purpose. And so I don't have the great anecdotes that probably Jack and Bill had.
• [00:15:51.94] AMY: No, those are good.
• [00:15:53.71] ANDREW: So what was the typical day as a reporter in the mid and late '90s? What was a typical day like? What did you do when you came in in the morning?
• [00:16:05.39] MARY MORGAN: Well, when I got here in 1996, we did not have our own email. There was one computer in the entire newsroom that had internet access. And it was AOL dial-up.
• [00:16:23.68] It's almost inconceivable to imagine how we did our jobs back there. The computer system we had was a proprietary system called Atex. And I think it was Atex.
• [00:16:39.63] And it was you come in, you'd log on, you'd check your voice mail. You would talk with your editor to try to get a sense of what your day was going to be like. Sometimes you'd be assigned things if it was on deadline in the morning.
• [00:16:58.83] It was an afternoon paper. So the production work took place in the morning. And pretty much after 9 o'clock, your day was done. Because we weren't online, there was no sort of constant updating. There was not that 24/7 sense of anything can happen, and we need to get it done immediately.
• [00:17:23.04] You really did have more of a breather after you were off deadline in the morning, which is I think very different than how people operate today. And one of the things that I miss from that time that I don't have as much of now is that camaraderie in the newsroom. And the sense of many different people having different tasks in order to put out the paper.
• [00:17:52.96] So you were at the front end as a reporter. Your text then got looked at by an editor, then got looked at by a copy editor, then got handled by a page designer before it went to the press. So you had all of these opportunities for people to ask questions, for checks to be made.
• [00:18:13.34] The copy editors, I think, are a really undervalued position. And saved my ass countless times. And now to have a copy editor at a smaller newspaper, in particular, that's just like a total luxury. They're doing many other things. And people are asked to do multiple tasks. So there's not that specialization. And I think it really hurts the final product.
• [00:18:42.83] But it was a very different-- it was a much mellower pace in many respects than it is today.
• [00:18:50.24] AMY: Can you talk a little bit about how the news changed over time? And when you first sensed there was trouble in the industry, and how the News responded to it?
• [00:19:00.04] MARY MORGAN: When I came, I think one of the most striking things, in hindsight, is that there was a really lucrative benefits package. I remember sitting down with the HR person, and literally my jaw dropped because she kept listing all of these perks. And not just the basic things like a decent salary and health care and vacation time.
• [00:19:22.95] But you also had things like a deep discount to the Newhouse publications, so Vanity Fair and GQ, and a lot of these national publications because it was part of this ownership group. Discounted or free tickets to the Michigan Theater.
• [00:19:42.56] You had your birthday days, vacation. You had a lot of extra vacations in addition to your two weeks. And then you had a lifetime job pledge, which just seems hysterical at the moment.
• [00:19:56.43] And it was a way I think for the company to-- it was a non-union shop, so we didn't have a guild. But we had this lifetime job pledge, which they discussed and presented to you as an employee. And up until really the last couple of years, that was taken very seriously. And people felt that that was going to be honored.
• [00:20:22.86] Even as the industry started to change pretty dramatically, and there were layoffs at other newspapers, and obviously we knew what was happening with the industry. And we could see what was happening nationwide, that job pledge was still held out as something that was going to be honored. Until the last few years, they didn't have any buyouts, either.
• [00:20:46.60] So I think that that was really the main change in terms of the business. There was this increasing sense of the revenues are dropping. Particularly classifieds went down after Craigslist really took off. Costs were increasing. Paper costs were increasing. Health care costs were increasing.
• [00:21:12.86] This was true with the News. You knew that it was true nationally with our industry as well. There's a sense of not having control. That particularly in the newsroom side, you understood intellectually what was happening but you felt like you really couldn't do anything.
• [00:21:31.05] Again for example, the fact that there was a separate company that had control of our internet site. So it was this sort of change in sense from a really optimistic time when I came, where there was a sense of growth. There was expansion into Livingston County. We'd opened a bureau in Ypsilanti, had a bureau in Livingston, in Howell.
• [00:21:57.43] A sense that there was optimism and a future. Going from that to a point where you were just hoping that you didn't go out of business. Although I will say that I don't think anybody there-- very few people thought that they would actually close. That was a shock to, I think, almost everybody there. We felt like downsizing was clearly an option, but to close it was pretty darn dramatic.
