Oral History Interview with Robert Schulman, September 6, 2007

SARAH MILLIGAN: Go ahead.

O. LEONARD PRESS: This is Len Press and we’re recording, continuing with the oral history recording of Robert Schulman of Louisville. The date is 9-6-03. [crashing sound] UNIDENTIFIED: Two thousand seven.

PRESS: [laughs] MILLIGAN: All right. I’m going to hit record again. All right. We’re recording again. We’re all going to [ ] and clean up and— PRESS: And, and Bob Schulman is ready to go. And I want to add for the recording that Sarah Milligan is helping us with this. And— ROBERT SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Officially and as the Director of the Oral History Commission, but also as a co-interviewer. And we may have the input of your wife, Louise, and my wife Lillian [laughter] as we go along. So— SCHULMAN: That was a—don’t tempt them. [laughter] PRESS: Okay. First I want to ask you a question. Then I want to ask you another question. The first question is what have we left out that you remembered that we should have put in, or that you should have put in? 1:00SCHULMAN: Ah, you want the— PRESS: If you can remember.

SCHULMAN: Full, the full list or the digest? [laughs] PRESS: Oh, no. I mean, take off. I won’t interrupt until you’re finished.

SCHULMAN: Actually, there was one, in my recollections, rather intriguing and interesting and consequential development that somehow I overlooked. Going back to those early, early days when I was still—let’s see—yes, of course I was still working for Time and Life and a new magazine in Seattle, Sports Illustrated. And for a number of years, I’d 2:00become friends with a, a, a dermatologist, interesting fellow, literate and, and involved and up with things. Walter Robinson was his name, African-American, and had been through the, over the years a very consequential supporter and contributor to the athletic programs of the University of Washington, U-Dub, as those of you who have experience with Seattle know. And unfortunately, the—at that period, very successful records for U-Dub, especially in football—as a contributor, he had become aware of the really uncontrolled activities of a local businessman whose name you can’t ever forget, “Torchy” Torrance. [laughs] I 3:00believe his name is, his real name was Roscoe. I’m not sure about that, but why do you need Roscoe when you’ve got “Torchy?” And Torchy was one of those totally intrusive supporters, generous with money, but also more than generous with enthusiasm and desires. And he did not want to let the coaches or the university elevate schedules or teams or players or players— PRESS: I, I shouldn’t interject this, but it sounds like you’re talking about the University of Kentucky right now.

SCHULMAN: That’s a malicious reference. You bet, but true.

PRESS: I was wrong.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Now, of course, I did not have personal awareness of the Bear Bryant period in Kentucky or some of his successors.

PRESS: I was talking about the conversation we were— SCHULMAN: It may be that the UK experiences are not quite as audacious, but it was— PRESS: I’m not talking about the, the controversy over the new chairman of the board.

SCHULMAN: Oh, oh, oh, oh, yes.

PRESS: Up to this point, you just, you’re almost describing 4:00his support of the athletic program.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. That’s true. That’s true.

PRESS: But go on, I’m fascinated to hear what happens next.

SCHULMAN: Well, Dr. Robinson had been talking to me from time to time about his insights into what was going on that bothered him as a, as another contributor. A good friend of mine, also at the time, the, the most popular newspaper columnist in Seattle, his name was Emmett Watson. He had the, the stature in Seattle that Herb Cane had in San Francisco. Or to a lesser degree, Kupcinet, Len, whom you will know about, in Chicago. Or, I think it, big leagues, Walter Winchell and Mark Hellinger and others in New York. And Emmett was also a, on the side, sort of, still a sports writer. And we had a mutual friend who, former coach at the U of L, who 5:00had been deposed over some of these factors. He had fought them. He had quit. His name was John Sherberg. He had some reasonably good record in football. He got into politics and became Lieutenant Governor of the state of Washington. But he was still bruised and receptive. So, we jointly decided it was time to really conduct and systematize all of this information. And Sports Illustrated was relatively new. I think we talked about the beginnings of the magazine as I recall them. And I had that lovely involvement with the first 6:00issue, have we not? The Pan-American Games and the Roger Bannister, the two— MILLIGAN: No.

SCHULMAN: No?

PRESS: I don’t remember.

SCHULMAN: Oh, my Lord.

PRESS: As you go there, what, does the name Als-, Al-, Alshook-, Altschuler— SCHULMAN: Auscho— PRESS: No. At Sports Illustrated, who was the first editor?

SCHULMAN: Sid James was the first editor. One of the Post-Dispatch contributors, contributions— PRESS: A childhood friend of mine in Boston had figured prominently somewhere there. But I guess it wasn’t— SCHULMAN: What was his name?

PRESS: Bob Altschuler.

SCHULMAN: A-L-T-S-C-H-U-L-E-R?

PRESS: Right. Right. It, and he— SCHULMAN: Well, he was not an editor.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: He probably was on the advertis-, could he be on the advertising side?

PRESS: No, no, no. But I may have the wrong, it was a major new sports magazine, and I thought it was Sports Illustrated. It may have been another one. Anyway, go on with the— 7:00SCHULMAN: I, it was Sports Illustrated at the time.

PRESS: Yeah. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Well, get me back to that Pan-American Games, if you want to.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: The two, the world’s two best mile runners. [laughs] Roger Bannister was the first man that—the Brit, a medical student who— PRESS: I, I remember it.

SCHULMAN: Was the first man to break the four-minute mile. And then his chief competitor from Australia, John Landry. Anyway, we got together and systematized all of the information that Dr. Robinson had and then that Emmett and I were able to pursue by interviewing ex-, ex-athletes and former low-grade people on the coaching staff at U Dub. And the result which broke in Sports Illustrated as a cover story was a juicy, marvelous story, 8:00picked up by, then, by the New York Times and others. Led to the, not only the reorganization of all of athletics at the University of Washington, but its reverberations were then picked up in comparable performance records in LA and San Francisco and all down the coast and led to the total reorganization of the Pacific Coast Collegiate Conference. Very satisfying. And it was that one guy, that African-American dermatologist who had really been responsible for it.

PRESS: Not intentionally, I presume.

SCHULMAN: Well, it had always bruised him. He was always agitated about it, you know.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: And of course, 9:00Torchy was eliminated, of course. And he did not take kindly to this. So, you know, it was several years before he would even say hello. [laughs] I can’t imagine if we passed the reason that I, that I noted the, with some personal excitement, the advent of Sports Illustrated, which was in 1954 or ’56. That’s easily checked. I’ve got a piece of material upstairs somewhere. This was to be the first issue of Sports Illustrated, and the choice for the cover story were the Pan-American Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. And while there are a number of other notable events on the program including a fantastic marathon, there was the bringing together of the world’s two greatest mile runners against each other that 10:00would make this a cover story of some import. So, Sports Illustrated, Time had four photographers there. And the writer who, with Seattle back-, background, incidentally, again, Paul O’Neill who’d gone on to Time and then was going to become the top writer at Sports Illustrated was there to bear first-hand witness of it as a writer. And I was sort of the trumpet-carrier as the local guy for covering the games for Sports Illustrated. And it was a fantastic race that Bannister won by a, split seconds, calling upon his special training as a medical student, respiratory approaches and so on. And sold out crowd in that stadium.

PRESS: Was this a match race?

SCHULMAN: I’m sorry.

PRESS: Was this a match race? Just the two of them?

SCHULMAN: Just the two of them. That is correct. Yes. The height of drama really.

PRESS: Yeah. 11:00SCHULMAN: And as Bannister and Landry then were, they’d gone through the finish line and were pacing off like I’ve since learned that they do—as a Kentuckian—with horses. The horses have got to pace out a little bit after. Landry, there went Bannister and Landry running along together and some overweight, balding, notebook-carrying character was trotting along behind them trying to keep up and listen to what they were saying. Well, Mark Kaufman, one of the, the top photographers, actually 12:00from Life covering it, was there, as would be any alert photographer. And he shot the picture of these three men.

PRESS: You want to give them the chance to work on the caption?

SCHULMAN: Yes. [laughter] You got it. The first issue of the magazine had what they called a “Pub Letter,” that it—this is typical now in magazines. You get a Newsweek and Time, the editor has a— PRESS: Yes.

SCHULMAN: Essay in the front. And the essay in the front of the first issue of Sports Illustrated was about a representation of how devoted and audacious and up-hill running Time’s reporters, Sports Illustrated’s reporters were that here with these two great [ ] was this fat guy listening behind. They didn’t say that, but that was my version. Anyway, that was very exciting when they ran the picture, which, again, I say, I’ve got a copy of somewhere upstairs.

MILLIGAN: So you were in the first Sports Illustrated?

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes. [laughs] And I was hardly a, you know, an athlete. Well, not all, what 13:00I mean, I skied, you know, and— PRESS: Well, you didn’t describe yourself very— [laughter] SCHULMAN: Well, I’m a— PRESS: Flatteringly.

SCHULMAN: I’m an intermediate, excel at the intermediate and lower levels.

PRESS: Okay. That was— SCHULMAN: It was a shame that we never got— PRESS: That was the first issue of the magazine?

SCHULMAN: First issue of Sports Illustrated.

PRESS: Wow.

UNIDENTIFIED: Do you have it?

SCHULMAN: Not the issue. But that page, somewhere. No, loose, you know. Some people do, but then, you know, all, I do have a bound volume of most of the Time cover stories on which I worked. They were prepared very generously and devotedly by my former wife, Eleanor Langham. And Louise has seen the book that is devoted, incidentally— LOUISE SCHULMAN: With, 14:00with great interest.

SCHULMAN: Huh? [laughs] Anyway, it’s a, it’s a nice volume.

PRESS: Yeah. Great story SCHULMAN: Beginning as I recall with, with Edgar Monsanto when I was still working in Seattle. And— LOUISE SCHULMAN: In Seattle?

SCHULMAN: In Louisville—in St. Louis. [laughs] Yes. See, I’d go astray without the presence of a certain— PRESS: There’s no much, there’s no, there’s no telling how much of what you’ve already told us would have been more accurate if Louise had been sitting there.

SCHULMAN: Well, there you go. [laughter] LOUISE SCHULMAN: Except I wasn’t around then much, Len, so I don’t know.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, but you’ve listened often enough, Louise.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: That I have.

SCHULMAN: Check the record.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: That is correct.

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: Check your list.

LILLIAN PRESS: I, I think that the idea is that oral history does not have to be accurate. It is not like other history. It does not have to have footnotes.

