Deborah Howell: Interview #6

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Moorhus: You said, after reading the transcripts, that there were some things you thought were missing. Why don't you tell me what you'd like to add.

Howell: Well, my grandmother's name is DelorahóI was named after her. They changed the L to BóDelorah Williams.

Moorhus: Good.

Howell: The part, it seemed to me, wasóit would seem like I had no children and, in fact, I have eight. They're all stepchildren, but I would sayóof course I'm closer to some than othersóbut all eight are important to me and I talk to all eight frequently. I give all eightó [Tape interruption.]

I've got eight stepchildren and nine grandchildren, and I'm in touch with all of them frequently, and I mean not a week goes by that I don't talk to two or three of themósend them notes, communicate with a couple of them on the computeróand they're very important and real to me. I realize my professional life and my married life I had talked about, but I really had not talked about the children. So I'll just tick them off right quick.

The oldest is Nick J. ColemanóI'll just go through the Coleman children firstówho isóI think I'm right about these agesóNick Coleman is forty-two. I mentioned him in my narrative, and he is a columnist on the St. Paul paper who I hired away from Minneapolis Star. He's married and has three children: Josiah Finn Coleman, Hannah Clare Coleman, and James Wilton Coleman who are represented in pictures around here and who are great kids. James was the first grandchild in the family.

The second child is Patrick Kevin Coleman and he is forty, forty-one. He is acquisitions director at the Minnesota Historical Society and a book collector and an outdoorsman. Nick and I learned great outdoors skills from Pat. He's the best outdoorsman in the family and quite a canoer, hiker, and great guy to be with. He was the first of the Coleman kids to accept me. He met his wife Cheryl when she was a nurse for Nick at the hospital. She was one of his leukemia nursesóa really wonderful person. He has two children from a former marriage, granddaughters, Natalie and Deirdre.

Third child is Brendan Coleman, who just got married to Beverly. Brendan is a musician and he is thirty-six years old. There was another Coleman child between Pat and Brendan who died very early of leukemia of the same kind that killed Nick.

Moorhus: Oh, really.

Howell: They also have a grandmother on their mother's side who died of acute leukemia so they have acute leukemia on both sides of their family. They lost a grandmother, a father, and a sib to it. Felt really awful.

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Howell: It's short for MonetteóMonette Magrath. She wants to be an actress. She's quite a talented and creative young woman. She's a good writer, too, and we have lots of fun together.

Moorhus: Well, that's a wonderful array of children. They must keep you very busy.

Howell: It gets especially busy around Christmas because I buy presents for every goddamned one of them. More than one. I'm the Queen of Christmas. So it took seven or eight huge packages to get all the presents there for all the kids and the grandkidsóthe Coleman kids. I had five Christmases this year: one with Emmett and his Texas girlfriend here because they were going to Texas for Christmas; then up to New York to have Christmas with Mo in New York; then off to Minnesota to have Christmas with the other five kids and the grandkids; then off to Texas with my mother, my sister, and my brother; then back here to have a late Christmas with Valerie. [Laughter.] I buy Christmas presents all year long. I've already bought Christmas presents for next year.

Moorhus: Well, you have to get an early start when you have that many to buy.

Howell: Right.

Moorhus: How did you establish a good relationship with your stepchildren?

Howell: It was difficult because Nick's divorce was extremely painful and the children didn't like me and were resentful of me. I had to work very hard at becoming their friend. The outdoors had a lot to do with it. We did a lot of camping and backpacking and canoeing. Finally they decided I wasn't such a witch after all, I guess. I'm very much a part of their lives. I think it's because I worked hard at it.

The other two kidsóValerie was really grown by the time I met her, but I've known Mo since she was three years old. We didn't really start knowing each other until she was about fifteen or sixteen. It's been a special challenge to become friends with these kids. I often wonderóI guess I could not have, but I chose to have relationships with all of them. I think I have good relationships with all of them. I mean, they have their ups and downs, but they are 90 percent of the time better rather than worse. And I consider them my children even if they're not my blood children. I'm carefulótry to be carefulónever to step on their biological mothers' toesóany of their mothers. But on the other hand, I've had a lot to do with all of them as we brought upóI mean, I've known Emmett, who's about to get married, who's twenty-seven, about to be twenty-eightóI've known him since he was five years old. So they're really, for me, long-term commitments.

