In his short time as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Mark Willes has made headlines, enemies,...

You're a sales executive for a newspaper, and you've just entered enemy territory.

You've entered the newsroom.

Reporters, with paunchy stomachs and short-sleeve shirts stained with drips of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, look up from their computer terminals. They see slick, sophisticated Sales Guy. French cuffs, suspenders, Bruno Magli shoes. They glance around at one another. They nod warily, "What's Sales Guy doing here?" They wonder what you're angling for, maybe a puff piece on a possible advertiser, or a plea to go easy on an existing one. They assume you're up to no good. Newspaper reporters have been suspicious of you and your kind for ages. While they work their butts off chasing down stories, breaking scandals, and saving democracies—all for a salary a little bit better than a librarian's—you and your other Sales Guys are schmoozing through a nine-to-five day. We're Church, they'll say under their breath, you're State. We're fact, you're frivolous. We're good, you're bad.

We're reporters, you're Sales Guys.



You're Mark Willes. You're the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, the top sales executive at the fourth largest daily newspaper in the country. You stand in the middle of the paper's newsroom—enemy territory—on April 14, the day when the most cherished awards in journalism are announced, the Pulitzer Prizes. You're surrounded by editors and reporters and photographers, all huddled near a computer terminal waiting for news of whether your newspaper has won a Pulitzer or two. You're easily spotted in the crowd, not just because you're domo Sales Guy. You stand about six-foot-three. No reporters or editors sneer at you—in fact, most smile and laugh nervously as they wait for the Pulitzer news to come through. A few of the newspaper's sales reps stand on the periphery of this party-in-waiting, themselves idly talking to reporters.

This can't be a newsroom. Where's the bunker mentality? Everything seems too warm, too cozy.

Shortly after noon, the newsroom lets out its first big cheer. It's more of a collective sigh of relief. The Times has won a Pulitzer for reporting on breaking news. Then, about 10 minutes later, a second and much more exuberant wave of laughter and cheers erupts. The Times takes the Pulitzer for feature photography. You're Mark Willes, and you pump your fist and clap your hands like everyone else in the newsroom. You're 57 years old, a native of Salt Lake City, conservatively attired in a blue dress shirt and navy tie, with graying hair that makes you look a bit like Jimmy Stewart. You turn to Clarence Williams, the photographer who snapped the winning shots. He's a 31-year-old black man who's been with the paper for only two years. He has dreadlocks past his shoulders.

You're Mark Willes. Big-time Sales Guy. What do you do? Do you shake hands and offer a quick, crisp, professional "Well done"?

No, no. You hug the dreadlocked photographer. Hug him.

Folks, if newspaper salespeople are the State, and reporters and editors and photographers are the Church, then watching Mark Willes hug Clarence Williams is like watching Fidel Castro high-five Pope John Paul II.

Yes, strange things are happening at the Los Angeles Times, and Mark Willes is the one to either credit or castigate. People—advertisers, reporters, deans of journalism schools—are talking about the Times a lot these days, not so much for the news it's covering but the news it's creating. Even the Columbia Journalism Review, a media watchdog and commentator, referred to recent events at the Times as a "revolution."

So what exactly is going on and what does it all mean to its readers and marketers? In the grand tradition of balanced journalism, it depends on the source.

The paper, which came under Willes's direction last October, has been vilified by journalists for letting its business and advertising sides get too close to its editorial side, thus prompting speculation that journalistic integrity has been jeopardized for the good of the paper's bottom line. Case in point: In May it was reported that Willes plans to introduce a bonus system that will reward reporters for quoting minorities and women in their stories. Willes expects the incentive to help drive readership among those demographics; skeptics say it tantalizes reporters to meet quotas, not mete out honest information. Ben Bradlee, the former Washington Post editor, has said of Willes and his tactics: "He alarms me, because in his vision of civic journalism, what's good for the community and what's good for the advertiser are an inch apart. He has no commitment to the pursuit of the truth."

Others have suggested that Willes's bold moves—marketing the Times more like a packaged goods product; increasing the editorial department's reliance on market research studies; and establishing management teams that bring editors and business personnel into closer working relationships—are necessary strategies in order for the paper to remain a viable business, let alone newspaper. The paper's circulation is down nearly 200,000 since 1991.

"Foremost he's trying to rescue the newspaper," says Orville Schell, dean of the journalism school at the University of California at Berkeley, "and to do that he has had to increase circulation." But then, a bit euphemistically, Schell adds, "The way he's doing it is very imaginative."