PRESS: Don’t encourage it. 15:00LILLIAN PRESS: It’s your version that counts.

SCHULMAN: Anyway, that, when you asked if we’d forgotten anything.

PRESS: If we—yeah. Which we would not know, of course.

SCHULMAN: Because it is sort of colorful.

PRESS: It is?

SCHULMAN: This Sports Illustrated thing between the, between the Pan-American Games and the break up of the West Coast Collegiate Athletic Organizations it was very satisfying. [laughs] PRESS: What else have you got on your list?

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: Or do you want me to go on with my— SCHULMAN: I, I know it was supposed to be, not supposed to be, but there’s a tendency to want to, to revisit the, the old record. The, the still glowing embers.

PRESS: That’s what this is all about.

SCHULMAN: But, but, but what has been happening in the newspaperdom, the American newspaperdom lately, the latest sad chapter. Here we are in September 2007. 16:00That is the deterioration or the perceived deterioration of two news-, more daily newspapers—the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Twin cities, but over the years, fantastic competitors. That’s always been sort of the case, I think, generally between Minneapolis and St. Paul. I had some occasion to get involved, for reasons that may not, time to get into, but I do have this more than casual sense of what goes on. 17:00And right now, there’s a really tawdry trouble in Minneapolis and St. Paul. When the McClatchy newspaper owners combination, better regarded than most, bought all of what had been another chain’s newspapers, as you probably know— PRESS: I’d read that.

SCHULMAN: Knight-Ridder, including the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, they then turned around and sold several of these prized newspapers— PRESS: Including— SCHULMAN: One of them— PRESS: Philadelphia.

SCHULMAN: The Philadelphia Enquirer, that’s right. Chiefly the, the San Jose and some others. And, and I’m at the moment I’m not apprised of the details of the group that took over the Star-Tribune, but there’s now been a disordered scenario in which the editor of the competitor, 18:00Pioneer Press, has defaulted to the Minneapolis paper and taken some talent with him of the talent that remains, and there’s a general feeling of deterioration.

PRESS: Well, were they both morning?

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes.

PRESS: And did they, did the, the paint [ ]— SCHULMAN: Had a, had a, had to have competitors.

PRESS: Are they, did one of them fold then? Did St. Paul fold?

SCHULMAN: That seems to be the expectation, yes.

PRESS: Isn’t that what’s happening to the Northern Kentucky Post?

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: That’s going away too.

SCHULMAN: A, a little different. A little different. They’re— PRESS: They had an arrangement [ ].

SCHULMAN: The competition. They’re the competition. It’s gone back for years, the Cincinnati Enquirer, which used to be independent. A Taft-owned newspaper.

PRESS: Right. Taft.

SCHULMAN: And the Kentucky and Cincinnati Post, owned by Scripps Howard, they’ve always been the lesser of the two from a circulation and economic standpoint. But journalistically, really pretty, pretty strong. Some of our friends, Len, yours and mine, the editor now 19:00of the Kentucky Post is also the editor of the Cincinnati Post. It’s strange. How can it be?

PRESS: Well, they operate under a common operating— SCHULMAN: Anyway, they have been for ten years, which is the same thing as in Seattle, my old stand-by, they have been on a so-called agency agreement.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Oh, this is set up by the federal government.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Where a more prosperous and economically solid newspaper agrees in the interest of continuing competition to join hands with its lesser paper in circulation and advertising—in other words, the economics are shared—while the two papers continue 20:00on the news standpoint to operate independently. Indep-, aggressively. But for a number of years now, that has been a concerted and unhealthy situation and as early as two years ago, that agreement was defaulted, was abandoned. And the big question ever since has been how long would it be before Scripps Howard, another smaller chain, would give up its losing proposition. Then, in this year, the end of this year, both the Kentucky and Cincinnati Post will go out of existence. Now, as I said, that’s a little different, 21:00because they’ve not been independent— PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: In recent years. I draw analogy to Seattle because in Seattle, during the years I was there, while the Seattle Times was always the fatter, economically more vigorous newspaper, it was always the establishment newspaper, owned by a family, the, the— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Times?

SCHULMAN: Begins with a “B.” The Seattle Times. Oh, Bu— PRESS: Name of your shopping center.

SCHULMAN: Well, we’ll come to it.

PRESS: That’s ridiculous. You know.

UNIDENTIFIED: King. King.

SCHULMAN: “B.” PRESS: King Broadcasting and, and the Seattle Times.

SCHULMAN: Well, it’s not that important. 22:00PRESS: A woman.

UNIDENTIFIED: A woman. There is a [ ].

SCHULMAN: It’s not as important— PRESS: No, no, no, no— SCHULMAN: To the point I want to make.

PRESS: I understand, but I, now, now it’s become my challenge too.

SCHULMAN: Oh, but, oh, you’ve got a challenge here, too.

PRESS: Sarah— SCHULMAN: Change, change the channel.

PRESS: All right. [laughter] MILLIGAN: Yeah, on, on.

PRESS: All right. Okay, go ahead.

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: It’ll come to us.

SCHULMAN: Of, of— PRESS: Bullitt.

SCHULMAN: What?

PRESS: Bullitt.

SCHULMAN: No, no, no, no.

PRESS: Oh, I was thinking of Bullitt.

SCHULMAN: No, Bullitt is my broadcasting— PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Operation.

PRESS: Right. Right.

SCHULMAN: No, no. This is a newspaper chain that— UNIDENTIFIED: Bulletin?

SCHULMAN: It ain’t Belson. [laughter] UNIDENTIFIED: The family— SCHULMAN: Anyway, we’ll come to that.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: [coughs] Excuse me.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: I’ve described the Seattle Times, the establishment paper, so much so that in the, in the ’50s and ’60s, the fate of Seattle was determined by a group of CEOs and lawyers and so on who met 23:00privately in a back room of the Olympic Hotel twice a month. And as a representative of the KING Broadcasting Company’s management, I was for a while a party to those meetings. Representing the New York Times was a chief political writer and editorial writer. You know, that’s— LOUISE SCHULMAN: The New York Times?

SCHULMAN: The Seattle Times. Seattle Times. Thank you, Louise.

PRESS: We knew.

SCHULMAN: And yet, my point is, the other paper, Hearst, a Hearst chain, that newspaper was not represented. It was by all odds the feistier and more progressive and the more astringent of the two newspapers from a news reporting standpoint. That was Hearst. Now, that slides me into the point I wanted to make that is redolent, relevant, the Minneapolis situation and the many other instances of where we’ve seen the deterioration of daily newspapers. If you agree, the main point has been weeping crocodile 24:00tears over the demise of the family newspaper. Now, in Seattle, it was the chain, that newspaper, that really carried the banners. In your city, adopted city of Lexington, the two so-called daily newspapers owned by an unscrupulous old devil who ran the Leader and the, and the— PRESS: Herald.

SCHULMAN: And the Herald. And each paper could collect the official advertising revenues that made it a Republican or a Democratic newspaper. Tawdry in the extreme.

PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: And while there were some good journalists on, working for both of these, they were always held captive to the designs and the economic interests of Mr.— UNIDENTIFIED: Wachs? 25:00SCHULMAN: Wachs. What happened to the journalistic strength of these newspapers? They grew when a chain, the Herald-Leader, took them over, combined them—Knight-Ridder combined them as, Knight, as Herald-Leader. And now, in some ways, Kentuckians will credit that paper with being stronger in some ways than the Courier-Journal.

PRESS: Well, but, and the same thing did not happen with the Courier-Journal though.

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: When it went chain.

SCHULMAN: Except that—no, of course not. There you had a good family. My point is— UNIDENTIFIED: The other way.

SCHULMAN: That the entire, in some ways, mythology of family-owned newspapers depended strongly and strictly on the motivations and, and drives of the family owning it.

PRESS: Well that— 26:00SCHULMAN: That, that Lexington Herald and Leader, they, the Seattle Times, the Chicago Tribune—until it was free from the dominations of its owner Colonel Robert McCormick, you knew where the, always, where the Chicago Tribune would be in its news coverage. So much so that during the early parts of World War II, it was the Chicago Tribune that, that revealed that the U.S. had broken the Japanese code, a dreadful thing, from the standpoint of national security. But that was Colonel McCormick, a family newspaper, which gained prestige and strength only after it became a chain newspaper.

PRESS: You know its— SCHULMAN: Another example. The Los Angeles Times, now revered and held victim to the chain ownership 27:00of the Chicago Tribune, but until the Chandler family— PRESS: [ ] SCHULMAN: Was taken over by a younger generation, Otis, it sold, it sold everybody else down the river. The movie Chinatown, talking about the, how did the Los Angeles Times and the Chandler family operate to suck up most of the water resources in the west for California, for L.A.’s benefit. This is not journalism. And it was bad family stuff.

PRESS: You, you remind— SCHULMAN: You see my point?

PRESS: Yeah. But you leave me—you, actually you lead me to my major questions after we had done, after we got— SCHULMAN: I had not intended that.

PRESS: After we got done with your life, which we never will be done with actually. But you lead me immediately, 28:00though, to a prior question: what about behind all of what you’re saying, which is certainly true, and I, and, you know, we’ve all seen that. The theory is, the simplistic theory is that ultimately Wall Street will drain those papers because Wall Street will own most of them, indirectly or directly, you know what I’m saying.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Well, the, the, the demands of the stockholders or the shareholders will become so, so overpowering that when they fall below twenty percent, you know, they will, profit, they will sell them off on the market— SCHULMAN: Yeah. Bottom line is [ ]— PRESS: And the way they’ll sell them off is, first, they will fire a lot of employees. They will cut back all bureaus. And make the profit rise a little bit and then get rid of it quick. Anyway. In terms of that, the money motivation behind the, the consolidating—do you believe that will ultimately 29:00kill the credibility of the press? Will make it— SCHULMAN: I do not, I do, my answer— PRESS: Make it less of a [ ]— SCHULMAN: To be, to be in keeping with the point I’ve been trying to make about the illusory nature of general notions about family newspapers, about the history of American journalism, about the fact, often overlooked fact it seems to me in my judgment that what we are, what we have been seeing is a return to public, to newspapers and other agencies becoming part of a political party process in the eighth-, in the nineteen-, the, the last half of the twentieth century—nineteenth century, pardon me. [ ] get too many centuries involved here.

