© THE SEATTLE TIMES COMPANY

1998: TAKING OUR CORE VALUES TO MAINE

When connecting with the family roots of his generational great-great grandfather, Frank Blethen toured the state of Maine and discovered another family-owned newspaper operation.

A few months later, we heard that this company was for sale. Included in the offering were the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram; Kennebec Journal in Augusta; Morning Sentinel in Waterville; Coastal Journal in Bath and the Web site mainetoday.com.

Not many newspaper operations of this size come available, so we began to look seriously into the purchase.

In the meantime, the employees of the Maine operation presented the owners with a petition asking them to sell to The Seattle Times. Even at the other end of the country, our reputation had preceded us.

When we finalized the purchase in late 1998, Chuck Cochrane moved his family to Maine and took over as publisher and CEO. He began instilling our core values and installing our methods of professional management. The impact was positive and almost immediate.

Making changes. | Before our involvement, there had been considerable senior management turnover and changes in direction over the past decade. A situation like that can be very unsettling for all employees. Chuck assured everyone that he was here to stay and that the philosophy and practices he represented would be consistent and would persist for many years to come.

For Chuck, Maine was now his home. He became chairperson of the United Way Pacesetter Fund in Portland. Even Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen established a presence in the community by buying a second home in Portland and joining the Board of Directors of the Kents Hill School, his great-grandfather's alma mater.

Encouraging excellence in journalism. | In a published interview with the Portland Press Herald after the acquisition, Frank encouraged the paper's employees to increase the "edginess" in both news content and editorial presentation, a notion that reflects the extra aggressiveness that comes from independent ownership committed to the highest quality journalism.

As Frank put it, "The primary shortcoming of any newspaper today is usually in what it does not cover or comment on, or only covers and comments on in a superficial way. 'Edginess' is the extra push to be sure we are aggressively independent, no matter who is offended. It's the extra push to be sure we are looking behind today's episodic news event to help our readers understand this world."

Reinforcing our continuing vision. | With the Maine purchase, we increased the financial strength of The Seattle Times Company and expanded our opportunities for continued growth in asset base and cash flow.

We also gave ourselves more opportunities to serve wider communities through quality journalism. With an increased size range of newspapers in more geographic locations, we also gained more openings for talented people and more occasions for good journalism.

Finally, we opened up new possibilities for bringing our core values - the same core values that worked so well for us in Washington state - to a Maine organization that was perfectly suited to benefit from them.

Now, at the end of the decade. | In November of 1999, American Journalism Review published its list of the "Top 20 Newspapers" in the United States. The Seattle Times had a place on it. We were the second smallest newspaper on the list and the only afternoon newspaper.

It was a fitting signature to a decade of accomplishments.

Only 300 family-owned newspapers remain among the 1,510 U.S. dailies, down from 700 in 1980. Analysts expect the numbers to decrease even more because of inheritance taxes and a lack of interest from the succeeding generations of ownership.

For our part, we'll stay the course. We will live by our core values and remain a professionally managed, family-owned company. We will strive at all times to serve our communities through quality journalism. We will continue to maximize workplace satisfaction for all employees. In doing all this, we will surely continue to publish the country's best newspapers.

We'll build on the momentum we gained during the decade of the 1990s and carry our public trust, a legacy handed down to us generation after generation for a hundred years, as far as we can and as well as we can.

We've done much. But the best is yet to come.