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Bill Kovach
By Paula Devlin
When Bill Kovach was
a sophomore in high school, he got lucky.
That's when he met
Mrs. Denton, his 10th-grade teacher, who showed him how he could use language
to express himself.
He got lucky again
the summer after he graduated from college. Headed for graduate school
and a career in marine biology, he took a summer job at the Johnson City
Press Chronicle in Johnson City, Tenn. There was no going back.
Kovach has since covered
the civil rights movement, politics and Appalachian poverty for the Nashville
Tennessean; worked for two decades at The New York Times, including serving
as its Washington bureau chief; and had a tempestuous two-year tenure as
editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He moved on to Harvard University
in 1989 as curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.
From instigating the
battle that led to a federal court case and the nation's first sunshine,
or open-meeting, laws to arranging to photocopy the Pentagon Papers, Kovach
has had a long and storied career in journalism.
And throughout that
career, he had mentors, starting with Mrs. Denton in that 10-grade classroom.
Then there was Tim Pridgen in Jonesboro, Tenn., who "taught me my first
lesson in telling people what you know and not bullshitting them about
what you don't know."
There was Ralph McGill,
at the Atlanta paper in the 1940s and '50s, who spoke out for those who
didn't have a voice at the time: "His voice was so clear and pure and strong."
And Scotty Reston,
who hired Kovach at The New York Times in 1968 but, more importantly, served
as a sounding board for Kovach for years to come.
That's what missing
from newsrooms today, Kovach says - mentoring.
"Over the last generation
or so there has been a breakdown of the mentoring system in news organizations,"
he says. "Buyouts have removed senior people from newsrooms ... cubicles
and computers.
"The cross-fertilization
between journalists by which the craft was passed on has broken down."
Today, at 68,
Kovach is working to reinvigorate journalists' faith in their craft through
his Committee of Concerned Journalists,
a group dedicated to maintaining journalistic principles.
The distortion of journalistic
standards by commercial pressure has become one of his themes. He believes
newspapers are losing readers because they pursue profit instead of serious
coverage.
And although he acknowledges
that one does not have to preclude the other, he says the balance has shifted
too far toward the profit side
"Clearly, journalism has to have economic strength to do its job," Kovach says. "And if the purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to govern themselves, then the obligation of journalism is to find the news and information that citizens need, not what advertisers need."
As for where copy desks fit into this obligation, Kovach is clear. He has called reporters the heart and soul of journalism, and he extends that to copy editors as well.
"They're crucial," he says. "The credibility of the work depends on copy editors. I would argue with the copy desk, but I would thank them more. The best news organization is the one with the best, strongest copy desk."
One trend Kovach is uncomfortable with is the reporter becoming "too novelistic."
"You'll see stories that read too much like columns, with too much attitude for a news story. It's the copy editor's job to produce the style that senior management sets," he says. "The copy desk is the last bastion of helping to shape the materials to serve the purpose of what the reader needs."
And for all the romantic reasons to get into journalism, Kovach says it's important to remember that purpose. "People are inundated with information that comes in a form that LOOKS journalistic. It's our responsibility to help them know the difference."
He says journalists, from reporters to copy editors to news editors and on up the line, can do this by maintaining a first obligation to truth, by staying independent, by putting the citizens first, by keeping the news in proportion, by monitoring the powerful and by remaining true to personal conscience.
He is a firm believer that newspapers can, and should, make a difference in the lives of their readers. "It's the nearest thing I have to religion," Kovach says. "The relationship between journalism and citizen is the most important job there is."
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Paula Devlin is copy desk chief at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. She can be reached at pdevlin@timespicayune.com.