PRESS: We’ve been in the— SCHULMAN: In the last half of the nineteenth century. 30:00And until, if you will, until World War—until the Great Depression, American Depression, American newspapers, abundant in number, were in most cases owned in effect by the political parties favored by their owners. They were party organs so that in my personal growing up period in New York, you knew what paper you would read if you wanted a Republican paper. The Herald-Trib was Republican. If you wanted a, a Democratic paper, you tended to read the New York Times or the New York Post or the World.

PRESS: Or the World.

SCHULMAN: Or the World.

PRESS: That was my— SCHULMAN: And that, that to me was what American newspaperdom, American journalism had begun to free itself from in, in the period after the Depression and leading almost down to our new period. Now, if you will forgive me, Len, the thesis that you have propounded, and you began by saying Wall Street, and I would have to first demure in that Ropert Worton—Rupert Murdock is not Wall Street. 31:00Rupert Murdock is a dissenter in many ways from Wall Street. He is an aggrandizing, capitalistic, empire-builder, like others of his ilk. True, he has shareholders. But it is not the shareholders he is responsible to. It is his own desires for power. That’s number one.

PRESS: [ ].

SCHULMAN: That’s a deviation, from, from stockholders. Number, number two, if you will forgive me, the thesis that you’ve propounded goes way the hell back. When I first got into the newspaper criticism evaluation business, a former, the first, I think, ombudsman for the Washington Post following the example set by, in Louisville, 32:00was Ben Bagdikian. And for four years, this is the course, this is the tenor, this is the theme that then Bagdikian and others have been following; that is, that the advertisers and the stockholders are working away to turn American journalism to their bottom line interests and that there’s going to be no defense. Now, in all of these years, I do not think 33:00that that has been the motivating factor. The motivating factor’s been changes in American lifestyle. Witness the fact that the Binghams, in the mid-’80s had to begin changing their formula. It wasn’t the, their family stockholders, Samily, Samel, Sally and Emily who were doing that.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ] and Emily.

SCHULMAN: It was dif— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Sally and Eleanor.

SCHULMAN: Sally and Eleanor. Thank you. It was changes and again economics. The costs of transportation, costs of, of newsprint. Changes with radio and television, changes in lifestyle that began the death of the afternoon newspapers. You see— PRESS: And which Barry Bingham was beginning to see and trying to address. Barry, Jr.

SCHULMAN: Trying to address economic factors.

PRESS: No, I mean technical delivery factors, like— 34:00SCHULMAN: And delivery, that—but these were not stockholders. You see my point?

PRESS: No, no, I— SCHULMAN: It’s a whole complex of other things.

PRESS: He did— SCHULMAN: It’s not the advertisers or the stockholders.

PRESS: Right. Right.

SCHULMAN: Now lately, lately, there has been more manifestation of what you are addressing. But I would submit to you that this is an end product. That is, the vulnerability to stock holders and bet-, bottom-line is a result of these others degenerative factors that have caused newspapers to lose their economic independence. And when you lose economic independence, you lose strength. You know, a newspaper ain’t worth a blind fart, fart— LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ] that’s charming.

SCHULMAN: [laughs] No, a newspaper isn’t worth anything— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Charming.

SCHULMAN: If it ain’t, if it ain’t coming out and it doesn’t come out unless it can afford 35:00to come out.

PRESS: Right. Okay.

SCHULMAN: Does that make sense?

PRESS: Yeah. And, and, and I’d love to dialogue this some more, but, but, but that’s not what I, what I need from you. Because it leads to my really big major question I came with today, and that is this first one. This is a test. If, if you were teaching students as you have, and trying to instruct them about how to prepare for their careers in journalism— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: And you said, this is what it’s going to look like in twenty years from now, so you’d better be prepared. This is what print journalism—it’s interesting, we say print journalism, because — SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: To say, not say print journalism leaves a— SCHULMAN: [laughs] That’s right. 36:00PRESS: Doesn’t tell you what you’re talking about.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

PRESS: How would you— SCHULMAN: Print, print just now comes in smaller letters.

PRESS: Yeah. How would you, how would you cast the future twenty years from now of, of the whole practice of journalism?

SCHULMAN: Can I answer first with my hope? [laughs] PRESS: Sure.

SCHULMAN: My, my hope is that given the appreciation and joy that I personally have and that the woman who’s running my future right now, [laughs] and others have, I hope, I hope by the hundreds and thousands and maybe the millions the pleasure of holding a newspaper in your hand in the morning and choosing to look where you want to look and doing that while you’re eating or doing something else, and not locking 37:00yourself into a small box or a big box, and, and having the whole smorgasbord of the world in front of you in your hands, rather than tapping and clicking buttons: that that special pleasure will endure. For it to endure, and this gets us back to our earlier examination, Len, for it to endure, it must have the economic vitality to make it possible. The expectation is that the internet, while we’re still around is going to gobble up ad-, classified advertising. It’s going to then nox-, next gobble up all the other kinds of special retail department stores, stuff that comes out now 38:00in an eighteen pound package on Sunday. And that what will be left to the newspaper and that the future of the newspaper would be—and you’re familiar with this—niche, a seven year niche, [laughter] which is sad, and of course will eliminate richness and breadth of journalism and depth of journalism and reduce the print piece into something a good deal less intriguing and consequential than it is now. That’s the best— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: That I can, that I can see.

PRESS: That’s, that’s the, that’s the answer to where will you see it. Will you see it on a box or a screen or on your window pane? Or will you be listening to it? Will you be watching it in video? But 39:00that doesn’t answer another question I got. What would you tell them to be prepared for in terms of career training? What should they learn to be? Writers, observers, all the things that journalisms now repre-, represents? Or something else? I mean, we’re faced with, with the, the Drudge Report. We’re faced with— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: The blogs and we’re faced with all kinds of—many of whom you wouldn’t call journalists.

SCHULMAN: Maybe even most. [laughs] PRESS: All right. Most. But— SCHULMAN: I mean, because credibility is going down the drain.

PRESS: But, so, is this a losing battle to even, for a student to even think about journalism as a life career?

SCHULMAN: Well, I, I will have a pass the buck answer before I try to address an answer.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: And that is that the pass buck answer is to what we, how we will be getting news and keeping up, 40:00those of whom still want to keep up, [laughs] and there’s some knowing discontent and worry, isn’t there, at the diminishing number of people who seem to want to keep up, you know, except in terms of food, health, pimples, mating. There doesn’t seem that, that much interest. I like to cast that off and think people like Sarah and submit that she’s the, characteristic of a young generation. But how it is going to be, how, what kind of looking is going to predominate, I would submit it’s more up your alley— UNIDENTIFIED: Who?

SCHULMAN: Len, than I. I am technologically not sufficiently sophisticated to venture anything but a hope not an answer. However, then, 41:00let me get to the question of what do you, what would I say teaching, now? It is wonderfully encouraging and intriguing to see the number of young people, even in a place like the U of L that does not have a journalism department— PRESS: Doesn’t?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Never has had.

PRESS: Thought you were— SCHULMAN: Because it, because it came so late into the state system that the, that the Council on Public Higher Education, which had as its central motif saving money by avoiding duplication—I was on a taskforce sum-, summoned by then president Don Swain, to look into this whole business. And the one injunction that we could not come up with was to establish a school of, or department of journalism. Why? Because you’ve got journalism schools or departments at Western, Eastern, Northern, Murray, at Oshkosh, I mean [laughs] every street corner has a, already 42:00had a state department [ ]— PRESS: Anyway they, so they— SCHULMAN: The journalism, so the biggest city in this state lacks a journalism—still, my point is, still there were young people appearing to work on the student newspaper, of which I’m still on the board. And there are consequential m-, my meaning more interesting than consequential changes than the mode of American journalism education to the degree that I’ve been able to be sensitive to it. For example, at my alma mater, a graduate school of journalism, the new dean who writes for The New Yorker magazine, Nicholas Leman, with the help of the, the new current president of the university, has broadened and extended what used to be a one year graduate course. It is now a two year course leading 43:00wherever is indicated to a Masters, to a, a Doctorate. And requirements that you become truly versed in some of the other disciplines of which this university is empowered in so that you have, when you go out, not just as a journalist, you go out as a journalist in health or economics or diplomacy or any of the other, so that the journalist will not come out more than a journalist, it will come out, [ ] and this is being replicated in a, in a variety of ways at Northwestern, at Berkeley, at Chapel Hill, you know. Maybe this says something 44:00for the young people that is promising. But even so, at the basic level, there are a few young, undeterred hearts and minds who are heading for journalism as we know it, willing to accept less in economic fortune in order to have some influence, some change in, in the community.

PRESS: Why do you suppose that they’ll always be a need for what they put in? Regardless of— SCHULMAN: I don’t [ ].

PRESS: Regardless of where the, what the output looks like?

SCHULMAN: Excuse me.

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

SCHULMAN: Some Sprite or something?

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

SCHULMAN: Thank you. I’m sorry. Oh, I’m, this is on a diuretic. Makes me dry up. [laughs] 45:00PRESS: Well, we’re, we’re helping— SCHULMAN: That’s a passing— PRESS: We’re helping.

SCHULMAN: That’s a passing fancy.

PRESS: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED: May, may I interrupt you, Len?

PRESS: Yes.

LILLIAN PRESS: You may want to break every now and then. I think it would be a good idea to just shut it off for a minute or two or five minutes, take a wee little break, and then you go on again. If they’re tiring you out by doing this for two or three hours.

SCHULMAN: No, I’m, no, I’m, no. No, no. I’m suffering some imperfections of lubrication. [laughs] Oh, the goddamn dry lips.

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

SCHULMAN: I think we’re all right. I don’t know.

UNIDENTIFIED: You think?

SCHULMAN: It’s up— PRESS: Yeah, I, I’m not too— SCHULMAN: How do you two feel about it?

MILLIGAN: Whatever you want. I think we started out doing interviews breaking every hour but you— PRESS: Well, we’ve been— UNIDENTIFIED: Let him have two more breaks. [laughter] SCHULMAN: Well I do want to get in [ ]— UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

SCHULMAN: But this is— UNIDENTIFIED: [ ] hospital. [ ] tired.

SCHULMAN: I don’t want to be interrupted every [ ].

UNIDENTIFIED: We don’t have two weeks.

SCHULMAN: Deeper flow, Len, 46:00that you have a way of enchanting— PRESS: Well— SCHULMAN: Injecting the flow. Well. I went ahead—at some point, I want to talk about curiosity.

PRESS: I have, I just have one more question along that line.

