Dean P. Baquet
1956–

Journalist, newspaper editor

Dean P. Baquet moved up in rank in journalism from part-time reporter for an afternoon newspaper in New Orleans to a prized post with a major newspaper. He took the helm of the Los Angeles Times in October 2005, becoming the first African American journalist to lead a top newspaper in the United States. In the interim, however, he had made a name for himself with two other well-known newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times.

Born in New Orleans in 1956, Dean P. Baquet was the fourth of five brothers who were raised in one of that city's working class neighborhoods. He had a part-time job early in life, cleaning his parents' Creole restaurant called Eddie's. The family lived in the back part of the building that housed their restaurant. At first the father worked as a mail carrier, but he gave up that job to open his own business. Dean Baquet took his first trip out of New Orleans when he left to study English at Columbia University; he became so homesick that he returned to New Orleans and, after his sophomore year, held an internship post for the city's afternoon newspaper, the States-Item. Soon Baquet fell in love with his job. Rather than complete his studies at Columbia, Baquet took a full-time job as reporter, promising Columbia that he would transfer to Tulane University in New Orleans. He soon gave up formal training.

Baquet's assignment with the States-Item, which the Times Picayune subsumed later on, was to cover news items related to the police force, the courts, and city hall. Later, he began what would become a triumphant career—investigative reporting. Baquet watched his older brother die after years of heavy drinking and smoking. Baquet believes that his writing about people he knew in New Orleans when he began his career contributed to his brother's death. Also, corruption stories he wrote upset a local black political group to the extent that it boycotted his father's restaurant. Writing about people and places where he lived was difficult for Baquet; he had trouble separating the good guys from the bad, writing about them fairly, and then seeing them face-to-face the next day.

After seven years with the New Orleans press, Baquet moved to the Chicago Tribune in 1984, where he later became associate metropolitan editor for investigations. As chief investigative reporter, in 1988 Baquet led a team of three reporters that documented corruption in the Chicago City Council. According to an article on LAObserved, the team wrote stories on "the self-interest and waste that plagued Chicago's City Council," and for that project Baquet and Ann Marie Lipinski shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

Leading newspapers continued to take notice of Baquet's work in investigative reporting. He left the Chicago Tribune in 1990 and became an investigative reporter for the New York Times. He despised his job the first year but liked it later on. He told the New Yorker that he had no aspiration to become an editor. Baquet began his work with the New York Times as deputy metro editor. He concentrated on investigations in New York and in Washington, D.C. During this time, he and another reporter were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for the series of stories that they wrote about poor care that patients received in New York City's hospitals. In 1995, Baquet was named national editor. Although he had succeeded at the paper and had a promising career there (there are claims that he might have later headed the New York Times), John S. Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, lured Baquet away. Shortly after joining that paper in 2000, Carroll persuaded Baquet to move his wife Dylan and their ten-year-old son to Los Angeles. But his persuasion was apparently not difficult, for Baquet believed that he could make a greater contribution in journalism by working in Los Angeles than in New York. As well, his vision was "to make the West Coast Times edgier and more focused on investigative work," he told Rachel Smolkin for AJR.

Becomes First Black to Head a Major Newspaper

Baquet was given the number two spot at the Los Angeles Times—that of managing editor. Over a five-year period, he and Carroll made major changes, replacing fourteen editors on the paper's masthead. The Orange County bureau was significantly scaled back because, as Baquet told the New Yorker, "it was marketing; it wasn't journalism." Company officials pressed Carroll and Baquet to republish stories from other papers that the Tribune Company owned; they resisted, asserting that, if decisions on articles that they published were written elsewhere, they would become a second-tier paper. By then, the Tribune Company had also acquired the family-owned Times. Baquet worked with Carroll to restore the broadsheet and help it receive thirteen Pulitzer prizes. One was a Pulitzer gold medal for public service, having published a series on the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, uncovering dangerous conditions for patients at the center. The series singled out the hospital's management team, which was African American. African American community leaders in Los Angeles denounced the prize.

