media maven / By Marcy Burstiner

The end of Somervillization as we know it

(July 3, 2008)  In the last column Rich Somerville penned as managing editor of the Times-Standard, he spoke about the Hawaiian term “huhu”, which he said meant a state of agitated anger. The column was about reader reaction to the paper’s editorial endorsing Clif Clendenen for the Board of Supervisors and the possibility it raised that Johanna Rodoni’s supporters would try to write her in for the November run-off. He said one blogger wanted to know how the Substandard could be so stupid. Somerville predicted that there would be more huhu after the paper ran a story confirming from County Clerk Carolyn Crnich that Rodoni could run as a write-in candidate.

Somerville relished the huhu and, as he called it, the ha ha that came after, when the paper was able to show that it had done its journalistic job in questioning conventional wisdom.

You might say that that is what Somerville himself did, when he first took over the reins of the Times-Standard less than two years ago: He questioned the conventional wisdom that said that the paper would never be anything but substandard.

His arrival caused some huhu. People expected him to shake up the T-S, especially after the North Coast Journal told how his arrival at a small paper in Grass Valley in 2002 caused an exodus of reporters there. When the shakeup didn’t happen here, some were relieved while others were disappointed. When I asked some reporters in the newsroom last year what effect Somerville was having, they tended to shrug and shake their heads as if Somerville was irrelevant. He was anything but. He was in many ways the epitome of a good editor.

You have to understand that being an editor is a job for either a control freak or a masochist. Control freaks make terrible editors. The best reporters and writers work best when unleashed to do their jobs. When you find the rare good editor, you find the masochist — they’re the ones protecting the reporters from both the angry mob and the irate publisher. But their names won’t show up on any Pulitzers. The great editor is the one who can size up his staff, and rather than try to force people to do things they aren’t very good at doing, recognize what it is each person does well and then step back and let them do it.

This is what he told the Journal back in October of 2006: “So I’m a believer in giving writers a voice, giving designers some freedom to have some fun in the design of the paper, being creative in photography — all those things. And — and try something strange. I’m willing to listen to any idea. It may sound goofy but you never know, it might be kind of fun.”

Consider just some of the changes that occurred under Somerville’s leadership. James Faulk moved off the news pages, where his Bully Pulpit was out of place and overblown, and was put in charge of the Web pages where he helped transform them. Chris Durant went from being a lousy court reporter to being a terrific entertainment writer. And after two years of being wasted covering restaurants and old people, Thadeus Greenson was finally given some real news to cover. Better yet, young Thadeus was paired with veteran John Driscoll on some of the most controversial stories. Together, the two produce impressive pieces.

The paper’s transformation has been so dramatic you couldn’t help but notice. But until Somerville’s death, I hadn’t credited any of it to him, mostly because he never trumpeted his own efforts or his own successes. In every conversation I had with him, he credited everything good that was happening at the paper to someone else at the paper. He was content to let others take the credit.

1 2 NEXT PAGE >SHARE