SCHULMAN: Okay.

PRESS: And then we can do whatever you want. I, I’m just curious, if you were the, if you were the head of the journalism department at, or whatever they called it, communications these days, media, whatever the hell— SCHULMAN: Make me an offer.

PRESS: I’m afraid that’s not possible right now, but—[laughter] Lee Todd said. And if the president came to you and said, you know, we’re building a top twenty university here at the University of Kentucky— SCHULMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

PRESS: And Beth Barnes is probably faced with this question.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: How do I plan for you? I mean, what are you going to be like in twenty years? Have we got to plan now for that? We know where the medical 47:00school is going. There’ll be new specialties, but ever [ ].

SCHULMAN: Yeah, yeah.

PRESS: But basically it’ll be what it is. And, and the sciences and engineering. All these are nice and stable and sure. But what in the world would you prepare for—would you—of course, one, one way would be simply to look inward instead of outward and just keep doing what you’re doing until, until the money runs out.

SCHULMAN: Ooh-ooh. [laughs] PRESS: But there’s going to be a seismic in the, in the next whatever period of time. And the whole idea of journalism and the delivery system—internet, whatever—is really going to change the practices as well as the delivery. Do you have any idea—what would you see?

SCHULMAN: I really tend to be derelict on, 48:00on this question. I, I would venture to be that you have some better ideas than I have, or some stronger ideas than I. I’d like to hear them and they may, they may generate something for me if you talk about it. [laughs] Briefly.

UNIDENTIFIED: Uh-uhn. Only briefly.

PRESS: No, I’m, I’m— SCHULMAN: No. What would, what would your notion— PRESS: I don’t have one. I think that the, I think that the print will change. I don’t think it will go away. I think the newspapers may change form. They may became, come news magazines. They may become more periodical than daily. They may, because so much is delivered immediately. I mean, right now, if I really 49:00want to know what’s happening now, I go to the newspaper’s website.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: I don’t wait—and I’ll see what’s going to ha-, what they’re going to report the next morning. So, in terms of instant news, it’s there before the print can hit the street.

SCHULMAN: If I may interject, I thought I had told this. Within recent months, Gannett, propounded for all of it’s newspapers, a new policy. I don’t regard it as a new policy. It intensified, among other things, intensified attention to the website. And so much so that reporters now at this, here in the Courier-Journal and I assume at the Herald-Leader—certainly, I know elsewhere around the country—what I, you know, by sad contrast in some ways to when we’ve discussed in my younger, younger days in journalism, 50:00when a reporter had a story and he called on the telephone to a re-write man, “Hey, Charlie, I’ve got, have I got a hell of a story.” And he dictates it, or he tells it to the re-write man and the re-write man then pulls his old hat down and lits up another cigarette and bats away on his typewriter and yells, “Copy!” And it then proceeds on a [ ]. By contrast now the reporter, before he’s in touch with anybody or before he comes back to the office, if he or she has to come back to the office, they get on their laptop and it goes first to the website. So much so—and I tell this because I like what the guy who’s now the managing editor of the Courier-Journal said at a closed meeting—well, it was a small meeting—about these new changes. He said, “Forget about the scoop. 51:00Forget about the scoop. It’s now the Courier-Journal.com. That’s the essence of it now.” And no story of any consequence goes first into print, even though the reporter kicks himself or herself knowing that this story really ought to stay until next morning so that nobody knows about it. All you got to do is go to the Web site that afternoon and there it is. And that’s the new, that is the new effort, new formula on the part of major metropolitan newspapers to save themselves or a part of themselves by making, as you know, the Web site an essential, a key part of their economic stream.

PRESS: Speaking of that economic stream, 52:00I wonder exactly who they’re competing against with the Web site? And does the Web site [ ]— SCHULMAN: I’ll give you, independently, independently-owned Web sites?

PRESS: Or—independently, you mean— SCHULMAN: Inclusive.

PRESS: Inclusively inde-, Web sites. Not even newspaper websites.

SCHULMAN: That’s right. Blogs.

PRESS: Right. Right. Okay.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: And there, the question that comes of economics, and, and there’s a group that’s even talking about trying to start a, a Kentucky internet, Web newspaper.

SCHULMAN: I, did I, did I see— PRESS: Yeah, you’ve heard about this.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, I guess I have.

PRESS: Al’s involved in this.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

PRESS: And Mark— SCHULMAN: Yeah. And—yes. Yes.

PRESS: And the big question is economics. I’ve been trying to find out how much money or what kind of profit, if any, the newspapers are showing on the Web site and how they’d measure it. They certainly couldn’t 53:00support their whole editorial staff with it.

SCHULMAN: No way.

PRESS: Could they ever? See? That’s my question.

SCHULMAN: I, I don’t know— PRESS: And— SCHULMAN: This is not, again, part of whatever expertise— PRESS: No, no. That was a r-, that was rhetorical, because I don’t think anybody knows on that.

SCHULMAN: No. No, no. Certainly, I don’t know that, I don’t know that you’re right in your saying that this will be—and this is not the phrase that you use—a revolutionary metamorphosis, whatever. I don’t, I think this is— PRESS: Twenty years. It’s a long time now days.

SCHULMAN: That’s, these, that’s right. Twenty years. So, that ain’t, that ain’t hardly a, even a bloodless revolution. [laughs] LIL PRESS: If it helps, I have to interrupt to make a point.

PRESS: No, you don’t—I mean, you’re not interrupting. [laughter] LIL PRESS: To make a point. As long as I can remember back, if you were releasing 54:00a story—let’s say a public relations aency - if you were releasing a story for tomorrow, you also were releasing it to the late news the night before. And they had the right to pub-, to, to carry that item on the news. I can’t remember if it was the seven o’clock or the eleven o’clock—you might remember. But we always knew that if I’m sending a story out to the paper, the paper knew that, unless informed otherwise, that that would be on the eleven o’clock news the night before. On TV and radio.

SCHULMAN: Because to know often, usually I assume [ ], you usually had an eleven o’clock edition.

LIL PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: It was on the street. So, the newspaper also had— LIL PRESS: Well, I don’t go back that far.

SCHULMAN: You see, you see. [laughs] LIL PRESS: But, and— SCHULMAN: That’s number one, Lil, and, and number two, during all of those years, when it was expected that the, that the a.m. 55:00newspaper story would be on the eleven o’clock p.m. news the night before, or even the ten o’clock news— LIL PRESS: Yeah, I don’t remember which one, but yeah [ ].

SCHULMAN: But it was a whole different situation. Because this was a different audience—that was the presumption. Also, the, and also, the audience got snippets, they didn’t get the— LIL PRESS: They didn’t get the whole story. [ ] SCHULMAN: The essence of it. Go to the newspaper in the morning to really get the story.

LIL PRESS: But there is not an idea that has never been done. Because that is—if you go to the Web site first, well, it’s more complete on, on—they advertise as more complete if you go to our Web site.

SCHULMAN: Well, there’s—yeah. If, if, if you were making the difference, I, I agree with you. There’s a dramatic difference. That’s why, that’s why the newspapers have had to move to, to make, try to make the Web sites their property—so that the, the result of their journalistic work is on, 56:00is in their bundle, [laughs] is in their, is in their revenue stream.

MILLIGAN: I wonder, we’re talking about the change that we are predicting or that we’re seeing that’s happened.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

MILLIGAN: What have been some of the major changes that have happened over your lifetime with media? And, and what was all of the, the buzz that was going around them?

SCHULMAN: If I’m catching the major thrust of your, the, the obvious ones were there, of course: radio. And radio news was going to kill newspapers.

MILLIGAN: Did it?

SCHULMAN: No. No. In many ways it added to the strength of newspapers.

PRESS: Particularly the newspapers that bought radio stations.

SCHULMAN: [laughs] Then came along television. Even more consequential concerns and uproar. 57:00Who’s going to want to read when they can look at it and get it. Again, it, it propounded, it developed for newspapers a whole new range of coverage. I remember those interesting years when newspapers wouldn’t run TV programming. It was competition. And then suddenly it occurred to them their readers were hungry for what the stuff was on the air and it was going to draw it from the newspaper and depend on the newspaper to know what the hell was going on.

PRESS: As a matter of fact, if I may, Bob, one of the things that convinced them that it was not a competition they could afford to ignore was the TV Guide.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yes.

PRESS: See, since the newspapers wouldn’t publish the schedules, they didn’t want to advertise, a thing 58:00grew up called the TV Guide.

SCHULMAN: Uh-huh.

PRESS: Which—do you have a-, do you even know about it?

MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

PRESS: You do? Okay.

SCHULMAN: Did you read TV Guide?

MILLIGAN: No. My parents had them around a little.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Which published all the schedules in your town. And finally—and took a lot of advertising and a lot of reader attention. And finally the newspapers had to give in. And when they, newspapers gave in and started publishing the schedules, TV Guide went away.

SCHULMAN: That’s right. TV Guide was a mint, was a mint.

LIL PRESS: Annenberg. Wasn’t it Annenberg?

PRESS: That was Annenberg.

SCHULMAN: And all of a sudden— PRESS: Walter Annenberg.

SCHULMAN: All of, all of a sudden, wheee.

PRESS: You’ve heard of, you’ve heard of Annenberg schools, have you not?

SCHULMAN: Exactly.

MILLIGAN: I’ve heard of the Annenberg Foundation.

PRESS: Well, okay. That too. [ ] is one of them.

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

SCHULMAN: In this, in this, I come from this context. I do remember attending a national convention which I used to or-, almost every year’s Radio and Television News Directors’ Association, which 59:00is, as you know all too well, they, the union of news execu-, of TV broadcast news executives, some of Louise’s, a lot of the keenest memories are of meetings that we attended where she can tell you about David Brinkley and Bill Small and, you know, James J. Kilpatrick, and so on. Anyway, it was at a convention of the RTNDA and I, I would have to scrub around for timing—you may can—a guy named as I recall [ ] was the speaker. And he was involved with Ted Turner. And they were going to start something called twenty-four hour op-, news operation, called— 60:00PRESS: Dumb. It was a dumb idea.

SCHULMAN: Cable news. Exactly.

MILLIGAN: Why was it— [END OF INTERVIEW] UNIDENTIFIED: [ ] That’s what— ROBERT SCHULMAN: Never were.

O. LEONARD PRESS: Everybody said it was a dumb idea.

SCHULMAN: Who was he to know?

UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, I still, I— PRESS: How can you, how can you support yourself by selling the news all the time?

SCHULMAN: Who, who was going to [ ] on it?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: I thought he was crazy. The Today program would never go any place.

PRESS: What?

SARAH MILLIGAN: Really?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: I predicted the Today—I saw a pilot of the Today program. I said, no one will ever watch that.

PRESS: I’ll compete with you on your prediction. Yeah. But— SCHULMAN: Well, [laughs] and that was a, that was a, an quintessential meeting of where everybody, nobody thought that would be a success – and zoom.[. And yet, not a threat to newspaper, you see. That continued from these other sources. And except, except as it became a factor in a whole arsenal 61:00of, of factors.

PRESS: And, and really, it, it, it would have appeared to be a threat to television news. But it didn’t— SCHULMAN: That, that’s right. It was— PRESS: It didn’t work that way.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes. That’s right.

PRESS: One, one thing I have observed that I can’t explain is that every time that there has been a new medium that threatened the old medium— SCHULMAN: Exactly.

PRESS: It would up that both thrived. In our lifetime— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: That’s been true.

SCHULMAN: Well— LILLIAN PRESS It’s kind of putting, like, the gas stations across the street from the other. I mean, it’s a good marketing concept that they use in commerce, you know.

PRESS: Gets everybody [ ]— LILLIAN PRESS: Gasoline station on corner and then, why to have one across the way, but it works.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

LILLIAN PRESS: It’s better.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughs] Now, I, I think in this—I, I may be using this as a device, but you asked about changes that, as, as you will recall because we covered this—when I was growing up, the closest 62:00[ ] would be writer, father brought home every day seven, collected and brought home every day, the seven daily newspapers. I am not aware that, and I can’t imagine that I was digging this phenomenon when I was growing up, and living surrounded by these newspapers, but my presumption is that it had to have an effect because I would read—I’d like to think I read the New York Times first. I mary vay, may very well have read bright scenes of kids in the New York Daily News. They paid a dollar for every published entry. Also, the New York World had a club for kids. I’d forgotten. And they had a big gathering every year at some theatre where we’d go and hear magicians, 63:00[ ] and all kinds of shows. But, I also, I did at some point read the New York Times. But then I would look into these other newspapers and I would see different colorations, different casts to the same story. And I remember then, in my teens, this began to generate questions: what’s, you know, who, where do you look to get the— PRESS: Who do you believe?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. That’s right. And I would like to think that for me and others who were growing up in this atmosphere it generated a knowing curiosity to find out what is making all of this—and out of that came the awareness that each of these papers spoke for a point of view. 64:00Not always, but sometimes, in their news as well as in their opinion. And that therefore, if you really wanted to get at the heart of something to the degree that anybody even with eight degrees can find the heart, you got to depend on more than one source. And you got to balance out and you got even—this is where it occurs to me—of course, I was surrounded then by the, already, by the, the Socialist call and the Reader’s Di-, the Literary Digest and the Saturday Evening Post, you know. Read magazines and even books, as well as newspapers to get at the real heart of the matter. 65:00And this generates then a curiosity. And somewhere, and I don’t know, Louise, if it turned up in Murphy, our Murphy’s law calendar, it’s nice to get to a point where you know everything, but what’s left is what you have yet to know. And I, it seems to me that this is what was pushing me and others. You went to a press conference, okay, and you know, especially in the old—deadlines, deadlines. You had five editions a day. And it was critical to get the story into that issue, that—because otherwise, the competition was going to show you up. But what, you know, 66:00what was good about that story? Was there enough—and they, then you had to find time, if you could, to go to another source. And I think this made for me, and a lot of others I know, a big difference, and it paid off—you reminded me, remember, we were talking about Joe McCarthy and his, when he defamed Adlai Stevenson at that, in the ho-, the Stevens hotel in Chicago in 1952. And everybody else with deadlines had to run off and report what McCarthy had said about this documentation he had. And because I was working for Time and I had time, I could go around behind the curtain and say “Where’s, where’s the documentation?” And not, nobody else had the time to do it. What happened in that case, you know, only it did make for a line 67:00in the local columnists’ column, in Kupcinet’s column. Wasn’t that interesting? And Time didn’t pick it up until the following week. Huh. This was a big, big difference. Now it’s, you would think it’s easier to get a diverse source, stream of sources. But it isn’t. Because what do you, you don’t, some newspapers retain their opinion distinctiveness. But not many. Look at the Courier-Journal. It’s loaded today with community stuff, community voices. Does that, and, does that come from an interest in other sources of information? I, it’s coming from circulation building. You got to do something, you know, you have a health and fitness— 68:00PRESS: I saw, that chief of circulation?

SCHULMAN: You have a health and fitness column now. You have a cooking column. You have a mating column, literally. [laughs] And so you got to reach out and get, and get the people to speak.

PRESS: It’s cheaper too.

SCHULMAN: [ ] No, I suppose you could argue there’s an essence of health in this, of, of, of good policy.

PRESS: Community journalism?

SCHULMAN: Community and social—exactly. And you remember three or four years ago, community journalism—there’s a guy, there’s a, head of the department at NYU has made himself a national reputation— PRESS: I remember.

SCHULMAN: As a propounder of you’ve got to get more voices. Is that what’s— PRESS: Talk back from the community. . . .

SCHULMAN: Is that what I was hungering for when I was a moppet? No. If that makes any— LIL PRESS: Well, worth it— 69:00SCHULMAN: Huh?

LIL PRESS: It creates a, it creates a, the newspaper used to be, when you talked about the people who controlled it were either Democrats or Republicans, but you depended on your newspaper to bring you information that wasn’t in the community.

SCHULMAN: That’s right.

LIL PRESS: And, and then it became only a recorder of what was happening. But I wondered, another question was, there are some people who say that so much of the, so many of the journalists today are lemmings, they follow what becomes the popular consensus of what is really happening. And, and I’ve witnessed that myself in Washington. When Reagan came in after Carter and the way, my only consideration, I, I thought 70:00the reason why that the journalists welcomed Reagan was words like “Style Comes Back to the White House.” SCHULMAN: God!

LIL PRESS: Carter just dumbed down, didn’t dumb down the White House, but it made it plainer. It wasn’t stylish. They, they invited all kinds of ordinary people.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: And they made it less distinguished. And so the White House correspondents felt hurt. They were downgraded.

SCHULMAN: Uh-huh.

LIL PRESS: So when Reagan came in—and I’ll never forget that day, because the fur coats at Garfinkle’s restroom was over—I sat in there for two hours on a chair, just looking at the coats.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Were you doing anything under the— LIL PRESS: No. Just sitting on, in the lobby. They had a huge rest-, restroom. I sat there counting the coats, the sables and the minks. I’d never seen anything like that in my whole life. 71:00SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: And it was endless. And the limousines cluttered the streets. And the newspapers were proclaiming, literally, “Style Comes Back to the White House.” They were like lemmings.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LIL PRESS: They weren’t looking for anything but a way to be important. And I wonder if what you say, if you think that way. If you think there are too many journalists or somehow the trend, the reporting follows one line. When someone there will always be able to say, that was not really the way it happened.

SCHULMAN: No question, a major concern, Lil. See if you read my, my response to that is that there’s no question that this is a phenomenon. That, but in my judgment, it is much, much more acute for discernable reasons in the beltway. 72:00In the Washington press corps.

LIL PRESS: Oh, yeah.

SCHULMAN: To a lesser degree, then, in state capitals, for the same reason. It’s that concentration on a set of single sources, a social togetherness, us against them, it, in the typical American community. Un-state capital, un-beltway reporters—and this is a sad thing in its own way—you know, we used to get together at press clubs, every major city in the country—it’s a big change—had a press club. And most nights, even while people were already married, they would go by for a drink and talk about the day and argue the issues and so on. And these 73:00were like Washington press clubs, but without all the frizzle and frazzle. They’re almost all gone now. Almost all gone. No more press clubs. Why? Changes in lifestyle. But one of the losses and one of the gains—one of the losses is that you lose a sense of sharing about the news and what are the challenges and the delinquencies and so on, that good cocktail hour talk. But a gain may be a separation from the closed circle beltway phenomenon, the lemmings, the lemmings thing. Can’t we theorize—and I, not having been there—can’t we theorize that it was this lemming, 74:00rather than softness, rather than favoring, this lemming characteristic, this hunger to get the hell away and take care of the family and do other things—that occasioned the acceptance of the intelligence that got us into Iraq. I mean, that lack of extra curiosity.

LIL PRESS: It, it, I, I believe that.

SCHULMAN: And more than, if you please, more than what is the usual notion—I mean, the New York Times r-, Sarah wrote this eighteen to twenty page confession about why the New York Times Washington bureau staff and New York editing staff had failed to note the dubiousness of the case for Iraq.

LIL PRESS: Exactly. That’s right.

SCHULMAN: And, 75:00and it was all, well, softness toward the, the Bush administration, and I think it’s rather, this phenomenon, a psychological lemming-like commitment. Does this make sense?

PRESS: Did it— UNIDENTIFIED: Um-hm.

PRESS: Was that, to what extent was Judith Miller a victim of— SCHULMAN: To what extent?

PRESS: Judith Miller?

SCHULMAN: Yes?

PRESS: A victim of the ownerships fear of stepping out too far and really digging in and finding out? To what extent were they, was, was she conforming to what, maybe, the ownership would have preferred, in her own mind at least? 76:00I mean, that was such a bungled thing.

SCHULMAN: It was a, it was a monstrous case of bunglitis—no, no question. [ ] again, operating from here, unfortunately, Louise and I have not been in Washington for so damned many years, without opportunity to have at least one session where we’re sitting in the, in the press club, if you will, or in the Senate gallery somewhere and getting the kind of stuff that one wants to get. If we were in Chicago or Louisville or so on, my impression from all of that exhaustive record that we were fed is that, with Judith Miller as a case reporter, one reporter, being bought in by the— PRESS: The government?

SCHULMAN: Not by the government. 77:00By operators working on her for the White House.

PRESS: Okay, well— SCHULMAN: And letting her in on this hot stuff. I think it was an, a reporter and the indulgence on the part of her editors. And that whole humungous and weird New York Times culture, which has been cleansed somewhat in the past year or two, but which I don’t think has as much to do with reportorial dedication as it is, as it is with a, you know, drift along— LIL PRESS: A societal, societal aspect.

