by Robert Bryce As part of our ongoing coverage of Austin’s media, this
week, contributing editor Robert Bryce talks to Austin American-Statesman
Publisher Roger Kintzel about the daily, the parent company Cox
Communications, and Cox’s recent (semi) victory in the Texas Legislature with
the telecommunications bill. Robert Bryce also covers the history of Cox
Communications and the family who owns it, starting below.
Roger Kintzel, publisher of the Austin
American-Statesman, describes himself as “a police reporter who got lucky.”
A graduate of Wright State University, he started his career on the police beat
in 1970 at the Xenia Daily Gazette in Xenia, Ohio. After two years,
Kintzel went to graduate school at the University of Missouri, where he got a
masters degree in journalism. In 1979, he got a job with the Dayton
Journal-Herald, a Cox Enterprises newspaper. From there, Cox sent him to
Arizona, where he worked as publisher of the Mesa Tribune. In 1986, he
was named publisher of the Statesman.
He spoke with the Chronicle on May 17, and again on
May 24, the day he announced that the Washington Bureau Chief for Knight-Ridder
News Service, Rich Oppel, would become the paper’s new editor. Oppel will
replace the Statesman interim editor Terry Burke, who assumed that
position a few months ago upon the departure of editor Maggie Balough.
n Austin Chronicle:The Austin
American-Statesmanis doing very well these days. Recent circulation figures
show the paper is growing while a lot of other papers have declining
circulations. Why is that?
Roger Kintzel: The area’s growing, so we are
able to take advantage of that growth in population and households. We’ve been
marketing the product really heavily. And I think we’ve made some improvements
in the product that made it more attractive.
AC: How so?
RK: Well, XL is one – we introduced that
in August of last year. It’s been a major enhancement. We made some changes
just recently in the last three or four months – typeface changes. We’ve
reworked the Life section and added the Capitol Page, which is the new feature.
One of those preorganized things. I think we’ve done a lot of things to enhance
the product.
AC: You’ve just hired Rich Oppel as the
paper’s new editor; how do you feel about your decision?
RK: I’m thrilled and excited. I consider myself
proud to be able to hire him. I think he will make this paper into a great
regional paper. He’s got tremendous experience.
He has delivered the goods
in Charlotte. He’s a top-notch editor, with a tremendous track record.
AC: Was it worth the three month wait?
[Former editor Maggie Balough left the paper February 15.]
RK: Absolutely.
AC:There have been a lot of changes
recently. Particularly the front page has gotten softer, there’s a lot less
hard news on that page. What’s driving that?
RK: I disagree with your premise. I don’t think
that’s the case right now. At one time, the trend was to put more soft news on
the front page, but now that is not the case.
AC:Are these marketing decisions driven out
of the Cox office in Atlanta, your office, or what?
RK: We make all the decisions here: about how to
market the paper, how to design the paper.
AC:What is the best daily paper in
Texas?
RK: In what respect?
AC:Just the best product.
RK: The largest staff, the largest circulation,
the best equipped Austin bureau?
AC:Okay, who has the best Capitol coverage?
RK: Well, I really can’t judge. I’m not in a
competition with other newspapers. I’m only looking at Austin, and trying to
fit in the best I can.
AC:Most people would say the best paper in
the state is the Dallas Morning News.
RK: You’d have to ask how you would define best.
The goal of that paper is to be a great statewide newspaper. Our goal is not to
be a great statewide newspaper. Every newspaper has its own goals for which
they are searching.
AC: Who has the best weekly newspaper in
Austin?
RK: Well, there’s only one. XL is not a
weekly newspaper. It’s designed for use over the course of a week.
AC:So you don’t think it competes with the
Chronicle, then?
RK: It does compete with the Chronicle,
in terms of entertainment news. The Chronicle has gone very heavily
towards political news. A different tack than we have. I mean, it can take that
because it’s a weekly newspaper.
AC:That tack?
RK: The tack is when you look at a weekly
newspaper versus a daily newspaper. We report things in daily increments; the
weekly newspaper can sit back and take a look at what’s happened over the last
week and take a different perspective.
AC: A lot of people complain to me about the
Statesman, saying it’s a lousy paper. Is the Statesmana good
paper?
RK: Absolutely.
AC: Is it a great newspaper?
RK: No.
AC: Why isn’t it great?
RK: “Great” encompasses an awful lot. It all
boils down to local news content. The difference between what we have done and
greatness is more aggressive and enterprising local reports.
AC: How can you get that?
RK: With leadership. And that’s why Mr. Oppel is
here.
AC:With the closing of the Houston
Post, let’s talk about the trend toward one-newspaper towns. Is that a good
thing?
RK: No, it’s terrible. I think competition is
good, and when it leaves like that, I think the reader suffers.
