Independent newspapers usually mean quality She starts out with a bias, of course, but Katharine Graham made some compelling arguments in favor of independent newspapers in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Her prejudice results from the fact that she's chairman of the executive committee of the Washington Post, an independent newspaper. She notes that at the start of the 20th century 99 percent of the daily newspapers in the United States were individually owned. Today it's less than 20 percent. The rest are owned by chains, or "groups" as they like to call themselves. Graham concedes that not every individually owned paper was great. And she said some chains like Knight-Ridder and the Tribune Co. have improved the quality of newspapers, "especially when the public spirit of the original owner/publisher has given way, over generations, to poor management or lack of interest on the part of descendants." When that happens, she said, "... relatives prefer the material gains that come from a sale." But, said Graham, "the newspapers best known for quality in this country - the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post - are, or were until recently, family controlled." Why? First, Graham said, they have deep roots, "including a knowledge of and commitment to the local community that's hard to get from professional managers who come and go as they work their way up the corporate ladder." (At this point, it's relevant to ask how much of a commitment the Thomson Newspaper Group had to Stevens Point. "We're committed to providing a high level of service to readers and advertisers in the Stevens Point community," Stuart Garner, Thomson's president and chief executive officer, intoned in 1997. This was shortly after the stockholders of the Stevens Point Journal, by a narrow margin, voted to sell the paper to Thomson. "The main plank of our business has been to retain the localness of each business and to build strong links between our newspapers and their communities," Garner continued. And on and on. Some two and one-half years later, in February 2000, Thomson announced it was selling all its United States newspapers, including the Journal. Retaining the "localness"? A strong link to communities? The turnover of newspapers was almost as rapid as the turnover of personnel on the Thomson papers.) Graham, in her Wall Street Journal article, also mentioned that individually owned newspapers, while obviously interested in making a profit, have "a perspective that extends beyond the next quarter's earnings per share." Finally, she wrote, individually owned papers have the independence sometimes needed to withstand governmental pressure. The Washington Post, she noted, pursued the Watergate scandal and the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers despite threats by government. "I hope there are no more events like these in the country's future," said Graham, "but I also hope there will be newspapers with the independence and courage to report on them if need be, whether the newspapers be public or private. Our democracy depends on it." The Stevens Point Journal, when individually owned, once dared sue the governor of Wisconsin, charging a violation of the state open records law. It won, and the state had to pick up most of its legal costs, but had it lost the Journal would have been stuck with a hefty bill. Would the Thomson Newspaper Group, justly famed for its steadfast devotion to the bottom line, have filed that lawsuit and risked damaging profits, merely for the sake of a principle? – George Rogers