PRESS: She was co-opted by, by— SCHULMAN: Co-opted—thank you. That’s— PRESS: By a member of the, of the, of the administration.

SCHULMAN: Apparatus.

PRESS: Okay. Of the apparatus. Apparatchik. But what, 78:00wh— SCHULMAN: And she, she became a chick on the apparatus.

PRESS: Wh- [laughs]. A monkey chick on the apparatus. Anyway, isn’t there supposed to be a tradition of second, second sources and all that sort of thing. What, shouldn’t, shouldn’t the newspaper have required her to, to get a— SCHULMAN: Oh, absolutely. Oh, well, the whole draggy business of the, of the, and, and I think Lil will agree, it’s a greater and more malicious sickness in Washington than elsewhere in the country. That is the use of anonymous sources and ratings of anonymous—a “senior official,” you know. [laughs] A whole— PRESS: Woodstein got a— SCHULMAN: Lexicon, Sarah, of— PRESS: Would— SCHULMAN: Differentiating tags to identify unidentified sources.

MILLIGAN: Anonymous.

PRESS: Woodstein got it right. 79:00Judith got it wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED: Burnstein?

UNIDENTIFIED: Burnstein or Woodstein?

PRESS: Well, that’s what they called him.

SCHULMAN: Woodward, Woodford Bernstein.

UNIDENTIFIED: Oh, Woodward Woodstein. [laughs] SCHULMAN: Woodford Bernstein.

PRESS: They called him Woodstein.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, but, that’s right. And that was, again, what a difference between the chemistry that, that predominated and prevailed in those days as against what we’re seeing now.

LIL PRESS: And I think what you said about a desire to re-, to lead a more normal life—I’d never thought about that. But I think you hit upon a very important thing about this culture today.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: It is more about, it’s just, it’s not that people are really worse. They’re putting other values on things. Journalists had to be, as Helen Thomas said, when I asked her why she was a cheerleader— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: To everybody she met, 80:00she just builds you up—and was so mean to the President. And she said, “I’m not mean to Presidents. I’m only asking for the truth.” Well, a journalist has to be that way.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: But because they get married and they have kids and they have soccer games and they have lives— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. But the culture for the journalists is so different. They were used to being the outcasts. They’re used to being on the odd side.

SCHULMAN: That’s right.

LIL PRESS: And now, they live in suburbia and their kids go to soccer camp and their best friends with a guy that works in the White House. And it’s different.

SCHULMAN: Lil put your finger on it. Louise can attest to that because she expected, when—I mean she’d had ample exposure to the journalistic community before I entered her life—but 81:00it got to be more intense right afterward and we went to some meetings. And Louise expected the kind of discussion that used to obtain in the press clubs. You know, imagine spending an evening with all these hotshot reporters.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Couldn’t have been duller. [laughter] SCHULMAN: Yes.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Appalling, I know.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Unsophisticated, arrogant, not fun socially. Surprised me.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

MILLIGAN: Were they primarily men?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Mostly, yeah. Mostly.

SCHULMAN: Uhm.

PRESS: Would they want to— SCHULMAN: No, come on Louise, don’t say that. Think again.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Mostly. Mostly men. Mostly.

SCHULMAN: Well, but that’s not the case.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: I didn’t say— SCHULMAN: It hasn’t been the case— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Only.

SCHULMAN: For thirty years, you know.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: No, no, but the people I was exposed to were mostly men.

SCHULMAN: It’s, it’s not a valid point in my judgment.

PRESS: What kind, what kind of—men or 82:00women—what kind of thing did they talk about?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Well, I just thought they were dull. I thought they were unsophisticated. I thought they were arrogant. I thought they were— PRESS: They weren’t talking professional talk?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: No. Just generally. I think a number of people in our, I had the same experience when Bob went to U of L because I thought this would be so wonderfully stimulating. And that, [laughs] that didn’t turn out to be the case either. And someone said a lot of the— SCHULMAN: You mean with faculty?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Yeah. A lot of people were using this as a social means of improving themselves. They were on the make, socially and professionally. And I don’t mean there weren’t bright people. There were some bright people. But it wasn’t a barrel of fun socially, generally speaking. I mean— SCHULMAN: I, I reacted instinctively.

UNIDENTIFIED: Pardon me just a second— LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ] SCHULMAN: Sarah’s point about were there—not instinctively—genderitially. [laughs] 83:00That, that—let me pursue this because Sarah’s question was whether there were more men than women, but I’ve, and I’ve, and I’ve, you know, as we covered in some of this my recollections of those really weird years when the women on the local news staff were all working in society, society reporting. At Time, they were all, uniformly all researchers, fact checkers, fact finders, actually doing a good deal more work than their title and their reputation credited them for. But in local terms, a second thought in response to your question, it does occur to me, as I think back over, for example, the local chapters of the Sigma Delta Chi, 84:00Society of Professional Journalists, that by and large, it is single, good professional journalists—women—who are tending to carry the working load out of the office.

MILLIGAN: I guess that was my, my question was really driven towards gender, but also towards whether you’re married or not, whether you choose to have a family or not. Because I wonder if that— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

MILLIGAN: Will come out of this trend of letting women into the workforce and then building themselves up and then all of a sudden, the lemming effect may come from gentrifying and then deciding we can still have a family, we don’t have to be workaholics anymore.

PRESS: It’s just another job.

SCHULMAN: Ha! [laughs] LIL PRESS: Now, there were certainly a lot of exceptions, you know. Nobody was— MILLIGAN: Absolutely.

LIL PRESS: Would ever say they’re all lemmings there. I know so many reporters who are anything but—but 85:00I think, I think that does have something to do with it.

SCHULMAN: From time to time in recent years, sometimes with, sometimes without Louise, I have found myselves, myselves [laughter]—okay, very good.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ] without me. [laughter] SCHULMAN: How about that?

PRESS: That’s a true statement.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: That explains [ ]. [laughter] SCHULMAN: I have found myself attending— LIL PRESS: Yourself.

SCHULMAN: Interesting or— LIL PRESS: Yourself. [ ] SCHULMAN: Yes. I found myself attending consequential [ ]. It seemed to me enough consequential that I wanted to take some time to attend meetings on community issues. And there ain’t no reporter around. And that, I think, ties in well to— LIL PRESS: Elizabeth Edwards came to Lexington. She came for a House fundraiser.

SCHULMAN: [ ] LIL PRESS: And—no, she came to a House fundraiser that I was one of the people, my friend was running it. 86:00And then the, they set up a, a fifteen dollar a person admission fundraiser for the community to meet her that night.

SCHULMAN: Mm.

LIL PRESS: They met at a gallery and, and like three hundred and fifty people crowded in before they shut the doors. It was so mobbed.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: Not one reporter covered that. The wife of one of the three top candidates was there in Lexington. They reported it when Obama came, but— SCHULMAN: Of course.

LIL PRESS: But they just, she was just the wife, she was just a woman.

MILLIGAN: Why, I mean, what is the assumption behind that?

LIL PRESS: Wh— MILLIGAN: That she’s just the wife or that they didn’t have enough reporters to cover it?

LIL PRESS: I don’t know. I, maybe they didn’t have a free reporter that night. It could be finance, you know.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: We see this all the time in here. Not in politics, but people of immense, you know, public stature. And we go to meetings and not covered. It’s time [ ].

LIL PRESS: And then— SCHULMAN: But I don’t think— LOUISE SCHULMAN: But I think the news was 87:00[ ].

SCHULMAN: Because when, when Mrs., when Mrs. Obama was here, there was a tremendous crowd and coverage.

LIL PRESS: And there was tremendous crowd when Obama was covered in Lexington while we were gone, but— PRESS: Was it— SCHULMAN: No, no. But I’m talking about the gender issue.

LIL PRESS: No, I don’t know that it was just about— SCHULMAN: Mrs. Obama got big, big coverage.

LIL PRESS: No, I think that— SCHULMAN: Mrs. Edwards got coverage here.

LIL PRESS: No, the same pe-, the same meeting was in the New York Times. They had her picture with a, like a five column spread about the crowd in Lexington that listened to her.

SCHULMAN: Ah. Yeah, yeah.

PRESS: As a matter of fact— SCHULMAN: Ah!

PRESS: The, it was either the editor or the publisher of the Lexington paper that said that was a mistake.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LIL PRESS: [ ] routine here—he said publicly it was a mistake? I missed that.

PRESS: Yeah. Oh, y—not publicly, but privately.

LIL PRESS: I mean, I don’t know how they could have missed that. A mob downtown, right near their building and the New York Times has it and they don’t have it?

MILLIGAN: So what is— LIL PRESS: We, we, we [ ]— LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ].

SCHULMAN: It is weird, yes.

MILLIGAN: But is this saying. I mean, if we look at this, what is it saying about the, the trends right now? 88:00LOUISE SCHULMAN Right.

MILLIGAN: I mean, if we’re—are we—is it saying something about newspaper coverage— SCHULMAN: The trends in journalism, you mean?

MILLIGAN: Mm-hm.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: I think that’s a very good question.

SCHULMAN: As to coverage. Well, I think it— LOUISE SCHULMAN: But Bob— SCHULMAN: I think it’s a question of, it’s not gender, it’s not— LOUISE SCHULMAN: No.

MILLIGAN: No, I don’t think it’s— SCHULMAN: But is it, is it a question of competence and dedication?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: And, and knowledge. You know, we find the local newspaper people running it these days have very little what we call institutional memory.

LIL PRESS: That’s right.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: I mean, very— LIL PRESS: That’s absolutely right.

SCHULMAN: Well, that’s true.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: You know, distinguished people die, they come. These people don’t know their switch from maybe a Gannett paper to a Gannett paper to a Gannett paper. They have no—they’re young, they don’t have some of the perspective, what some of us have been around a little bit longer might have. They don’t have any knowledge. And they don’t give a damn. But— MILLIGAN: So, is it an issue of baby boomers going out and the next generation coming in?

LIL PRESS: Well, I, I think that at the night shift maybe, they have kids right out of college who don’t have the history. 89:00And by the time, you know, if, but still it was like seven o’clock or something. They had plenty of time.

PRESS: I don’t think, I don’t think this can be laid on the, on the reporters or the people who are gathering the news. I think, let’s get this, this is— LIL PRESS: It’s the editors.

PRESS: Yeah. Sure.

LIL PRESS: Of course.

PRESS: Oh, okay.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: But what we also see of [ ]— LIL PRESS: But that’s journalism.