• [00:22:29.51] ANDREW: When did it become apparent-- either to people or to the whole organization-- that the internet was going to fundamentally change the way newspapers worked? When did that start to dawn on people?
• [00:22:42.64] MARY MORGAN: Wow. I'm not sure that it ever really sunk in until probably well after the turn of the century. I think that I was more attuned to it because of my coverage of the tech community. And so there were a lot of early adapters. And I was covering institutions like Internet2 here locally and the University also.
• [00:23:12.76] You could see that that was really fundamentally changing things. But I think a lot of people in the management at the Ann Arbor News, mostly men in their 50s and 60s, and I think that there was a lot of the orientation towards, OK, if we can just keep doing what we've been doing for the past few decades until we retire. This other stuff we really don't-- we shouldn't need to worry about that too much.
• [00:23:45.20] There was like a little bit of a denial going on there. And there was a lot of pressure from reporters and mid-level editors that didn't quite get any traction at the management level. And frankly, some of that might have had to do with what was happening outside of Ann Arbor with the Newhouse family.
• [00:24:07.37] And if the publisher here was being told, you can do X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C then again, that's an issue of control. And I'm not sure exactly where the marching orders came from for some of those things. But I do think that it took a long, long time to really sense that the internet is something that's going to just radically shift how we do business, not only in how it's delivered, but also in how it's reported.
• [00:24:41.05] And I think that in some ways, to have those two separate entities, to have your internet disconnected from your production really reflects that they didn't get it up until the very end. That that was really something that needed to change. And fundamentally, I don't know that it still hasn't-- they still embraced that in a way for their other markets.
• [00:25:11.10] I'm not as familiar with what's happening with MLive now as I used to be. But it still exists as a separate company.
• [00:25:18.85] AMY: So instead of closing, what do you think they should have done? What would have you liked to have seen happen?
• [00:25:27.71] MARY MORGAN: I fundamentally believe that if the owners had been in Ann Arbor, if it was a locally owned institution, that it would never have closed. I think that there would have been a way to reshape the institution in a way that would've made it viable financially. I think that the decision to close it was really a reflection of a national strategy.
• [00:25:53.39] And I sense that this was a great market to try some new things that they might then roll out in other markets nationwide. I mean they've referred to this as an experiment, as sort of a test bed community, fairly unabashedly. And so I think that that really was a direct relationship between their decision and what happened, and what would have happened if it had been played only in this market with local owners.
• [00:26:27.01] I think that, certainly, they did not engage the employees as much as they could have. I think that if it had been a matter of taking pay cuts or other concessions, I think employees would have been willing to do that. I think that certainly when they closed the business, and then opened annarbor.com, they got rid of legacy costs in a very dramatic way.
• [00:26:56.17] And were able to essentially, instead of firing people or laying people off, and all of the issues that come with that, basically could just pick and choose. In fact it was kind of telling in my exit interview, I think it was July 2008 before I left the news. And this was before anybody even had any idea that the newspaper would be closing. And they didn't announce that until the following year.
• [00:27:21.43] At an exit interview with Laurel Champion, the publisher, and she asked me, if you were to create a newsroom just starting from scratch, who here would you pick to come with you? And at the time I thought, well, that's kind of an odd question. But it makes a little more sense now.
• [00:27:40.95] I think there was the interest in not transforming what they had but really just cutting ties and starting from scratch. And it was a brutally financial decision in many ways.
• [00:28:02.23] ANDREW: One of the things that's most interesting about that is despite the financial advantages of cutting off one company and beginning a new company, to do away with a decades-old brand like the Ann Arbor News. I mean, just doing away with the name Ann Arbor News is a huge, huge thing. And I imagine that must have been a very difficult decision to come to.
• [00:28:21.30] Because that has a big effect on what you do going forward, but maybe some of those effects are negative and some of them are positive. I don't really know. You know?
• [00:28:29.69] MARY MORGAN: Well, I don't know how big of a change and how-- I think it would've been a big deal to people who are here and who are invested in the community. But I think if you're dealing with it in a much more abstract level, if you don't live here, it's one piece of a big puzzle that you're looking at. That it's more of a academic question. It's more of a theoretical question.