I don't know how I'm going to do with grandchildren because I'm far away and all my grandchildren are in Minnesota, but I really try to write them notes and remember them and send them things. The other day I got a computer message on my America OnLine from my six-year-old grandson Josie. I had sent him a dinosaur teeshirt and he really loved it, so his father helped him type out a message to me, which I thought was pretty cute. They call me Grandma Debbie. [Laughter.]

Moorhus: Grandma Debbie.

Howell: "Gramma Debbie." [Laughter.] Which kind of comes into "Gramma Debbie."

Moorhus: It all runs together.

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I wanted to keep it in the family. It was an important house to me. I lived there sixteen years. So we have the Christmas party where we've always held the Christmas party for nineteen years.

Moorhus: So you go back to Minnesota at Christmastimeó

Howell: I go back two or three times a year. I go back for summer. We have a big summer party we have every yearófor the kids. Then I go back at Christmas and then I'm usually back at least one or two other times to see them. All of the kids have been out here except forówell, four of the six of Nick's kids have been out here to visit. Two haven't been out yet, but they'll come.

I had the whole familyóNick and his wife and three kids for a week doing "the family does Washington." You know, hauling them around everyplace and had Chris and his wife and babyóI babysat while they went to the inaugural ball.

Moorhus: I expect that leaving them was one ofó

Howell: It was terrible.

Moorhus: óthe difficulties for you.

Howell: Leaving Minnesota, as I think I said, was just terrible. I sat down on the floor of my empty house, with all the furniture taken out of it, and cried. Because I had spent twenty-five years there. I'd married there, I'd buried there, I'd married again, I had all these kids and now grandkids. I was really wedded to that place. It was extremely hard to leave it.

Moorhus: And yet you said professionallyó

Howell: It was the only thing I could do. It was the only thing I could do. I had to leave behind those kids if I was going to progress professionally. The situation was such at the St. Paul paper [St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch]óI just couldn't stay. Because I couldn't do what they wanted me to do. I couldn't cut up what I had built. So I did the right thing. But it was very hard.

So I go back a lot. I see my friends and I see my family.

Moorhus: Tell me about the satisfactions, as well as the frustrations, that you have had here with Newhouse in Washington.

Howell: Washington is a very funny place in that it can be very phony. It's very built-up power and ego, and I'm not much into power and ego. So running a Washington bureau the way many of the Washington bureaus are run is just something I'm not very good at. I wanted to run a bureau more based on issues than power and ego and politics. And so I have, and I think I've been moderately successful. I also think that I will never, probably, be a success in the way that the New York Times or the Washington Post people will be successful, because I don't have the power or the access. And that's okay. I'll do something different.

But Washington is a very small town. I'm still not quite comfortable in it.

Moorhus: And it's a real insider-outsider town.

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Howell: No. And I think I could cover itóI've got a wonderful religion editor here [Joan Connell], and I would like to expand our religion coverage. I'd like to do that. I think it would beóI think we could do a good job of it.*

Moorhus: What do you see as the issues in religion to be covered?

Howell: We really cover religion, ethics, and morality. So it's a much broader beat. It's "what's good, what's right, what's wrong" as well as the value system of this country, the value system of the world, which inómost values are based on religious belief or on value systems that are highly influenced by religious belief. I'm fascinated by that. [Tape interruption.]

Moorhus: I'm wondering if you are taking this interest in religion, morality, and ethics and applying it to stories that might not be covered that way. For example, the story of the radiation testing that was done.* There is a whole political dimension to that, of course, and there is a scientific dimensionó

Howell: I would have done the morality side of that if I hadn't been sending my morality reporter off to Israel to do a story on how human beings and agencies and groups and churches and synagogues are trying to come to grips with peace in the Middle East. She has gone over there to do a series of stories on that or I would have had her do a morality of radiation story.

Moorhus: But is that part of what you mean about applying that to issues that mightó

Howell: Yes. Sure. It's applying the standards, the values and ethics and morality to public policy is a big part of her beat. Why do people lie in public policy? There were the hearings on the CIA director, when Robert Gates was trying to become the CIA director, and there were a number of people saying he was lying. He was saying they were lying. We did a story about everybody saying everybody else was lyingóa Washington phenomenonówhen nobody seems to be telling the truth.

So we do stories like that. We did a story onówe did some stuff out of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings that were based on ethical and moral principles. We've done a lot of stories like gay priestsóhow the Catholic Church is so screwed up on sexual matters. So we've done a lot of controversial reporting, too, in that area. Some stuff that some of our papers wouldn't run.

