Sam Zell appears to be serious about redesigning the Tribune company this year and he has the editor of the Chicago Tribune, Ann Marie Lipinski, writing memos to her troops to follow the general’s marching orders about making dramatic changes to the paper and the newspaper company.
This is serious. When editors want fast action - they write memos. And form committees.
History tells us (And a visit to the shrine at Cantigny will verify) that The Chicago Tribune was once led by a Colonel (Col. Robert R. McCormick) with grand visions and the pecadillos that seem to accompany wealthy media barons - so issuing memos should come naturally to lieutenants like Lipinski who are now charged with drawing up rapid redesign battle plans under the shadows of the Colonel’s famous flying buttresses at 435 N. Michigan Avenue.
It has been a long time since I have talked to Ann Marie Lipinski - we once worked together a LONG time ago in the Tribune newsroom editing the paper’s Sunday Perspective section. So much time has passed (I don’t have her current phone number) but I’d love to talk with her and get her take on the company’s direction. I am currently on the road but easily reachable all summer. I even plan on being in Chicago the entire month of July so there’s no reason we can’t do a sit-down interview soon.
For the record, I first went to the Chicago Tribune Web site and searched for “Ann Marie Lipinski” to find her contact information.
This is the screen that came up.
Is the site suggesting I have a better chance of contacting her through the site’s advertisers like PeopleFinders.com?
Arggh. I did find a phone tree online and the closest I could get to her was a letter to the editor form and the e-mail address of the public editor. So I fired off an interview request to both.
Here’s hoping she’ll agree to a proper Q&A. I do respect her skills and remember her being a journalist long before she became a Tribune vice-president. A Pulitzer-Prize wining reporter, in fact.
Odd that I could not find a copy of her memo on the paper’s Web site - only a link to the AP report that mentions her memo pen action. I gave up looking and headed over to Romenesko to find a leaked copy of her battle plan.
The paper’s Public editor Timothy J. McNulty makes no mention of the Lipinski memo in his 20 June Friday article on soliciting reader ideas for a redesigned, yet far smaller, Tribune. Yet clearly, he too, is acting on orders from on high.
It was actually in Dave Roeder’s Sun-Times.com article where I learned more about the task Lipinski has been handed. I learned of Dave’s article because of a Google alert I set up to notify me when Ann Marie Lipinski’s name appears in a news story. A name worth watching as she forms fast-action committees to redesign the paper in three months time.
Roeder writes:
The memo from Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski discussed the coming changes in a staff memo Thursday but didn’t say how many newsroom jobs will be cut. She told the staff that internal committees will recommend staffing levels within 60 days as they also evaluate what content to keep. Editor Ann Marie Lipinski set out timetables for decisions leading to a “rethought and redesigned” Tribune promised in mid-September. Internal committees, she said, will evaluate which editorial matter to keep as the paper downsizes and, by mid-August, will recommend staffing levels.
I guess what this means is that we might soon find out what the Chicago Tribune’s ‘Zell Number’ is for pages produced per journalist - a controversial measurement developed by the company’s officers to measure productivity per paper.
That leads to me my first question for editor Lipinski . . . What is the Tribune’s current productivity number?
Another question I have for her . . . How much of the paper’s design playbook is being written and tested in the new Orlando Sentinel redesign? (The first Tribune paper to undergo a rapid redesign and attempt new story editing and visual editing approaches.
Looking at her committee outlines I saw a lot of familiar colleagues listed. I swear many of those same names have popped up in her other major newsroom initiatives over the past 10 years. Missing now from the list are, of course, George de Lama, James O’Shea and her publisher Scott Smith.
The STEERING Committee
Bill Parker is overseeing the project.
His committee includes Lipinski, Hanke Gratteau, Jim Warren, Randy Weissman, Joe Knowles, Jane Hirt, Linda Bergstrom, Jim Kirk, Kerry Luft, Geoff Brown, Louise Kiernan, and Eric Zorn.
Begs an obvious question or two for her doesn’t it? What is the average age of these editors? And how long have these editors been in charge of your current newspaper?
Design by committee(s)
The news and features prototypes will be produced by Joe Knowles and his team of designers under guidance from two other committees.
–Jim Kirk is leading the news group, which includes Bill Adee, Rochell Bishop, Robin Daughtridge, Cara DiPasquale, James Janega, Mike Kellams, Peter Kendall, John P. McCormick, Dan McGrath, Flynn McRoberts, Jennifer Mystkowski, Mike Tackett and Joyce Winnecke.
–Linda Bergstrom is heading the features group, which includes Tim Bannon, Geoff Brown, Torry Bruno, Wendy Donahue, Chris Jones, Scott Powers, Sheila Solomon, David Syrek, Liz Taylor and Shaila Wunderlich.
Please chime in with questions of your own and I’ll do my best to contact her and set up a video interview with her to ask, face-to-face, the best of all the questions. Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, talked last year in Cape Town and was extremely candid with his on-mic remarks.
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