Democracy in Minneapolis

Employees get a role in reshaping their newspaper

"You God damn tittering moron-you lousy stewbum ... You 're going to cover the hanging like I asked you!"

In such tones did Managing Editor Walter Burns make his wishes known to Reporter Hildy Johnson in that 1928 Broadway classic The Front Page. Generations of fire-breathing editors have embraced this persuasive management technique, but one news'executive is flirting with an unusual alternative: democracy. At the Minneapolis Star (circ. 226,828), rank-and-file editorial employees have been given an active role in deciding how to reshape their foundering evening paper.

The outside agitator who introduced the Star to "participatory management," as the arrangement is called, is Stephen D. Isaacs, 41, former Washington Post Wunderkind (metropolitan editor at 26) and most recently director of the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service. When Isaacs became the Star's editor a year ago, the paper was, in the words of Publisher Donald R. Dwight, 48, "a warmed-over daily news report that was neither timely nor very interesting." The Star had lost 75,000 subscribers since the 1950s. Last July, for the first time in its 59 years, the paper fell behind the morning Tribune (circ. 226,899). Both are owned by the Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co., publisher of Harper's magazine.

Isaacs had a few ideas about how to save the Star, but he did not want to impose them arbitrarily and risk alienating the wary staff. So he borrowed from a successful participatory management scheme introduced in 1972 at a car-mirror plant in Bolivar, Tenn. Isaacs set up eight committees (there are now eleven) composed of newsroom volunteers and usually a management representative. The committees suggested ways to improve the Star's design, writing, editorials, special sections and allocations of manpower, space and money. A strategy committee considered the paper's overall position in the market. Says Reporter Frank Allen, 32, chairman of the strategy group: "We were supposed to take the lid off the bottle and think as wildly as we dared about what the Star could become."

After considering a number of alternatives-ranging from a racy tabloid ("the fuel-injected Minneapolis Tangerine," it was jokingly called) to a sober newspaper of record ("the Minneapolis Times, "after a certain self-important daily in New York City)-the committees selected a middle course. The result: the Star's traditional no-frills hard-news approach was shucked in favor of more analytical coverage, occasionally frivolous feature stories, breezier writing and zestier graphics. The company did its part by increasing the editorial budget $1.4 million, to $5.5 million. Star reporters began turning up in such far-flung places as Italy and Niagara Falls, and writing long, thoughtful pieces on migrant workers, regional government and the labor movement in the airline industry.

At the manpower committee's suggestion, the staff was divided into "teams" that meet at least once weekly to discuss story assignments and other newsroom business. Management agreed to add ten new reporters to the 50-member corps, including specialists in food processing and higher education, important local industries that had been neglected. At the strategy committee's suggestion, the paper has beefed up its coverage of the computer and health-care businesses.

Though ideas from virtually every committee found their way into the new Star, none were adopted without Isaacs' O.K. "What we wanted and he didn't like, we don't have," says one reporter. Indeed, democracy at the Star is modest compared with a number of papers in Europe, where editorial policy has sometimes been put to staff referendum. Among some Star journalists a suspicion lingers that participatory management is a gimmick to defuse employee resistance to Isaacs' otherwise autocratic rule. "Participatory management means having an input into management," concedes the burly (6 ft. 3 in., 234 Ibs.) editor, whom subordinates have nicknamed "the Hulk." "It doesn't mean reporters making decisions. They're only paid $460 a week, and that's not enough to make the kinds of decisions I have to make."

Although the Star can be frustratingly uneven, most readers surveyed by the paper have noticed the changes and like them. Circulation has slipped, partly because several thousand unprofitable subscribers in outlying areas were intentionally dropped last year. Inside the Star and Tribune building, the box score is encouraging: four Star reporters have applied for jobs at the more prestigious Tribune, but eight Tribune staffers have asked for transfers to the Star. "Even people who hate Isaacs think that he's a genius," says one who remained Star-side. Adds Senior Assistant Managing Editor Glenn Speidel, 54: "I wasn't comfortable with the changes at first, but now I'm convinced that's the way we ha veto go."

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