• [00:28:54.57] It's not as visceral as I think it would be for somebody who lived here, who worked here. Who really was invested in the newspaper as the Ann Arbor News. And in that tradition, that 174-year tradition, who felt connected to it.
• [00:29:14.68] ANDREW: When you were there, did you feel connected to it? Did you feel like there were a lot of people there who did feel connected to it? Like they were a part of something much, much larger that was there before them and would be there after them?
• [00:29:25.40] MARY MORGAN: Absolutely. I think that sense of you're part of an institution. You're part of history. I mean you're recording the first draft of history. You're working on something that people have done decades before you.
• [00:29:44.22] There were also the it was a sense of when I came there, there were people who had been there forever in the newsroom. So there was sort of the institutional memory that they brought. The stories that they could tell. So you really did have that connection. We weren't all in our 20s and 30s.
• [00:30:02.64] There were people who were near retirement. There were people who could tell stories like you're collecting now about what had happened in the community. And I think that that also kind of cemented a sense of you're part of something bigger than just your individual job. I don't know how much of that is sensed anymore.
• [00:30:26.40] AMY: Can you give us a character sketch, a little character sketch of Ed Petykiewicz?
• [00:30:35.35] MARY MORGAN: All righty then. Well, there are two things. There's the Ed Petykiewicz of legend. And then there's my own sense of him as an editor and a person.
• [00:30:53.84] He came into the news and was a fairly formidable force, when he arrived. This was probably 10 years or so before I came. And so when I came into the news, one of the interesting things you know how culture is conveyed.
• [00:31:13.15] So I would have people take me aside, and give me the skinny on what Ed was all about. And you know, oh, he's this bastard that doesn't care about real journalism. And doesn't care about people. And he's really mean and very intimidating.
• [00:31:30.40] And I think that over time he-- my sense is that he mellowed somewhat from those early years. By the time I got there, he had had a child. And so I think she was preschool. She was still very young at the time. And so I think that that served to sort of give him a sense of, OK, this is what families are like, and give him more sympathy to people than he had in the past.
• [00:32:01.99] Ed was always very good to me. He was, in many ways, willing to mentor me and to give me opportunities at the paper. And I'm very grateful to him for that.
• [00:32:15.20] I felt that, from what I observed, he was not a leader that inspired people. I think he was oftentimes someone who people responded to because they were afraid of him. And there was sort of an intimidation factor. And I think that that was very difficult oftentimes in the newsroom because people were really searching for somebody that they could follow, and be inspired by. That he just didn't have-- that wasn't part of who he was.
• [00:32:52.04] And I think, at the very end, that was also a very difficult time. I was gone by the time they announced the News closing. But from what I was told, he was really devastated by that. And he had taken a retirement just prior to that.
• [00:33:11.61] I think it must be hard for someone who was a journalist their whole life, and to be the last editor-in-chief for a newspaper that's closing, and not to be asked to be a part of the new iteration. So I feel for him.
• [00:33:30.32] It's a tough transition. And I don't know that things would have happened differently under different leadership. They may have. But I think that to be in that position at the end is really tough.
• [00:33:45.35] ANDREW: Can you describe your decision to leave the News when you did? Especially, in hindsight, a very prescient decision to leave when you did. And do what you did. What lead to that?
• [00:33:57.55] MARY MORGAN: It does seem that way. Well, like anything else it's a really complicated decision. So I had mentioned earlier in this interview that I tend to get restless every few years. And so we were kind of coming up on that time.
• [00:34:14.24] So I was looking to see what else I might be able to do. And given what I saw at the News, it didn't really seem like it was a place where I could really make a difference in the way that I felt I wanted to. I didn't feel like, even if there had been an opportunity to be editor-in-chief or publisher that I would have really had the freedom to make changes that I felt needed to be made.
• [00:34:43.11] At the same time, I was seeing on the national level a lot of entrepreneurial ventures, a lot of new enterprises that were popping up. I had been sent to a conference in Washington, DC, about online ventures. And there had been panels of people who had started their own local news sites which was kind of intriguing to me.
• [00:35:16.49] I wasn't really 100% sure that I could do something like that, but I felt like I needed to make a break with the Ann Arbor News before I could really embrace something like that. And it was a very, very difficult decision because at that time, it was still, yes you have a lifetime job pledge. You have this great-- relatively speaking-- health care and health insurance.