What adds a tabloid tenor to this debate is the man fueling it. Mark Willes is quite the enigma. He's described by some (even his critics) as a religious and family man (he's the father of five). He looks unassuming, with deep, sleepy eyes. He appears about as revolutionary as Ward Cleaver. But then you read his résumé and the press clippings and the vitriolic comments made about him, and another image forms. This guy is bad-ass, bottom-line tough. He wouldn't have secured the jobs he's had with just a soft smile.

He has held top posts at General Mills and the Federal Reserve Banks of Minneapolis and Philadelphia. He became CEO of the Times-Mirror Company (the parent of the Los Angeles Times and various other media holdings) in 1995 and immediately started making headlines. In order to boost a sagging stock price, he slashed hundreds of jobs. The moves earned the former General Mills vice chairman the nickname "Cereal Killer." His boldest move: the shuttering of New York Newsday in 1995. "I had 100 million reasons for closing that paper," Willes steadfastly says one recent morning in his glass-enclosed office in downtown Los Angeles, referring to the financial losses Newsday had incurred since its launch. As the CEO of a publicly traded company, Willes contends he had a responsibility to stockholders to locate and cut losses where he saw fit.

But for many in editorial circles the closure of the award-winning Newsday, a feisty tabloid in the competitive New York City market that featured some of the profession's top reporters and columnists, came to symbolize their greatest fears of a nonnewspaper man running one of the nation's leading newspaper chains: that he would treat the product no differently than Cheerios or some other General Mills brand; if it didn't make its numbers it would have to make tracks, even if newspapers, unlike most other consumer products, play a vital role in igniting and maintaining healthy civic dialog.

"He's a very self-deluded man," says one former Newsday columnist.

After being slammed so often by critics in recent years, Willes is hardly moved by such comments. Sipping a Diet Coke, his long legs propped up on a coffee table, he says, "I sleep very well at night."

With good reason. Shortly after winning the two Pulitzers, the paper reported a 2.5 percent circulation increase for the most recent reporting period, the second highest percentage increase among the country's largest newspapers. Meanwhile, total advertising revenue—up 5 percent in 1997—is predicted to increase another 5 percent this year. And in a move made in May to punch up the paper's ad revenue, Times-Mirror agreed to a local joint advertising venture with the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, publishers of the Times' primary city rival, the Daily News.

"We're rethinking literally everything we do and how we do it," Willes says. "I'm hopeful that by the time I'm finished the changes will not only grow our business but be ways for other people to grow their businesses."



At times Mark Willes can sound like he wants to be the savior of the entire newspaper industry. The industry could use one. While there have been some upswings in newspaper readership over the past 12 months, the longer trend has seen a steady decline, a trend that threatens the medium's prime revenue source—advertising.

The reasons for the falloff are familiar: Newspapers are competing for readers' time (and subsequently marketers' advertising dollars) against more media sources—magazines, broadcast and cable television, radio, and increasingly the Internet. And there are demographic reasons. Metro dailies, like the L.A. Times and the Daily News in New York, have suffered as the populations of their cities have changed. In the case of the Times, whose circulation was as high as 1.29 million five years ago, the paper has been criticized for not appealing to its sprawling city's myriad nationalities.

Willes charges that too many newspaper publishers have grown complacent about the declines—and given up on trying to reverse them. The Cereal Killer ain't so nonchalant. "The trouble is, there's no guarantee that it will stay slow," he says of the circulation trending.

Such fears, and an antsy Times-Mirror board of directors, incited Willes to get the Times eyeing growth. While not setting a deadline, he wants to boost the paper's circulation by 500,000. His formula? Hey, for an expat of the packaged-goods world, there's but one formula: the four P's—price, promotion, placement, and product.

On the price side, the Times has reduced its daily cost from 50 cents to 25 cents, a move that has played a part in the paper's improved circulation numbers. In the areas of promotion and placement, the paper has introduced several initiatives whose payoffs may take longer to show results. Willes and Robert Brisco, the Times' 35-year-old senior vice president of advertising and marketing, are attempting to replace an antiquated marketing effort that they feel has failed to stimulate new buyers. "I saw a billion-dollar media company that didn't have a traditional marketing function," Brisco says. "The industry has historically been behind and playing catch up with its marketing practices."

At the Times, the biggest advertisers traditionally have been local retailers and automotive dealers with media plans usually tied to sales or last-minute placements. National brand advertising or program buys are rare. Brisco and his staff have sought to create integrated media buys—"a holistic way"—that could offer advertisers year-long programs that tie their advertising to direct mail, customized promotions, research projects, and other ancillary vehicles beyond just the print ad.