AC:Is it just simple economics that are
driving these closures?
RK: Well, I can’t speak for the individual
newspapers, because I’m not privy to their income statements. But having two
newspapers in a town, one is going to be the dominant newspaper. They’ll never
quite be able to divide the market 50/50. It’s not that one newspaper has
enough money to buy the other, it’s that one newspaper ends up on the short end
of the revenue stick. Right now we’re going through this tremendous surge in
newsprint prices. So what happens is that it puts one newspaper in a real weak
position. And inevitably, they’ll try to cut back, cut corners. If you do that,
it kind of sends you down.
AC:See an end to that trend?
RK: There aren’t too many more two newspaper
towns, so the trend is almost over. Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Denver,
those are the major ones.
AC:So what’s the future of the
Statesman?
RK: Well, I think we have a good future. We’re in a
growing economy. Were making changes to try to keep up with what is absolutely
just an exciting, dynamic city. One that’s gone through some pretty major
changes. There’s been an influx of a lot of new people, change in the
employment base, change in living habits and standards, area that’s facing
problems: traffic, crime, cost of living, environmental questions and
debates.
AC:Back to Cox. Do monopoly papers operate
differently than papers who have competitors?
RK: I really try and get away from that term
monopoly. We’re not sanctioned by the government or anything. We got here just
because of circumstances and free enterprise. I guess I’m sensitive to that
because I’ve been dealing with the telephone companies. When you look at us,
and call us a monopoly, then look at the telephone company, there’s just no
comparison. Anybody in the world could come in here and start up a daily
newspaper. But nobody can come over here and start a local telephone company.
AC:How far away from paper-based newspapers
is the Statesmangoing to go?
RK: Based on what I see in 1995, I think that
newspapers are going to be around a long time. That is, information on print.
We’re going to put out a daily newspaper for a long time to come. And I think
at the same time, were going to develop a lot of electronic services. We’ve got
a fax service, we’ve got Inside Line, the telephone-based service.
We’ve got our legal information service, which is a database
company that we bought about a year ago. We have our archives online. Were
going to develop a Prodigy service, that will take us to the Internet. So we’ll
be on the Net, we’ll be on Prodigy, we’ll be – Cox is part of this thing called
the New Century Network, which is the amalgamation of the nine largest media
companies in the U.S. to form a network of all these newspapers. I think we’re
just at the very beginning, at the infantile stage, of developing electronic
services, both interactive and just static.
AC:So the Statesmanhas become a
multi-faceted media company.
RK: I think Cox has been a leader in that. Cox has a
real good picture of what’s going to happen out there in terms of our need to
be out in the electronic arena with that information. We’re an information
company as much as we are a newspaper company. We spend a lot of our time
gathering information, collecting it. We have a lot of sources of information.
We take it in and we massage it, and put it back out.
AC:How many people are on staff here at the
Statesman?
RK: We have about 850 full-time employees and 150
part-time.
AC:And how many of those are in the news
business?
RK: We have about 200 in the newsroom. Reporters,
editors, and support personnel.
AC:Have you ever met the Cox sisters?
RK: Yes, I have.
AC:What are your impressions?
RK: I haven’t had a close enough association
with them to make any impressions.
AC:Do you know how active they are in
company management?
RK: No.
AC:Cox and the newspapers got out of the
telecommunications bill what they wanted, which was to allow someone else to
provide local phone service so that the papers don’t have to compete directly
with Southwestern Bell for information services. Is that accurate?
RK: No. First of all, my negotiating was done as
president of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association. I didn’t lobby or work on
behalf of Cox. I did it solely for the TDNA. The direction and philosophy of
those negotiations all came out of a committee we had that involved the TDNA
and the Texas Press Association. So we represent about 600 newspapers in the
state – weekly, semi-weekly, and daily.
The concern that we have is that as it stands right now,
there is only one electronic pipeline to every consumer’s home and that’s the
telephone. We’re forced to use that one and that one only. And we’re saying
that we didn’t want the telephone company to get into the electronic publishing
business to compete with us. If they own the pipeline, and they’re competing
with us on the information services side, we’re at an unfair disadvantage. So
all we said was: Prohibit them from doing information services, until such time
as competition exists in the telephone business. If there’s competition in the
telephone business, we don’t care what they do. Then we’ll have alternative
routes to the hunt.
AC:But you’re happy with the
telecommunications bill?
RK: Yeah.
AC:AT&T, MCI, and Sprint say that
competition isn’t going to happen.
RK: Well, yeah. It didn’t happen the way they
wanted it.
AC:But that suits your needs.
RK: I think we’d be better served if we just had
it wide open. If we had total competition on the telephone line, it would be
real good. We’re not going to get that. And so our whole thrust up there was to
keep the telephone com-pany out of electronic publishing until such time as
there is competition. Then we worked on the issues we felt were important to
try to ensure the development of competition.