• [00:35:49.49] You have relatively speaking to the rest of the industry, this kind of security. And then the economy, as a whole, was also going through tremendous change. And so it felt like just stepping off a cliff. It was a really traumatic decision.
• [00:36:09.20] And when I made that, I don't know if I had understood what would come the next year or so after. I'm not sure I would have had the guts to make it. It's kind of like, its better off not to know what you're in for.
• [00:36:25.26] So I decided that I just needed to quit. And I was fairly confident that whatever I ended up doing, I had enough connections in the community that I would be able to find something, somewhere. So that I wouldn't be eating cat food and sleeping under a bridge somewhere.
• [00:36:44.36] So left the News and ultimately decided to start the Ann Arbor Chronicle as an online news venture. Focusing in part on some of the things that I felt were under-covered by the Ann Arbor News. Really was often frustrated as an opinion editor because I didn't feel like I had a deep understanding of some of the issues that were happening in local government in particular.
• [00:37:14.26] We had a reporter who covered City Hall and the County Board of Commissioners, and had to rely a lot on that reporting. It didn't really always feel like I was on solid ground to understand some issues that were happening. I knew there were a lot of things that weren't even being covered at all. Because there were just not enough people to cover them.
• [00:37:37.92] When we started the Chronicle, that was one of the things that we felt pretty committed to. That we wanted to go to these public meetings and really try to get a deeper understanding. And report on some of these, in more detail, issues that were happening locally. And so that's sort of how we developed this niche.
• [00:37:56.57] It was more of a personal interest in what we wanted to know as citizens of this community and residents here. Some of those things that were going on. Luckily found that that resonated with others in the community too.
• [00:38:14.38] AMY: Can you talk a little bit-- because I think this would be interesting, especially in light of Andrew's question about what a day-to-day job looked like in 1996-- what is your day, what are the deadlines like with the Chronicle now? What are your deadlines? How does it work? On day-to-day basis.
• [00:38:30.98] MARY MORGAN: Well, the whole concept of deadline is just meaningless in many ways. The deadline before was tied to you got somebody in the press room who is going tick tock. I'm going do a press run. And you have to have this. And you had all these stages that the copy had to go through, including production which was not insignificant, the layout and design.
• [00:38:53.15] The person is putting all those pieces together. So you had to write it to a certain length. Or cut it to a certain length. Or add to make-- there were all these other issues that an online publication just doesn't have.
• [00:39:05.40] We don't have a set publication schedule. Our feeling is we'll publish something when we believe it's ready. So we're not particularly interested in getting things published immediately and getting something out there as soon as possible.
• [00:39:26.27] More of a priority for us is to get as much information as we feel this particular story warrants. And to provide the context or whatever we fill it needs. And then to publish it.
• [00:39:37.18] So it's not like we say, OK, it's 9 o'clock, we have to publish whatever we have. I mean we don't have that kind of publication schedule. And I think that that's freeing in a lot of ways.
• [00:39:52.48] A lot of our publication is driven by what happens in the public sector. So if there's a meeting that we're committed to covering, then we'll go to that meeting. And typically, those are in the afternoons and evenings. So our schedule is sort of heavy on the end of the day. But because of the way we report things and the level of detail, we don't turn things around immediately.
• [00:40:15.88] And so we have two components. We have what we call civic news tickers, which are briefs that are outcomes of individual actions at meetings. And then we have longer stories are published sometimes two, three, four, five days later.
• [00:40:36.89] There's really very little that happens that you have to absolutely know at this instant in our world. So I'm not talking about fires or traffic accidents. That's a whole different thing. And there's obviously a sense of immediacy there. But we don't do that kind of coverage. So for us, it's just a very different orientation than a more traditional soup-to-nuts kind of mainstream media coverage.
• [00:41:08.25] ANDREW: How does being the publisher of the Chronicle compare to what you imagined being an editor-in-chief or publisher of a major newspaper? How do those things match up?
• [00:41:18.61] MARY MORGAN: I don't have a staff of minions to execute my will. I want minions, damn it. I think that there's two things.
• [00:41:31.25] I think there's the being a publisher, an editor-chief at an institution like the Ann Arbor News or a more established business. And then there's the entrepreneurial start-up venture, and being in charge of that, or being one of the owners of that.
