If Greenspon’s sudden eviction came as a surprise, Stackhouse’s ascension did not. The 20-year Globe veteran, known for his intensity and gruelling work ethic, was regarded as the heir apparent even before being named ROB editor in 2004. Born and raised in Toronto, the Queen’s University commerce graduate joined the Report on Business magazine as a writer in 1989, then covered development issues while based in New Delhi between 1992 and 1998 with his wife, the photographer Cindy Andrew. Back in Canada, he proved himself talented and flexible, as foreign editor, national editor, and winner of a record number of NNAs, including one for a diary of hitchhiking across Canada, which became the basis of his book Timbit Nation.
Richard Addis, now running a media consulting company in London, says Stackhouse would have been his choice to succeed him back in 2002, though he had “less than zero” say at the time. “He’s a superb writer, so he’ll promote good writing; more than anything that’s what editors have to do now,” says Addis. He describes the 46-year-old as “almost insanely brave,” noting: “He has convictions and will fight for them; he can be really stubborn; he won’t do things because he’s being bullied by the management board.” He has gravitas, he adds: “He’s not a flibbertigibbet.”
That was evident at the town hall convened the day of his appointment, at which Stackhouse told the staff he wanted stories that were “accessible and consequential.” In an email declining Maclean’s request for an interview, he said he’d prefer to wait until later in the summer to talk, “once I have the management team reorganized and laid out a more detailed strategy for staff.” And, he noted: “We have some ambitious plans.” Those include recasting the “Globe and Mail newspaper” to the “Globe and Mail news organization across various platforms,” says a CTVglobemedia insider: “Eddie was useful in calming the newsroom after Addis; John will take us where we have to go.”
That is uncharted territory. As Shirky points out, “There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the Internet just broke.” Crawley speaks of Stackhouse pushing for the paper to be more “authoritative,” a word that could also describe his management style. Three days after his appointment, the new editor flew to Ottawa to tell the bureau he wanted it to concentrate more on policy and governance, less on partisan feuding or gossip. Last week, a senior official in the PMO marvelled that a Globe reporter called to check a fact, noting: “That has never happened before.”
Within the Globe, there’s some skepticism real change is under way. “If you want fundamental change you don’t get people who have been working at the paper for decades,” says one staffer. Stackhouse is not known as a Web evangelist, though his supervision of the revamp of Globeinvestor.com, a 10-year-old site that provides investment news and portfolio tracking tools, clearly impressed Crawley. The 18-month project proved him skilled at working across departments, or, as Crawley puts it, “cross-functional business initiatives,” another future model. The site met its April launch deadline, though there was internal griping that it was rushed out before kinks had been worked out. Crawley points to Globeinvestor.com, along with the job site Workopolis.com and used-car site AutoHound.com, in which the Globe is partnered, as potential revenue generators.
But the former journalist also knows the Globe’s brand is based on the quality of its news and commentary, not its ability to sell used cars. He speaks of a fresh two-pronged approach: at one end, Angus Frame, newly minted VP of digital, working on the technical business solutions; at the other end, says Crawley, is Stackhouse, “whose prime focus is the creation of best quality content as well as figuring out how to deliver that content across a number of platforms.”
All of this talk about “content” and “platforms,” of course, blurs the fact that the task of a newspaper remains much as it has always been, even more so in an age in which news quickly becomes old: to provide a vital and engaging link to the wider world by creating news itself. And in this regard, the Globe is being newly nipped by the Toronto Star, revitalized under editor Michael Cooke, who arrived from the Chicago Sun-Times in March. The Star broke the Ruby Dhalla nanny scandal and recently ran a world exclusive interview with the Uighur Guantánamo detainees who were resettled in Bermuda. The paper’s also aggressively poaching talent: last week it announced Jennifer Wells, a recent NNA winner, is returning from the Globe. Cooke, who ran full-page ads making hay of Campbell’s departure, is gunning for a fight: “Phillip Crawley is a tough newspaperman who’s old school. I respect him immensely. But he’s not going to take this sitting down.”
The digital revolution presents exciting possibilities for journalism, says Wayne MacPhail, a former print journalist and board member of rabble.ca who has developed online content for Canadian corporations. He is less optimistic about the future of the traditional newsroom. Newspapers have been warned for more than 15 years about the Internet and did nothing, he says: “It wasn’t that they were blindsided; it’s more like they were data blind in the Thomas Kuhn sense of not seeing data outside of your paradigm.” MacPhail believes the Globe is doing one of the best jobs in Canada online, primarily because of Mathew Ingram, the paper’s communities editor. But he’s skeptical that the paper, like others, understands the innovation required to have a successful Web presence. It’s not enough to reproduce a newspaper online, he points out. “They’re trying to wedge old business models that should be retired into a new social media framework.”
The old competitive Fleet Street newspaper model is archaic in the digital age, MacPhail says, citing the unwillingness of newspaper websites to link to one another’s stories. “That’s heartbreakingly stupid, so opposite the ethic and spirit of the Web.” These habits are entrenched: the Globe downplayed the Ruby Dhalla story for days because the Star got there first. The question of whether to charge for website content is another topic that reveals an old school/new school divide. Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corporation, says yes, as does Crawley. Naysayers believe newspapers need to figure out how to build relationships with readers who don’t normally come to the site, and then monetize that—the successful example being the Guardian in the U.K., which provides all of its content for free, provided the newspaper is credited. It makes its money from the embedded advertising.
MacPhail blames an entrenched institutional arrogance. “Unlike the best Web-based organs, the Globe is burdened with historical, emotional, attitudinal and infrastructure baggage,” he says. To his credit, Crawley has tried to break through this. A former Globe senior editor recalls the publisher bringing in one of the authors of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns to speak in the spring of 2004. It was the hot management book then, arguing that market leaders don’t have the peripheral vision to see change, and even when they do, they can’t respond to it because they’re locked in structurally. That provides an opportunity for upstarts to work their way up from bottom end niches, the classic example being Japanese carmakers in North America. One person at the Globe seminar asked if any leading company had successfully recast its own enterprise. The answer was none. “It’s like the lobster in the pot,” says the former employee. “You don’t know what’s coming and you’re done. It happens in degrees.”
Geoff Beattie, chairman of CTVglobemedia and president of Woodbridge, is optimistic about the Globe’s ability to reinvent itself amid revolutionary change, but believes radical change is required. The industry has drifted too much into the business of entertaining at the expense of informing, Beattie says. A fundamental, profound shift in the way newspapers regard revenue stream is necessary: “We have to see the reader as the customer, rather than the advertiser as the customer,” he says, citing the Economist and the Financial Times as must-read brands that have figured out the formula. Whether Phillip Crawley’s ad-friendly Globe and Mail of the future will find its way onto that list remains a newsworthy work in progress.