Chronology

1956

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana

1984

Becomes associate metropolitan editor for the Chicago Tribune

1988

Shares Pulitzer Prize with teammate

1990

Becomes investigative reporter for the New York Times

1995

Becomes national editor for the New York Times

2000

Moves to Los Angeles Times as managing editor

2005

Becomes first African American editor of a major newspaper, the Los Angeles Times

Such honors that the paper received continued to challenge Baquet, up to and through his appointment in October 2005 as editor of the Los Angeles Times. Baquet knew that he had to satisfy profit demands and enhance the paper as well. "I'd like the paper to have more of a sense of California," he told Rachel Smolkin for AJR. "We have as strong a sense of place here as any paper in America." Located in the center of Hollywood, where books and movies are inspired, it follows, according to Baquet, that the paper should do the right thing and have California represented more fully within its pages. This innovation called for improvements in the coverage of the entertainment industry, greater coverage of metropolitan Los Angeles, and daily stories of interest. While more resources were needed to support his vision, he said, "You identify some of the writers who can wander around and … come up with stories that surprise people, and you let them loose and get out of their hair." As much as he wants to find new readers, Baquet is opposed to committing a "youth spinoff and to endorsing the new mantra of giving young readers the information that they want rather than what editors view as significant.

Carroll and Baquet demonstrated mutual trust and respect for each other's opinions, whether or not their opinions differed. They were journalists whose divergent styles and backgrounds were a cool contrast that meshed well. However, they failed to improve the corporate relationship and to remove the cloud that hung over the paper. In 2003, when Carroll and the Tribune office disagreed over mandatory newsroom cuts, Baquet considered leaving the paper. In spring 2005, the Tribune Company wanted Carroll to cut the staff again; Carroll saw the move as an "annual thing." He had seen newsroom cuts and layoffs, attrition, buyouts—altogether a loss of nearly two hundred employees. Such cuts were among the disagreements between Carroll and the company that resulted in Carroll's decision to leave and Baquet's threat to follow. But Baquet was concerned that he and Carroll could have been responsible for the fractious relationship with the Tribune Company. After Carroll announced his retirement to his staff in October 2005, Baquet assured workers of his continuing interest in the paper's future. "I'm taking over one of the best newspapers in America at the top of its game in a city I care about, succeeding somebody who's a close friend," he told AJR. He knew that all newspapers are now under great budget pressure, but he said that he "wouldn't be doing this if [he] didn't think [he] could still make the paper better." Baquet liked the paper's hard-hitting stories and those that were beautifully written. His dream was for the Times to become the country's best newspaper. He made one immediate organizational change: the editorial and opinion papers would now report to the publisher rather than the editor.

As Carroll bowed out, Orville Schell, dean of the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, told Robertson and Smolkin that Baquet was challenged to maintain the Los Angeles Times "true to the distinguished journalistic traditions he and Carroll share." He called Baquet "a very good editor" who would "have his hands full to keep the L.A. Times a great paper as well as a paper that makes a lot of money, or makes enough money."

Baquet expressed his intention to become a better leader in the newsroom, where budget cuts had an impact on size of staff and where communication has been lax. In April 2001, while still with the New York Times, he told a panel for the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), cited by Cicely K. Dyson, that newsroom staffs should "be honest and open. Let them [the newspaper editors] know when you disagree with the budget and other cuts." While all panelists expressed concern for the lack of communication with their writers, Baquet's advice was that "Senior editors don't talk to reporters any more…. They should sit in on meetings and let their colleagues know they care." He was concerned that editors may ignore ideas that reporters find exciting when they should take time to listen to the enthusiasm that the reporter has for a story.

Baquet's closest friend in New York, Martin Gottlieb, the New York Times's associate managing editor, told the New Yorker that Baquet "has enormous empathy for people"; he attributed this to Baquet's having a close-knit family. Baquet has been spotlighted in his role as new editor of the Los Angeles Times. A man filled with energy, enthusiasm, a whirlwind of ideas, and an intense passion for his craft, he is poised to raise the paper to new levels of success.

REFERENCES

Periodicals

Auletta, Ken. "Faule Line." New Yorker (10 October 2005): 51-61.

Online

"Baquet Era Begins." LAObserved. http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/07/baquet_era_begi.html (Accessed 28 October 2005).

Dyson, Cicely K. "In Your Journalism Career, Who Has Been An inspiration?" asne reporter 2. http://www.asne.org/2001reporter/wednesday/barrier4.html (Accessed 28 October 2005.)

E & P Staff. "Auletta Details LATimes/Tribune Rift in Major Article." Editor & Publisher. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=100. (Accessed 28 October 2005).

Smolkin, Rachel. "Nothing but Fans." AJR. http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3912 (Accessed 28 October 2005).

                                   Jessie Carney Smith