Stephen B. Shepard - Deadlines and Disruption: My Turbulent Path from Print to Digital

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For Lynn, Sarah, and Ned

PART I
FOUNDATION

PART II
THE BusinessWeek YEARS

PART III
CUNY: A NEW JOURNALISM SCHOOL FOR A NEW ERA

PART IV
THE QUEST FOR NEW BUSINESS MODELS

Because memory is a tricky thinghighly selective and sometimes wrongI have tried to make this memoir as accurate as possible by reporting, fact-checking, and research. Even so, some people will inevitably remember things differently. Im reminded of the final scene in The Thin Red Line, James Joness epic novel of World War II. A group of GIs, survivors of the bloody fighting on Guadalcanal, are getting ready to leave the island. Someday one of their number would write a book about all this, Jones wrote, but none of them would believe it, because none of them would remember it that way.

This, then, is the way I remember it. Im grateful to many people who provided guidance, supplied information, or read portions of the manuscript. A few intrepid souls read the entire draft and offered many good suggestions. First off, I want to thank my agent, Amanda Urban of ICM, for her faith in the book and my editors at McGraw-Hill, Philip Ruppel, Stephanie Frerich, and Jane Palmieri, for their tender care. Im very grateful to McGraw-Hill for fact-checking the manuscript so scrupulously, catching several mistakes, inconsistencies, and lapses of memory. Ken Vittor, a good friend who is the legal counsel of McGraw-Hill, read the entire manuscript, suggesting many thoughtful changes, as well as providing legal advice on the sections dealing with the investigative stories BusinessWeek published when I was editor-in-chief.

Many others offered valuable insight and suggestions along the way. Im especially grateful to Sarah Bartlett, Merrill Brown, Ron Chernow, Marc Frons, Malcolm Frouman, Jeff Jarvis, Nick Lemann, Peter Osnos, Tom Rosenstiel, Randy Rothenberg, and Judy Watson.

I relied heavily on two terrific sources for most of the data and some of the analysis about todays media business: the Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism, which regularly does outstanding work, and the Federal Communications Commissions detailed report The Information Needs of Communities, published in July 2011. Im also grateful to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard for publishing a comprehensive daily newsletter about new developments in the media world. Ken Doctors regular column Newsonomics was especially helpful. I tapped many books, but two stand out as insightful and pleasurable: City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College, by James Traub (1994), and Pulitzers School: Columbia Universitys School of Journalism, 19032004, by James Boylan (2003).

At CUNY, I received much help from Barbara Gray and Tinamarie Vella at the journalism schools Research Center. John Smock shot some of the photos in the book, Amy Dunkin maintained our website, Dan Reshef and Sharmela Girjanand rescued me from various technical snafus, and Marie Desir assisted in many ways. Judy Watson supplied much of the documentation and recollections about CUNYs thinking about journalism education before I arrived. Paul Moses of Brooklyn College and Glenn Lewis of York College helped fill in some early detailsas did Michael Arena at CUNY headquarters. David Crook of CUNY supplied some of the early data.

I regret I was unable to mention many of the people I knew and admired along the way, including old friends from the Bronx (notably, Ed Rosenthal), classmates at the excellent schools I attended (especially Darlene Ehrenberg), and colleagues at CUNY who did so much to make the new journalism school a success. I feel particularly grateful to the hundreds of unsung people I worked with in my 20 years as editor-in-chief of BusinessWeekthe talented group of journalists and executives who made the magazine so great during its heyday. I want to cite, in particular, the three publishers I worked with during my tenure: Jack Patten, Dave Ferm, and Bill Kupper, who were responsible for the magazines financial success and who scrupulously respected our editorial independence, even when it proved costly. And Im grateful to McGraw-Hills CEO, Terry McGraw, for his friendship and stewardship for so many years.