PRESS: Well it, and it, if the editors and then the question always comes back to, is the editor responding to the owners and are the owners responding to the, to the— SCHULMAN: [ ] PRESS: To circulation.

SCHULMAN: My [ ]—excuse my [ ]— PRESS: Wait a minute, wait a minute. But circulation is always on everybody’s mind who runs a newspaper. It’s got to be. Not advertising, maybe, but circulation.

SCHULMAN: Well, but then, see, you’ve raised two issues.

PRESS: I’m trying to confuse you— SCHULMAN: Which I lived and, and number one, again, number one, the influence of advertisers has been grossly overplayed.

PRESS: I said that. I just said that. I tried to say that. 90:00SCHULMAN: You said that?

PRESS: Yes. I said he, the, the editorial decision is not made because of the advertisers.

SCHULMAN: It is not made because of the [ ]— PRESS: Not because of—no. I give, I grant you that. Absolutely.

SCHULMAN: Good. Good. That’s number one.

PRESS: That’s number one.

SCHULMAN: Because that’s one of my deep experiences and it runs counter to the usual per— UNIDENTIFIED: Experience and theory.

SCHULMAN: Politically correct journalistic assumption.

PRESS: No, I’m not—I, I believe that and— SCHULMAN: The [ ] effect.

PRESS: That element of journalism is still respected, I think, everywhere to the utmost. I really do. From small papers to big ones.

SCHULMAN: Except among us, some academics.

PRESS: I know. I know well for the sake of, you know, covering it. But, but on the other hand, the publisher is influenced by a lot of things: circulation is one. The political slant of the owners is another. I mean, they are, there’s a predetermination that this will be—why is the Lexington Herald-Leader¬ a Democratic paper?

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Why? I’m asking that. That’s not rhetorical.

SCHULMAN: Oh, why?

PRESS: Why, why 91:00is it a, a liberal paper?

SCHULMAN: In my judgment— PRESS: It’s not a family paper.

SCHULMAN: By contrast to the, what used to be the Knight-Ridder among the chains was one of the more progressive— PRESS: Right.

LIL PRESS: Liberal.

SCHULMAN: And therefore, it, it seeped down not by, not by direction but by the kinds of people that editors tended to hire— PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: When they had, when they interviewed. You know, where, where are you on issues, and so on and so on. Oh, I love Roger R-, God, Roger Reagan. [laughs] PRESS: But, but, but, by, by this token, see, by this token, whatever their motives, the publisher is, is going to if not in words is going to clearly set the policy. The editorial writers are not going to write like 92:00they’re Fox News.

SCHULMAN: The editorial writers are what?

PRESS: They’re not going to write editorials as though they were on Fox News.

SCHULMAN: No, not likely.

PRESS: Not in the Lexington paper.

SCHULMAN: No.

PRESS: The reporters, to some extent, are equally influenced. For example, even though they tried to be objective during our water fight, the number of stories that seemed, seemed to us—always you got to say “seemed to us” with a, with a news story— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Seemed to be sympathetic to our position— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Versus their position— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Was very, very noticeable.

SCHULMAN: You mean— PRESS: So— SCHULMAN: They out-, they out-numbered you?

PRESS: Yeah. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Oh. I would anticipate that. Because— PRESS: Because it’s a liberal paper.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Yeah. Okay.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

PRESS: So, what I’m getting at in all of that, that there a policy—there is a, there is a, a, a sense of— SCHULMAN: Not a policy. 93:00PRESS: Sense of pol—I’m trying to find the word.

SCHULMAN: It’s not a, it’s not a policy. It is an environment.

PRESS: That’s it. Okay. Okay.

SCHULMAN: I think there’s a big difference.

PRESS: You’re right. [ ] a hell of a big difference. It’s not a stated policy, I understand that. But it is an environment that everybody understands.

SCHULMAN: Early on, early on in my career here, I became aware when I was at the newspapers—no—yes, I was at the newspapers, left television, that the reputation around town that Barry Bingham, Sr. had sacred cows. There were certain subjects that everybody knew, without his ever saying, that everybody knew needed to be treated with some delicacy. And Louise may help me on this. I know that one—I did a piece, a column. A, one of them was the, 94:00the English— LOUISE SCHULMAN: English-speaking union.

SCHULMAN: English-speaking union. The English-speaking union. [laughs] LOUISE SCHULMAN: One was mental health.

SCHULMAN: And the other was mental health, yes.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ].

SCHULMAN: And I sat down with Mr. Bingham to explore this. And he was shocked. Shocked. “You mean that you’re suggesting, Bob, that our editorial coverage is influenced?” He said, “Of course, our editorials favor things I like, but the news?” So, we went back and looked at some—and he had to acknowledge that un-, un-, unbeknownst to him— PRESS: Exactly. Exactly.

SCHULMAN: The English-speaking union was getting very, very soft and affable treatment. [laughs] 95:00PRESS: As it should have.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Yeah. It didn’t have much else.

MILLIGAN: What are you [ ]— SCHULMAN: I—did I tell you about the World’s Fair thing?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ] scholarship.

MILLIGAN: We should think about taking a break in a little while.

PRESS: Yeah. Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED: Maybe it’s over.

PRESS: Maybe it’s over.

UNIDENTIFIED: What time is it?

PRESS: It’s four-twelve.

UNIDENTIFIED: Where’s Bob?

SCHULMAN: The, the World’s Fair— PRESS: [ ].

SCHULMAN: The coverage of the World’s, Kentucky W-, State Fair, and the bull story? Did I tell that?

PRESS: Do that right after the break.

SCHULMAN: Remind me.

MILLIGAN: Got it.

SCHULMAN: Now that was not— PRESS: The bull story.

SCHULMAN: That was not publishing, that was editor, news editor. Still— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: It was an ex-, exemplified— MILLIGAN: Push in pause.

SCHULMAN: [ ]. Huh?

PRESS: Yeah. You did.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughs] MILLIGAN: We’re right where we [ ]— SCHULMAN: Louise never goes.

PRESS: But she was there that time.

SCHULMAN: You know, because it’s important at the Henry Clay, 96:00the name of the hotel.

MILLIGAN: This is the Society of, for Professional Journalists annual— SCHULMAN: Annual awards— MILLIGAN: Awards.

SCHULMAN: Dinner.

MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: And then a couple of weeks later, Louise said, oh, she’d made up her mind, that she’d changed her mind, she was going to attend. So, I made a reservation and it went okay. And then a little later, our brother-in-law, D.A. Sacks— MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: I got word that he was going to attend. What? Talk about gullibility. I mean it never, just never occurred to me, you know, that all kinds of [ ]— PRESS: I, I know very well. [laughter] SCHULMAN: Prizewinners. Well, you know, Len.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And there was a big cocktail party beforehand. The president of the chapter came over and said, “Oh, we can—” you know, there’s a board, board tables, 97:00and I’m still on the board, so—he said, “You’re sitting at A3.” Okay. A-, or A1, or A-, whatever the number was. I said, “That’s fine.” I said, “But look. I got Louise and my brother-in-law, D.A.” “That’s all right. We’ll find occasion for them.” So, I want your opinion now, on the first thing, Jack Guthrie, son of-, you ought to know Jack Guthrie, he’s the, heads the, Louisville’s longest-standing and most successful public relations company here. Originally he, he did communications here for Phillip-Morris and then worked for a while for Phillip-Morris in PR— PRESS: He’s also a, a major muck— SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: He also is a mucky-muck with the University of Kentucky Alumni Association.

SCHULMAN: Oh, indeed. He was an alumni trustee.

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

PRESS: Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

SCHULMAN: Huh. Well, 98:00anyway, all of a sudden—what is it? He said, “This is your wife?” [sound of hands smacking together] He had talked to, you know, all kinds of people. I guess he talked to you, did he not, Len? No?

PRESS: No, I didn’t know about it.

SCHULMAN: Ah. [laughs] And Louise, I insist, Sarah, that I made a, a jape, a, a gag. She thinks at the outset I’m going to, whatever I said, I said I wanted, this is very moving and I want to thank the group for the silver, silver— PRESS: Chalice.

SCHULMAN: Bowl. What did I call it. Silver—I didn’t call it a bowl. Silver pot, I think I—whatever. [laughs] MILLIGAN: Like a chamber pot. 99:00SCHULMAN: Anyway. Very nice. But when it, you know, I figure that’s just long-, longevity. I, I joined or was inducted into Sigma Delta Chi, which was for seventy-five years the name of this outfit until it became the Society of Professional Journalists, in 1941. [laughs] And they were looking back, you know, at the, the local chapter, they were saying, “How come you were never president?” Well, because I didn’t want to be president. I was vice-president. You could, you, in the afternoon, you could, with the schedule somehow I manage to contrive, you could do this stuff but if you’re not wrapped in—well, anyway. [laughs] UNIDENTIFIED: [ ].

MILLIGAN: In the, speaking of the [ ] what do you, seventy-five years 100:00with this organization, and, since 1940— SCHULMAN: Yeah.

MILLIGAN: What do you think, looking back, what is, what’s your, your favorite accomplishment? Your favorite personal accomplishment? Whether it’s life, work, life related?

PRESS: Being here to talk about it?

SCHULMAN: Yeah, well, of course. Any number, any number, as you can imagine— MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: Any number of answers to this, so it’s not fair, but what occurs to me, and this might be a surprise, and it, and it’s so, so institutional and journalistic rather than personal, and that is that I have always been grateful for the way I found it possible, and I think a lot of others would and it would be helpful if they could do to make the move 101:00from the various modes of journalism, the media—to go from newspaper reporting to magazine reporting, magazine writing to television documentaries, television editorializing and then back to writing, so, and then, and then to this whole new area of, of professional evaluation and, and that involvement in, in getting journalism and the rest of the community involved in ways that had never really been fruitfully explored. So that’s kind of— PRESS: Well, I, I— SCHULMAN: You know, that’s luck, in a way.

PRESS: Yeah, that’s real luck.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughs] PRESS: The fact is, what’s phenomenal is that you were not only a talented writer, 102:00you were a tal-, talented speaker, I mean public speaker, a talented interviewer, a talented, talented television performer. What’d I leave out?

SCHULMAN: [laughs] PRESS: I mean, that isn’t luck.

LIL PRESS: Well and, and [ ]— PRESS: That’s a remarkable combination of talents. Underlying them all, of course, was your interest in journalism, which was part of every one of those performances you did, whether it was with the judges or— SCHULMAN: I have to acknowledge some awe and admiration in what you described. [laughs] LIL PRESS: May I add one?

