Russian newspapers do a rotten job covering women, Maxwell McCrohon was saying. And, the Western image aside, they`re not all dowdy mopes in babushkas, staring at empty grocery shelves.
”There`s a very strong streak of male chauvinism over there,” he adds.
”The young women are really very bright, very sharp.”
Well, McCrohon, former editor of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, now can make an inroad or two in altering portrayals of females, and perhaps more: He`s U.S. editor for We/Mbl (”Mbl” is Russian for ”We”), a joint American-Russian newspaper that has been publishing separate English- and Russian-language editions since February.
The look and feel of the broadsheet, a joint venture of Hearst Corp. and Izvestia, the Soviet daily that`s 51 percent employee-owned, won`t knock the socks off Americans accustomed to clean layouts, lots of color and neat graphics.
But it`s an alluring shock for a Soviet audience, accustomed to papers and printing as engaging as refrigerator manuals-and assuming they can meet the stiff price of 3 rubles on average salaries of 900 rubles a month (the English edition is $1.25).
”We set out to print an American-style paper that goes beyond politics to explain American culture to a Russian audience,” explained McCrohon, who`d been consulting for Hearst after the demise of the Herald Examiner.
There are 15-person staffs each in Washington and Moscow. McCrohon, 63, runs the office here with Sergei Darydin, 40, once the youngest editor appointed to Izvestia`s editorial board and its deputy international editor.
The paper`s tone and thrust are akin to a Sunday newspaper, trying to recap events, discern trends and provide analysis. About 80 percent of the editorial matter is the same in both editions. Moscow handles all translation, no small feat given clashing stylistic traditions-the Soviet being discursive and opinionated, the American more distant and dry.
Typically, a story on hoopla over Oliver Stone`s ”JFK” was hot for Soviets, but McCrohon decided it was old news for his audience and didn`t run it. But while he wants a piece on the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, his Moscow counterparts find that a snooze and will take a pass.
If a Soviet-savvy colleague of mine is right, the Russian edition could use more distinctly American stories. It might be wise to lower the amount the two have in common, since the Soviets can`t get enough of American life, be it an interview with Barbra Streisand or a tale of Soviet emigres confronting crime in New York`s Brighton Beach section.
A primary constituency for both editions is business folks. The Russian financial section is very much how-to on an incipient free market. The English edition`s section is more a primer for U.S. businessmen navigating the Soviet commercial and legal systems.
Hearst`s primary contribution is hard currency (it won`t discuss the size of its investment). The English edition is printed in Springfield, Va., the Russian edition printed by Izvestia.
About 300,000 copies are distributed in eight republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States, with 60,000 English copies distributed in the U.S., Europe and Far East. Press runs will rise depending on interest. It began as a monthly, went twice-a-month in April and goes weekly in June.
It`s a worthy endeavor. Thirteen issues of the English edition of We/Mbl can be had for $13, via We/Mbl Subscriptions, P.O. Box 7557, Red Oak, Iowa 51591-2557.
One editor attending last week`s convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors returned home with a thought for his readers: A lot of his colleagues acted like jerks.
Jack Davis, editor of the Tribune Co.-owned Daily Press of Newport News, Va., and a former Chicago Tribune metropolitan editor, was chagrined by counterparts` questioning of presidential wannabe H. Ross Perot, a substitute guest after cancellations by Bill Clinton (ill) and Jerry Brown (non-union hotel). So he wrote a column about it.
Many editors, he noted, regard TV and tabloids as ”unduly sensational, trivial or unethical” and worry that the press has demeaned the presidential campaign via a fixation on mini-scandals. These editors chide others for a lack of civility and undue simplicity. The brief session with Perot seemed a chance to show ”how to conduct a civilized interview to get meaningful answers to complex questions.”
It didn`t happen. Sitting in a packed ballroom, Davis was struck ”by how uncomfortable the journalists (a three-editor panel) seemed under the stage lights. . . . They remained carefully stone-faced as the down-home billionaire entertained the audience with his version of common-sense reforms. It was as if the questioners were afraid to be perceived as anything but skeptical toward a guy who is seen by the trade`s conventional wisdom as simplistic and naive.”
What ensued was a ”pattern of impatient interruption that became badgering.” Acel Moore, an editor from the Philadelphia Inquirer, ”moved beyond ungracious to belligerent, in questions about the drug problem, when Perot stopped the show for a moment. `Do we have to be rude? And adversarial?` Perot asked. `Can`t we just talk?` ”
Press coverage of Perot`s appearance was critical of the billionaire. The Washington Post saw Perot`s plea as early evidence that his skin was too thin for a presidential campaign. A National Public Radio account called him
”testy,” while a Philadelphia Daily News columnist cited Perot`s responses to ”genteel probing” by the editors.
Davis told his readers, ”Moral: Don`t look for newspaper editors to fix up campaign coverage any time soon.”
Finally, notes on the Chicago coverage of the disastrous Loop flood, which dwarfs what one saw during the Persian Gulf war:
– Battleship Tribune was sharper and more comprehensive than the Sun-Times the first day out, but the Sun-Times came back strongly thereafter. Ladies and gents in the back rooms rarely get credit, but there was nice work by artists on both papers, especially Sun-Times stalwart Jack Jordan.
– TV, without a whole lot to show, did well, with many previous bit players, such as WMAQ-Ch. 5`s Robin George, acquitting themselves nicely. Ratings soared. Tuesday`s 9 p.m. news audience for WGN-Ch. 9, which did good work on the city`s contract with the dredging firm, was twice its normal size. Old hands Dick Kay of WMAQ-Ch. 5, Andy Shaw of WLS-Ch. 7 and, yes, Steve Martin look-alike Jay Levine of WBBM-Ch. 2 were fine. I especially enjoyed Shaw`s late Monday news conference at City Hall. Oops! I mean Mayor Daley`s news conference, which Andy dominated, albeit with relevant queries during his station`s live coverage.
– Larry Mendte, Channel 2`s aspiring standup comic, now deserves induction into a Papier Mache Hall of Fame after a bravura performance in the Thursday night unveiling of a not unhelpful in-studio mockup of the disaster area. It came replete with a Gumby-like diver that was dropped into a shaft and what looked like a non-stop stream of confetti serving as concrete being poured.
For Channel 2`s sake, one hoped that this was more accurate than its classic 1969 studio show-and-tell, which followed the killing of two Black Panthers in a West Side apartment. Back then, Channel 2 let police raiders walk through a mockup and lie their fannies off in claiming a vicious firefight with the Panthers.
– Congratulations to Neal Sabin, program director at WPWR-Ch. 50, for a wry disaster response.
On Wednesday, realizing that there were no human injuries, he concocted a new station identification at the top of each hour. It used the finale of a Three Stooges short in which the trio portray bumbling plumbers who cross water and electrical lines just as a society matron demonstrates to chums a new invention: a television set. As soon as a TV announcer declares, ”And now we go to Niagara Falls,” water gushes out the screen and douses matron and chums.
Friday, Sabin switched to a Stooges short in which Curley tries to fix flooding in a bathroom by drilling a hole in the floor-only to fall right through.
In an updated version, Larry Mendte might surface from below, in scuba gear.