• [00:41:54.63] It's a very different sort of business model because you're like any other venture that starts from scratch. So I think I have much more in common with an entrepreneur at a small business of any nature, than I might with a publisher of a traditional newspaper. Because they have a whole infrastructure that's set up to support their decisions. And I am the infrastructure.
• [00:42:28.04] Dave Askins, who is the editor-in-chief of the Chronicle, who's also my husband, and business partner, co-owner of the Chronicle. It's essentially the two of us. We have a freelance staff that we work with.
• [00:42:42.14] But it was a learning curve of just how to do a business. You know, attorney, accountant, all of that that you don't think of when you're-- and you don't have to deal with when you're a reporter or an editor at a traditional newspaper. So that's really been, I think, the difference between what I do and what I would have done if I were a publisher elsewhere.
• [00:43:12.02] AMY: If you could expand, what would be the next thing you would like to do with the Chronicle?
• [00:43:17.41] MARY MORGAN: Well, I would like to add coverage. That for me is always kind of the thing that is a little bit frustrating. Because we see the universe of things that we could cover. And we have our readers ask us to do things, to cover different entities.
• [00:43:39.84] For example, the Ann Arbor Housing Commission. This area talks about affordable housing all the time. Nobody covers the housing commission. That's the pass through for a lot of federal and state funding. Executive director resigned recently and that sort of was under the radar. And so those kind of things. More schools coverage. I would like to see.
• [00:44:02.38] We're committed to growing organically. So our growth is going to be slower. So rather than going out and finding a venture capital capitalist to back us or getting a stable of investors, we're really growing revenue.
• [00:44:15.16] And when our revenue gets to a certain point, we will be able to add. Our first step was basically to be able to support the two of us. Then we added freelancers on a regular basis. Hopefully we'll get to the point where we can add additional staff, permanent staff to offload some of the work that we're still doing. But also to add coverage.
• [00:44:38.09] So that's how I'd like to see the Chronicle grow. I'm less interested in building-- I'm not interested at all in building a media empire of any kind. People have talked about, can you cover Ypsilanti and Saline and Chelsea? And I think that that dilutes what we're doing.
• [00:44:54.59] I would really love to see people from those communities do something like what we're doing. But I think that it's really powerful if you're living there and doing it yourself and embedded in the community that you're covering. And I think that makes a big difference. Than parachuting in and trying to build something, with not that familiarity. That we have with Ann Arbor.
• [00:45:19.53] ANDREW: So now that what you do is your business, it's you, and your husband, what does that mean for your restlessness that's coming? Do--
• [00:45:27.03] MARY MORGAN: I don't know. I don't know. We've been doing this three years. And that's about the time that it hits. So right now, I think that the thing that's preventing me from having that feeling is the fact that there's just always so much that is new and different. And that I'm kind of forging ahead on.
• [00:45:51.99] So whether it's figuring out what's next for our advertising, or our coverage, or working with our interns, or trying to figure out what are freelance folks are going to be doing. There's so many things that are challenging. I haven't reached the point where I don't feel challenged. And I think that that's probably a key .
• [00:46:22.26] Right now it's a matter of stamina more than anything else. Can I sustain this level of work? We were so excited we got away for a two-day vacation this year to Grand Rapids. We were just, yay--
• [00:46:38.11] AMY: What if you want-- what if you want a week's vacation?
• [00:46:41.20] MARY MORGAN: I know. We're totally screwed. We don't-- that's actually a goal that we talk about. To be able to take a vacation would just be really a mark of, OK, we have gotten to the point where we can-- we have other people who can do the work that we're doing. I mean even when we were out of town in Grand Rapids, we were still editing things online. It was a working vacation for sure.
• [00:47:06.82] That's definitely a goal. It's like any other small business where you're in a start up mode. And you have to do most of the tasks yourself. You just do it. And it's a constant thing. Having a week would be-- it's like a dream.
• [00:47:27.90] AMY: How's annarbor.com doing in your view?
• [00:47:30.97] MARY MORGAN: Well, I've written about the publication. So clearly, I have an opinion about it. And as I've said, I'm really torn in a lot of ways, because I have friends there still who I would like to see employed. It's very hard not to be bitter about what happened, frankly.