PRESS: Please, that’s what we’re doing here.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: We, we’re keeping score.

LIL PRESS: But I agree with all that, but you have one additional thing that I only ever heard once about another person, when Jean White said it about someone at UK. 103:00You have the gift of friendship, the social gift above all others of friendship. And that—with all those talents, you would expect an arrogant, you would expect a know-it-all. You would expect a person who really just didn’t care.

PRESS: And she describes you very well, as a matter of fact. [laughter] LIL PRESS: Well, no. But instead of all that, with all those talents, he has the most humane gift of all, and that is a, not only being a social lion—people lionize these two, she and he, in Louisville, they do, socially. And he has that simplicity and, and I guess the only other word I could call it is a gift for being a friend 104:00and being socially lionized and not letting that go to his head either.

PRESS: And part of that is a professional, is a professional talent. And that is a, the, the talent of being interested, really interested in everything— LIL PRESS: Curiosity.

PRESS: And everybody.

SCHULMAN: Thank you. That [ ]— PRESS: That is—and nobody loves more than being attended to.

SCHULMAN: You can’t take credit for that. It’s just— PRESS: No, you really can’t.

SCHULMAN: Some comes with, to [ ]— PRESS: To, to, you really can’t. It’s there. It’s just there. But it explains a lot about you and what you’ve accomplished and how people have recognized it.

SCHULMAN: You’ve set some big fat goals for me. [laughter] PRESS: Now, about the, about the bull?

MILLIGAN: Kentucky State Fair bull?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Oh, the story about the bull, Bob.

SCHULMAN: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: In the newsroom.

SCHULMAN: Talk about influencing journalistic, journalistic approaches and emphasis. I stress 105:00that this is not, this is not the publisher, at, obviously, in this case. I had, I thought I’d mention this. Barry Bingham, Sr.—Jr.—was beginning to feel these economic pressures and changing his whole marvelous traditional approach to the paper and serving every part of the state and so on and so on. And so various editors were pushing him to think about ways in which to perhaps regain some of this profile and some of this personality of the, THE paper and the message was given to Barry, Jr. that not enough attention, for years, had been given to the Kentucky State Fair. Critical element in the culture of—you 106:00know this story?

PRESS: No.

UNIDENTIFIED: No.

PRESS: I know the [ ].

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Critical element in the, in the culture of Kentucky. And the Courier’s role in maintaining this statewide chemistry and so it was, it happened to be, it was the managing editor called Janish who got Barry’s approval to spread the message that really enough attention needed to be paid to the Kentucky State Fair. And so Janish promulgated this message to the staff at a special meeting. And it produced results which—and it continues, by the way, after years of really giving second or third level attention to the fair. Now you’re getting, I don’t know about how the Herald-Leader—I’m no longer reading it.

PRESS: For us, it’s the UK 107:00football and basketball teams.

SCHULMAN: [laughs] Yeah. Okay. Well, here’s, it’s also Car— PRESS: Front page, Vanna headlines.

SCHULMAN: Cardinals, but anyway. This struck some of the lesser editors as being a departure from tradition and maybe a little bizarre. And so the then-city editor, Bill, Bill Cox— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Right.

SCHULMAN: Of the Courier-Journal had a call from a man who had come to the fair with his prize Brahmin bull. And there ought to be a feature about this remarkable animal. “A feature,” said Bill. “More than that. Bring him—can you bring him down?” And he said, “Bring him down? Yes, we’ve got our delivery shoot.” “Bring the bull in. We want to do some special photographs of him.” LOUISE SCHULMAN: Bill Cox was very funny.

SCHULMAN: So they brought that bull down— UNIDENTIFIED: Did you go see him? 108:00SCHULMAN: And brought him in and brought him up into the newsroom. [laughs] And Bill Cox said, “Well, we want to, we want you to meet the editor, the managing editor.” “Can you ride?” He said, “Yeah, I can ride him. Sure. I was—” And he got on the bull [laughter] and they ushered the bull into editor Janish’s office. And he said, “Bill, Paul, you wanted us to give more attention to the state fair. We are doing it.” And at that point, as if on signal— PRESS: Oh!

SCHULMAN: the bull crapped on his floor. [laughter] The story has never been, never been told.

PRESS: Somebody, somebody—was there a photographer there?

SCHULMAN: There was a photographer! Dammit. [ ] I never got that.

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ] pooper-scooper there. [laughter] SCHULMAN: Somebody thought of that.

PRESS: A poop-scoop.

MILLIGAN: Different kind of scoops than what they’re used to. 109:00SCHULMAN: Oh. Marvelous, marvelous, you know. [laughter] LIL PRESS: That’s when journalism was at its height.

SCHULMAN: Ah, that was— PRESS: I can, I would have liked to get, been the guy that wrote that story up. It would have been more fun.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: But you could never— SCHULMAN: No, no, it should have been written.

PRESS: Yeah?

SCHULMAN: Sh-, and you know, and in the older days, there used to be—every press club had a, a monthly or a quarterly little publication, simple but with news, gossip, you know, inside stuff for the, for the brotherhood, sisterhood. No longer, no longer, you know. That stuff gets lost.

PRESS: Too bad.

SCHULMAN: Well, I, I, it made me think of another comparable story.

PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: Sad, sad epilogue that that one. 110:00Bill Cox moved from being city editor to a lovely opportunity to be managing editor of the Star Bulletin in Honolulu.

UNIDENTFIED: Oh, wow.

SCHULMAN: And there, after a couple of very successful years, he came down with AIDS. We brought him back for a meeting, an AIDS, a SPJ meeting.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Early on, one of the first people I ever heard of who had AIDS. I believe it [ ]— SCHULMAN: Yes, and he talked— PRESS: It was a long time ago.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Early on.

SCHULMAN: It was an SPJ program— LOUISE SCHULMAN: He was from Owensboro. All sorts [ ]— SCHULMAN: [ ] about AIDS.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Ashamed about Bill.

SCHULMAN: And not too long. And, and the chapter paid for him to come. And not so long after that, Bill Cox died of AIDS.

PRESS: Ah.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: A funny man. [ ] SCHULMAN: Bill was delight-, delightful. Yeah. Well— [laughs] PRESS: That’s a sad note to end on. Any happy 111:00 ones?

SCHULMAN: I wrote, made one, wrote one other note here.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: I need a little more— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Whatever.

SCHULMAN: Water, dear. [ ] LOUISE SCHULMAN: A little more water and time.

SCHULMAN: Mm.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Excuse me.

SCHULMAN: For a hundred years.

PRESS: Put a shot of something good in there [ ].

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: For a hundred years, as you know—you’ve probably, like I have, uttered it in speeches and so on—the role of journalism in America is still to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

PRESS: Comfort the afflicted. Exactly.

SCHULMAN: There was some undersides as well as some topsides to this. [ ] undersides in, in recent years is that it fed into political correctness in journalism, afflicted the, 112:00to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted, you know. The whole, the whole scene that we grappled with for so many years, welfare as a handout to the poor, outrageous and yet, and yet there were imperfections in the system.

PRESS: Of course.

SCHULMAN: That needed to be explored. And only journalism, and didn’t journalism fail that for a long time because you got to be sympathetic to and, and aligned with the suffering.

PRESS: Sure.

SCHULMAN: With the afflicted.

PRESS: Sure.

SCHULMAN: And the same thing with afflict the comfortable. Now, it seems to me you don’t hear so much of that anymore. What you hear instead is a new version of the old saying, which was you’ve got to give the people what they need— 113:00PRESS: Rather than— SCHULMAN: Not—rather than what they want.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: And of course, that’s gone. Mostly out the window. Now you, driven by the economic necessities, you have to push the rush.

PRESS: There you go.

SCHULMAN: The mass movement is to give them—what the hell is it that they want? You got to give it to them. No matter what it is. And of course, that results in a deprivation of what it is that they really need to know and to take the complex and the serious and the, and invest it with bright writing and, and fresh approaches and the kind of thing that will, that will make the harder way to go to get the mission accomplished.

PRESS: And you— SCHULMAN: That’s what I— PRESS: Do you think it might be true also that the effort toward community journalism may have been a self-defeating effort because what the community 114:00wanted in participating was not what they wanted to see in writing.

SCHULMAN: That’s right. That’s exactly so. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

PRESS: They thought that if they— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Say that again, Len.

SCHULMAN: They—huh?

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Say that again. What the— PRESS: Well, the, the idea of community journalism— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Right.

PRESS: Was to get the community to participate in— LOUISE SCHULMAN: Work together PRESS: What’s going into the paper.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: Bores me terribly.

PRESS: Exactly.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah, but what, what did you say?

UNIDENTIFIED: [ ] yes.

PRESS: And it bored them, too.

LIL PRESS: No, Len, she wants you to repeat the sentence.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: I don’t think so.

SCHULMAN: Repeat what you said.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: You said it might be self-defeating because— [laughter] UNIDENTIFIED: [ ] PRESS: One of the things that— SCHULMAN: Ah!

MILLIGAN: Wait until the end and we’ll play it back.

PRESS: We’ll play it back later. We’ll play it back.

MILLIGAN: Wait until you’re done and I’ll replay it.

LOUISE SCHULMAN: It’s all right. It’s okay.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Because I might have, I might have something to add to that. [laughs] PRESS: I’m sure. [laughter] LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ] exactly what he said. My— SCHULMAN: Well, those were the— LOUISE SCHULMAN: [ ] community building.

SCHULMAN: Conditioned on our recapture and pursuit of that message. 115:00PRESS: You know, the nicest thing about all of this is that whether you just realized it or not, we came out agreeing. [laughter] SCHULMAN: What? I fully expected that, Len Press.

PRESS: Oh. Okay. [laughter] SCHULMAN: As a matter of fact, you’ve been a damned sight less taxing than I expected.

PRESS: Well— SCHULMAN: Although tax is an unforgivable word.

PRESS: That’s, that’s, that’s big, that’s a—in that respect, I failed my mission.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughter] PRESS: I was supposed to tax you.

SCHULMAN: I call this a labor of love.

PRESS: Indeed. Indeed.

SCHULMAN: That’s really the way it comes through to me. And it’s lovely. Really.

PRESS: Yeah. I think so.

MILLIGAN: Turn it off.

SCHULMAN: And to have Sarah added to it is an added bonus. [END OF INTERVIEW]