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http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=11776
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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 8/30/2006 1:43:05 PM
Title: "So bitter. So naive."
Posted By: Jim Romenesko

From ROY PETER CLARK, Poynter vice president and Senior Scholar: What I've always suspected is now confirmed. The former president of the Poynter Institute and my former boss, Jim Naughton, has been outed. Make that a double. Behind Naughton's choirboy demeanor beats the heart of a man who is both "bitter" and "naive."

Since Naughton beat me out of the job I thought I wanted, I wanted to be the one who was considered "bitter" and "naive." But noooo. Not only did Naughton get the job, but he gets the pleasure of bitterness – with naivete thrown in for good measure.

The reason I now know for sure that Naughton is "bitter" and "naive" is that Tony Ridder told the New York Times that this was the case. If Tony said it, it must be true. And, of course, we all know about truth in the New York Times.

Tony's attack on Jim, which followed Jim's attack on Tony, was not at all bitter or naive. Nosiree. If anything, it was "complacent" and "jaded." It came after Jim said this (in Sunday’s New York Times) about Tony's leadership at the former company known as Knight Ridder:

"The real story of the fall and decline of Knight Ridder is not Bruce Sherman," said James M. Naughton, once executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, formerly a Knight Ridder paper, and a retired president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "It's the notion that you can continue whittling and paring and reducing and degrading the quality of your product and not pay any price. Tony's legacy is that he destroyed a great company."

Mr. Ridder, whose great-grandfather founded one of Knight Ridder's predecessor companies in 1892, dismisses such criticism. "I'm very proud of the journalism of Knight Ridder, and I think Jim Naughton is a bitter guy who was passed over for the top editor’s job," he said in an interview on Friday. "The issue was what’s happened to the newspaper industry over the last couple of years and the growth of revenue. To say that if we had more people in our newsrooms this could have been avoided is incredibly naïve.”

Now that Tony has added fuel to the fire of my argument (that Naughton is "bitter" and "naive"), I will stoke his flames by offering this evidence to Tony's case:

Naughton must be bitter and naive because:

He owns a Lexus convertible instead of a Mercedes SLR Maclaren.

He married a wonderful woman, but not Sophia Loren.

He owns a fantastic house overlooking the water, but not in the south of France.

He graduated from Notre Dame, but never got a date with the captain of the football team.

He's lucky enough to be Irish, but thinks that's lucky enough.

He became president of the Poynter Institute, but refused to go hunting with me, the future vice-president.

He created the Poynter website and hired Romenesko, but thought Deep Throat was Gerald Ford.

He built the new wing of the Poynter Institute, but took 174 years to finish the job.

He loved playing practical jokes involving animals, but could never get access to Tony Ridder's executive washroom.

He loved working for the Philadelphia Inquirer and helped make Knight Ridder a synonym for journalistic quality and integrity, only to watch its CEO lead it into oblivion.

So bitter. So naive. [Permalink]