AC:When is the Statesman going to be
available on Prodigy?
RK: Should be this fall.
AC:How much extra effort does that
require?
RK: We have to build a staff of maybe 21, 22
people. We have to install a lot of servers. It’s a fairly hefty project.
AC:What about the reporting end of it?
RK: We don’t have as our goal just to replicate
the daily newspaper on Prodigy. We wouldn’t gain much. We’re going to have to
talk about different types of information, different delivery of information.
Now we operate on a 24-hour cycle. We put everything together and lock it up by
10:30, 11 at night. Everybody goes home and goes to bed, and drifts in about 9
the next morning and starts work again. Well, if we’re on line, people can dial
us up any time they want to. We need to be more current, so I think we have to
change the way we deliver information.
AC:Of the editorial content and marketing –
are all those decisions are yours? Atlanta doesn’t look over your
shoulder?
RK: They judge the product, they read it, they
see it after the fact. They certainly have budget oversight. I produce a budget
and I take my budget to them and present it to them and they own the paper, so
they have budget oversight. But in terms of the day-to-day operations, that’s
all done here.
AC:To what extent do you involve yourself in
editorial decisions? For instance, the Chronicleand the
Statesmanhave been polar opposites on a lot of the issues facing the
city.
RK: Actually, we’re probably closer than you
think.
AC:Well, in a number of issues regarding
bond issues, particularly development and environmental fights, we were for
SOS, the Statesmanwas against it. We’ve been opposing the deal with
Freeport – the Statesman has all along been asking for a settlement, or
asking for the city to make a deal. Do you involve yourself in those kind of
editorial decisions?
RK: There’s the then, and there’s the now. Right
now, the editor of the editorial page, Arnold Garcia, has been reporting to me
because we don’t have an editor. So, I have had more input on the editorial
pages over the last couple of months. Prior to that I had very little input on
these pages. The only editorial comment that I ever really had much direct
impact on was telecommunications. And during my time here, nine years, we’ve
probably had four telecommunications editorials.
AC:Let’s talk about the newspaper’s
editorial position on the Freeport issue. What’s the rationale behind its
position: that the city should move on to other things?
RK: It’s about trying to balance the risks and
rewards. The risks were going to court and losing on the legislative side.
AC:The rewards were?
RK: To settle the issue. There were a lot of
other issues in the community that need attention in city hall.
AC:What are those issues?
RK: They’re dealing with the Seton/Brackenridge
thing. I think we always have a traffic problem. There’s downtown
revitalization. Downtown really needs to be worked on, and right now we aren’t
paying any attention to it. Dump the city hall issue on top of that. They’re
trying to build an airport, which is a major problem. You have the traffic and
the crime problem, and I think East Austin needs a lot of attention. The city’s
got the electric utility that it’s going to have to deal with some time. There
are a lot of complex issues out there that really need a lot of attention by
the city council which right now, seems to be struggling to find some
direction.
AC:Whose fault is that?
RK: Whatever it is, boils down to a leadership
issue.
AC:And is there a lack of leadership on the
council?
RK: I’ve been here nine years – I guess what
happens is, you look down the road and you look at a Henry Cisneros and you see
what somebody like that can do for a community and it’s tough for somebody to
operate in that shadow. [Kintzel pauses for a long time. He stares out the
window. Nearly a minute elapses in silence. He chuckles, and then says:] “I
am just not going to get off on the political side of the equation. If you want
to talk about the newspaper, I’ll talk about that, but I’m not going to get off
on the political side of it.”
AC:Okay. So when you want to find out what’s
happening in Texas, what do you read?
RK: I try to read three newspapers a day. That’s
the American-Statesman, the New York Times, and the Wall
Street Journal. And I rely on those three.
AC:No other Texas papers?
RK: Not on a regular basis.
AC: Do you read the [Austin]
Chronicle?
RK: Occasionally.
AC:Like it? Hate it? Think we’re as biased
as we think the Statesmanis sometimes?
RK: Occasionally I see some good work.
AC:Magazines? Do you read any?
RK: I read novels, those three newspapers, and
that’s probably the extent of it.
AC:Do you feel that’s a lot?
RK: It’s a real question of trying to find time
to read. I hate to say that, but that’s just kind of the way it is.
AC:Are there any other planned changes at
the Statesman?
RK: Well, a newspaper is a dynamic, living
product. It changes all the time. It should change. The population changes,
their demands change, the news environment changes, styles change, television
brings about a lot of change, the media bring about a lot of changes. For us to
not change would be, well, not very smart.
This article appears in May 26 • 1995 and May 26 • 1995 (Cover).