Tribute to a Newsman

Bob McGruder stood as a testament to the importance of diversity, and having allies, in the newsroom

by Jackie Jones

I was sitting at my desk at work when the e-mail arrived from a former colleague at the Detroit Free Press.

It was bad news.

Editor Bob McGruder's cancer had gone out of remission. He was in the hospital. Things did not look good.

I took a deep breath and sighed. This was the news I had feared but had convinced myself wouldn't come. Bob had beaten cancer; thanks, he said, not only to the doctors who treated him but principally to his loving wife, Annette -- Nurse Annette he had taken to calling her -- who made getting him well her mission.

Several of us who had worked with Bob at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland had planned to get together with the McGruders at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Washington this year and have dinner. A friend now living near Newport News, Va., had planned to come up. We found a former colleague teaching at American University and had planned to invite him to join us. Food, drink and reminiscing. There was nothing not to like with that picture.

When Bob died in April, he received many deserving tributes for his stellar career and his leadership. Two scholarship funds were set up in his name. Friends and former colleagues who had not seen him in years began reaching out to one another. There was quite an e-mail network going around. People of all colors, ages. People in journalism. People who left journalism. People who never were journalists. At his wake and funeral, there were hundreds of mourners.

In death, as in life, Bob McGruder was the very thing he said he stood for: diversity.

When he was the only African-American reporter at The Plain Dealer, he developed friendships with white colleagues. When he became an editor, he sought to hire the best -- regardless of color -- and managed to develop a multicultural newsroom.

"Please know I stand for diversity. I represent diversity. I am the messenger and the message of diversity," Bob said in accepting the John S. Knight Gold Medal in October 2001. "I represent the African Americans, Latinos, Arab Americans, Asians, Native Americans, gays and lesbians, women and all the others we must see represented in our business offices, newsrooms and our newspapers if we truly want to meet the challenge of serving our communities."

Powerful words. But not surprising if you knew Bob. To him those words simply made sense. And Bob was nothing if not a practical, sensible man.

He wasn't one to raise his voice or pound his fist on the table. Sometimes, when everyone else was buzzing about the newsroom in a frenzy over one thing or another, he didn't even seem interested. But what I discovered was that he thought very carefully about everything. He seldom wasted time or energy in a flurry of show, but when he decided to act, he did so quietly, firmly and deliberately. It was a lesson that took me years to learn -- primarily in conversations with him years later when I was an editor myself.

He told me that I wasn't going to win every battle I pressed, but I should never be afraid to state my position. There was no shame in losing, he said, only in holding back out of fear that I might. He told me there would always be people with critical things to say about the way I ran a newsroom or the things I may push someone to pursue in a story, but as long as I was acting on behalf of the newspaper and its readers, I would make more right decisions than wrong ones.

He was comforting when, as a young reporter, I had written a story that cast a harsh light on the Cleveland NAACP chapter. I got called into the office of the chapter president and berated and accused of not giving him a chance to respond to anonymous attacks on his leadership. I nervously, but deliberately, read back every question and his answers to those accusations. I got phone calls from people who accused me of doing the white man's bidding in trying to take down an organization that helped me -- and many other young black journalists -- get my job at a predominantly white institution. I was certain of my facts. I believed I had been fair. But I still felt rotten.

As I sat at my typewriter the next day, struggling to finish an unrelated story, Bob came over to my desk. "Come with me," he said. "Don't worry about the story. You can finish it tomorrow."

We went down the street to the bar where many of us hung out after work. Bob assured me I had been fair and thorough with my coverage, but that he understood that it was hard to write something negative about black people and it was hard for some black people to understand why you would ever need to.

He told me about covering Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of Cleveland. Stokes, Bob said, would berate Bob by name at news conferences when The Plain Dealer published a story Stokes didn't like. He called Bob, "The Plain Dealer's boy."

That hurt, Bob said, but Stokes eventually grew to respect Bob and his fair reporting. Ultimately, he asked Bob to ghostwrite his autobiography.

Taking the time to empathize with me, to coach me, to be a big brother -- not only on that day but many other occasions -- solidified my admiration and trust in Bob. To be sure, there were times when I thought he was being too much of a big brother, or maybe even a dad. In an argument, once, he started to lecture me and I retorted, "I have a father, thank you." Years later, we laughed about that.

We laughed, too, about how my young son would run into the newsroom and yell "McGruder!" and then wrap himself around Bob's leg to give him a hug. Bob, well over 6 feet tall, would look down at Tony as though he were a flea and simply say "Hello, Tony" and go back to reading copy as thought nothing had happened. He never shooed Tony away, never picked him up, just behaved as though it were normal to have a pint-sized person clinging to you in the middle of the office.

At the 2000 NABJ convention in Phoenix, Tony walked up to Bob outside the hotel's lobby bar and introduced himself as though he were a former job applicant:

Tony: "Hello, Mr. McGruder, you don't remember me, do you?" Bob: "No, I'm sorry I don't, young man." Tony: "Maybe this will help you -- McGRUDER!!!!!!" (with his arms outstretched)

Bob laughed and grabbed Tony in a big bear hug.

There were lots of moments of fun and frivolity over the years, but there are many serious lessons as well, about becoming an effective manager, developing a sense of fair play and practicing diversity in a way that guarantees results and silences critics.

There won't be anymore of those moments with Bob, but his commitment to good journalism and diversity live on in every journalist who had the good fortune to work with him. It is our commitment to good journalism and diversity that will keep his legacy alive. I will no longer be able to call him up for advice, but I can use the advice he gave me to good effect.

It simply makes sense.