Moorhus: Oh, really?

______________________ * In January 1994, Newhouse News Service announced its purchase of Religious News Service, a sixty-year-old religious news wire service which provides stories and photos to 270 clients, religious and secular, five days a week. Deborah Howell, who proposed the purchase, says, "Religious News Service has a sterling reputation for independence and integrity in reporting, and we plan to continue that tradition and enhance it. The historic mission of RNS has been to serve the religious press, and we have every intention of continuing that mission." RNS headquarters will move from New York City to Washington, D.C. [Ed.] *In January 1993, Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary announced that the federal government had supported research experiments on individuals, often without their consent, from the 1950s into the 1970s. The story was widely reported and breaking as this interview was conducted.

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Moorhus: Really?

Howell: No. There was only one woman reporter on the national staff. Now it's about half and half. I have a black reporter, black editor, black photo director, black graphic artist, a Mexican-American reporter. I lost my Asian reporter, and the next opening I hope to get back an Asian reporter. I've got a Peruvian intern. I'll get there. Every opening I try to add a minority to the staffópreferably a minority woman because I'm still low on women.

Moorhus: One of the women I'm interviewing is Dorothy Gilliam, and when I asked her about the question of ethics in journalism, she said "diversity." To her, diversity is an ethical issue.

Howell: Oh, I think it is, too. I agree with her. I know Dorothy, I agree with her. I think an all-white bureauóand it was when I came here in 1990óis practically unethical. It's not easy to doóto build a multicultural, diverse bureauóbut it's important.

Moorhus: It's not just hiring, it's also retaining. And it's integrating in the sense of developing a group of people that are comfortable and able to work together productively.

Howell: Right. My staff works together very wellóI have very little tension on my staff.

Moorhus: How have you worked to make that work?

Howell: I couldn't tell you. There was a lot of tension when Iónot a lot, but there was some racial tension when I first hired three black peopleóboom, boom, boom. I think everybody thought they were affirmative action hires. They were and they weren't. I mean, I looked for good people, found them, andó [Tape interruption.]

Howell: I had somebody I will not name here who was a very nice guy, very conservative, did work on the inner city with poor kids, but he was racist. He was just racist. He was always saying things that would just send black people on the staff around the bend. And I finally had to talk to him, just tell himó

Moorhus: That he was being racist. Did he recognize that when you confronted him?

Howell: No.

Moorhus: No. He denied it. [Tape interruption.]

Howell: Some people say incredibly racist things and it's just hard. You have to work at it. I mean, this happened in St. Paul. I have seen racism all my life. I grew up in Texas. I had a Mexican boyfriend one time, and my father slapped me across the room about it when I was twenty-one years old. I walked out, didn't come back for about a year and a half. It's just something that's very important to meóI've fought it all my life. It's one of the hallmarks, to me, of my entire life.

Moorhus: I can certainly see you teaching by example and responding one on one when you hear something. I was wondering if you had sensitivity sessions oró

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Moorhus: You said, before we started today, that there were some things you wanted to be sure got on the record about your experience here in Washington, in terms of covering that. What kind of things did you have in mind? [Pause.] You said there were two topics that you hadn't adequately covered beforeóyour stepchildren and your experiences here in Washington with the bureau.

Howell: Oh. I think I've hit what I wanted to hit.

Moorhus: I am really quite interested in the focus you've taken here and the themes that you're emphasizing and I think it's very interesting in terms of how to make a mark, how to carve out a niche for Newhouse.

Howell: Well, I'm hoping it works. It has taken me a long time to get here, and we've still got a lot of work to do. I could not declare it a success. I only know that if I had done it the way everybody else did it in Washington, I do not necessarily think we would have been a success.

Moorhus: Are you moving to other office space in March because you need more space?

Howell: Yes. And our lease is up. We're paying too much money here. We're going to pay nine dollars less a square foot there.

Moorhus: Wow. So you'll have more space for less money.

Howell: In a nicer neighborhood.

Moorhus: And that will give you an opportunity to expand.

Howell: Right. I've got beaucoup expansion room so we're real pleased. I've got a new set of computers. We've done a lot of stuff to upgrade. We've upgraded everything here since I got here. Really done a lot of upgrading.

Moorhus: Good. Thank you very much.