To better serve more and different advertisers, Brisco reorganized his sales and marketing teams. Previously the marketing effort centered around three generic categories—national, retail, and classified; today, there are 17 categories, including automotive, travel, and finance. "Initially the sales staff was apprehensive about this approach," Brisco says. "They thought marketing had taken over."

Those moves have been supplemented by an ongoing Times advertising campaign. For nearly five years, the paper had no promotional effort, Willes says. "I don't know of any consumer product that if you don't keep reminding people of how valuable it is, you're going to decline," says Willes, shaking his head at his paper's marketing inactivity. "You can see example after example of where the Times and other papers haven't done things in a way that we would have consistent growth."

And yet for all the apparent practicality of such moves, moves that would seem routine for a brand manager at P&G or Coca-Cola, it's been Willes's involvement with the fourth P—the product—that has put the Times in the middle of a media maelstrom.



Whether it's folklore passed down through the ages, or a rule drilled into students at journalism school, it's long been held that a newspaper's publishing side not interfere with its editorial content. To ensure separation, at some newspapers sales reps and editors are located on different floors; at others strict rules about socializing among reporters and salespeople are in place. The reasoning behind such practices: potential involvement could sway how a story—say one on an influential businessperson whose company is also a newspaper advertiser—is reported or edited.

Mark Willes thinks such rules reek. "When you start putting up walls around ideas, it seems to me you're not doing the right thing," he says abruptly.

Willes, in many ways, wants the walls to start tumbling down. Since coming onboard as publisher, he has made some subtle and not so subtle moves that portend a new relationship between editorial and sales. In addition to his plan to offer reporters bonuses for quoting minorities in their stories, he has suggested that salespeople and reporters take each other out to lunch. That way, the two sides could share information that might ultimately be helpful to their respective jobs. (He says only a few Times reporters have taken him up on the offer.) He's also made readership studies, usually used primarily by marketing departments, more available to editors and reporters as an aid to determining what stories they may want to cover. More directly, the paper, often criticized for offering a liberal bias in its stories, has made an effort to be "more balanced," according to Willes. "No product is ever as good as it should be, but I think in the case of our newspaper you need to have the balance," Willes says. "There was perception in this market that we were not balanced."

The paper is using considerable market research to determine what it will offer readers on a daily basis. Section editors, such as those from business and sports, are working closely with general managers from the business side to determine how individual sections can better serve both the interests of readers and advertisers. While Brisco says these general managers "do not determine what appears in the paper," their relationship with editors is intended to spawn new forms of editorial coverage. For instance, the business section has since started special sections that devote added coverage to technology and personal finance, areas that reader surveys indicate a strong interest. The sections also opened new categories for salespeople to sell to potential advertisers.

Some in editorial circles worry that this and other Willes-imposed moves will stifle the paper's journalistic energy. Several Times reporters and editors angrily complained to the publisher when he suggested the paper write more stories that would appeal emotionally to women, a demographic Willes would like increased readership from. (Willes later apologized for his comments.) So far David Shaw, the Times media critic for more than 20 years, says he hasn't seen the paper's editorial coverage adversely affected by Willes, but cautions that "what he's done has the potential to make problems."



You're Mark Willes, and you're the biggest sales executive at one of the biggest newspapers in the country. When you moved from Utah nearly 35 years ago to attend college at Columbia University in New York, you say it was your first exposure to big-city journalism and that you loved reading The New York Times. At the time the city had a dozen or so daily newspapers. Today, there are three. (It had four, but you killed one.) Until you took over Times-Mirror, you could only watch from the outside as the newspaper industry took poundings from other media forms. Now from the inside you worry about how your newspaper can remain a primary—and profitable—provider of information.

You're Mark Willes, and as the publisher of the Los Angeles Times you wonder what will make your paper stand out from the competition, and make your stockholders money. You ask yourself, are kids in L.A. learning to get news from the broadsheet or the Internet? How much more can the Times' sports section tell Dodger fans about last night's game that ESPN's SportsCenter hasn't already reported? In this lightning-fast global economy, can L.A. investors really wait for the Times business section to arrive on their front step to make a move?

Such questions make newspaper publishers around America lose sleep. But you, Mark Willes, say you sleep fine. Maybe that's because while others plod with a wait-and-see attitude, you don't have the patience. You don't care about Church versus State, or walking into "enemy territory." You're a businessman, not a newspaper man. Headlines? Bylines? Who cares? You worry about bottom lines.

You're Mark Willes, and as you finish a Diet Coke, you say to a visitor in your glass-enclosed office, "If we had done all of the traditional things that great consumer companies have done over the years and we were still declining, then I would say maybe this is an old, mature industry, there's nothing we can do about it, and let's head for cover." You pause a moment. "But in fact we haven't done these things."

You will.