By TOM LITTLEWOOD

The Media Rob Small views big news

FOR THE LAST half of 1982, Len Robert Small commuted between his job as editor and publisher of the Moline Dispatch and his other job as chairman of the board of the second of the nation's two news wire services — United Press International — in New York.

Balancing the two got to be too much and at the beginning of this year Rob Small withdrew from the partnership which acquired UPI. Then in June he was named to succeed his mother, Jean Alice Small, as president and chief executive officer of the Small Newspaper Group, a family-owned corporation with roots in Illinois.

Rob's great-grandfather, Len Small, who later was elected to two terms as governor of Illinois in the 1920s, was one of the founders of the Kankakee Republican in 1903. The name of the paper was changed to the Kankakee Daily Journal in 1945. Over the years, the Smalls acquired papers in Moline, Ottawa and Streator in Illinois, and in Indiana, Minnesota and California. Despite their interests elsewhere, the Smalls remain distinctively Illinois newspaper operators. Mrs. Small, who became president of the company after her husband, Len H., was killed in an automobile accident in 1980, continues as editor-publisher in Kankakee. Rob's brother Tom is in charge of the California properties. His sister Jennifer is the newspapers' Washington correspondent.

Although most journalists were generally concerned that UPI survive as a competitor to the Associated Press, the news business reaction to the acquisition was largely one of suspicious disbelief. That a 40-year-old small city publisher from downstate Illinois could pull off such a deal along with a Chicago lawyer and two cable television executives from Nashville, Tenn., strained the credulity of media moguls in the East. "Editors are basically a pretty jealous, temperamental breed," Small remarked to me later.

Brief as it was, his involvement in the UPI purchase thrust him into the national spotlight. And now Small's elevation to the leadership of one of the state's most prominent Illinois-based newspaper organizations — one that is in the market for additional acquisitions — makes Small and his views important in the state.

He told me in a recent interview that the growth of large communications conglomerates has been "disturbing." "This doesn't mean that every home-owned newspaper cares about the community," Small said, "but there is a tendency, without the local ties, for that local identity to be lost."

He was chairman of an industry group lobbying for changes in the estate tax laws that would make it easier for family-held newspapers to pass from one generation to the next. Although farmers and timber interests succeeded in obtaining inheritance tax privileges, newspaper owners are less comfortable as lobbyists and so far nothing has happened.

Small noted though that the big publicly held companies are pouring their millions into cable television these days. He is not one who believes that the electronic delivery of information will make print news obsolete.

Why then the rush for newspapers to get into cable? For one thing, according to Small, publishers were late recognizing the competition of free suburban shoppers and told themselves "we're not going to miss the boat on cable."

Another reason, he said, "is that brokers and investors love to hear this high tech stuff — it's honey to their ears — it makes stock prices go up "Wealthy investors have all computer terminals on their desks for several years now, but they still subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Print is just too convenient. It's portable, it's faster. The two greatest factors affecting newspaper circulation are: If you own your own home you have taxes to worry about, and if you have children you have school boards to worry about, and you have to read a newspaper."

Some of Small's other views: On big libel verdicts against newspapers: "Aggressive papers used to sell themselves as champions of the underdog. Now there's just one paper and the public sees the paper as the big guy in town who sort of kicks people around."

On newspaper success: "The most successful papers use short stories tightly edited with lots of pictures. You try to have a mix of in-depth stuff, but if you do nothing else right you've got to have the chicken dinner pictures." On media responsibility for regional antagonisms in Illinois: "It is true that the media and political representative share the trait of being parochial. There is no force against parochialism. In fact, there is some evidence the media are becoming more, not less, parochial."

The two most serious problems facing newspapers, in his estimation, are: (1) new postal rates that make it cheaper for advertisers who don't want to help pay newspaper overhead to distribute advertising by mail ("this is like if John Deere all of a sudden got competition from the Department of Agriculture who decided to build a billion-dollar tractor plant and sell tractors"); and (2) the telephone company's ability to use phone lines to deliver advertising and other information to home terminals. Last year, a federal judge barred AT & T from entering electronic publishing for at least seven years, citing "substantial danger; to First Amendment values."

August 1983 | Illinois Issues | 38