• [00:47:54.76] Friends of mine-- their lives were turned upside down. Professionals, journalists that I respect really went through-- I can't even imagine. I felt like I was buffered because of the decision to leave before all that happened. But I observed it. And it was just an emotional nightmare for so many people.
• [00:48:19.61] Both at the publication and in the community. And I think that-- perhaps because I'm a receptive-- people know I'm a receptive audience, I almost can't have a conversation about that publication without people just trashing it and complaining about it. Various aspects of it, and of what happened, and how they miss the Ann Arbor News.
• [00:48:45.57] Of course people would often trash the Ann Arbor News when it was around. So that comes part and parcel, I think, with any kind of publication. But I really feel like it has not-- that the community deserves more from the resources that the Newhouse family has. And I feel like they haven't delivered.
• [00:49:16.70] And I think that that's a shame. Because Ann Arbor is a community that I think could really embrace and support a newspaper that was better quality than one [INAUDIBLE] that they're able to provide. As a citizen, I want something better.
• [00:49:36.39] But they've chosen to go down a path that I think is driven by finance. And I think that there is certainly-- as a business owner myself, I understand that you have to make certain decisions based on your sense of the financial implications of it but that can't be the only thing. And I think that a lot of times that's more of a driver than it should be.
• [00:50:07.78] ANDREW: I'm always trying to get a sense whenever I think about the newspaper. I'm always trying to get a sense of how the newspaper runs and what the newsroom is actually like. Have you ever seen-- has there ever been a television program, or a movie that has been in any way true to your experience of this is what a new room is like.
• [00:50:24.95] The Wire or All the President's Men-- do any of those things represent-- yeah, this is actually-- this gives you an idea of what it's like to be in a newsroom.
• [00:50:33.78] MARY MORGAN: I've never seen The Wire. So I've heard that that's more realistic than most. All the President's Men-- first of all, it was a huge metro daily. So that was a whole different deal. And I guess, like anything, real life is both more interesting, but also more mundane.
• [00:51:02.53] There's a lot of talk about like, what are you bringing to the potluck? And complaining about so and so talks too loud. And just the sort of office politics that you might find it anywhere.
• [00:51:22.97] My experience in the newsroom is kind of overlaid with all of those kind of things as well. In addition to the periodic adrenalin rushes. In some ways, I guess I hesitate to make this analogy, but I've heard that as a soldier, you're bored, you're bored, you're bored. Then you have this tremendous spike. And then you go back to being-- and so I think there is a parallel there.
• [00:51:51.01] Where a lot of what you do in the newsroom is just you're calling people in your beat. It's routine. You're writing up something that your boss tells you to write up and that you're not very interested. And then something happens that gets you. And your adrenaline gets pumping. And you get excited about it. Or it's challenging in an intellectual way, if it's a more investigative piece or whatever.
• [00:52:22.66] And I think one of the things that-- I don't know that its captured in any of the shows I've seen about new rooms but just the immediacy of getting concrete finished to what you have done. I think a lot of jobs you don't have that. So one of the satisfying things about being a reporter is that you work, it's finished, and you have it.
• [00:52:51.76] You have the thing in your hand or on screen. That is something that you have done that day. And that's really satisfying in a lot of ways. It's not exciting per se. I think the excitement of seeing your name on your byline wears off pretty quickly. That's really cool the first time, and then it's like oh yeah.
• [00:53:16.09] But it is satisfying to have that sense of closure for your work that it's not just an endless thing. It's like this is what you did. Here's what you-- and now it's out in the world. And you can't take it back. And people respond to it. And that's satisfying, too. I don't think I answered your question at all.
• [00:53:37.66] ANDREW: You did.
• [00:53:38.12] AMY: You did. That was a great answer.
• [00:53:39.50] [MUSIC PLAYING]
• [00:53:41.80] ANDREW: To learn more about Mary Morgan and the Ann Arbor Chronicle, go to annarborchronicle.com.
• [00:53:46.48] [MUSIC PLAYING]
• [00:53:52.51] AMY: Music for this episode has been from the score to The Back Page, composed and performed by Steven Ball. Available at aadl.org/backpage.
• [00:54:04.58] ANDREW: AADL Talks to Mary Morgan has been a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.
• [00:54:08.65] [MUSIC PLAYING]