2015.01.24 我竞聘《经济学人》总编辑

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My Bid to Be Editor of The Economist
One of the 13 candidates provides an account of the selection process

By Gideon Lichfield and Quartz

Matt Brown/Flickr
JANUARY 24, 2015
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Yesterday The Economist chose Zanny Minton Beddoes to be the first female editor-in-chief in its 171-year history. “About time,” you might say.

But among its peers, the venerable British publication, where I spent 16 years before leaving to help found Quartz, is practically a pioneer. The Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times have never had a female editor, and nor have the Times, Telegraph, or Guardian in Britain. The New York Times got its first one only in 2011, and Le Monde in 2013 (both have since left). Time and Newsweek have both been helmed by women in the last half-decade, but Businessweek never has. Even the San Francisco Chronicle named its first female editor-in-chief only last week.


Still, Minton Beddoes was the only woman among the 13 candidates who applied for The Economist’s top job. All of them were current or former Economist staffers. I was one of them.

It’s been 50 years since an outsider, Alastair Burnet, was made editor, and he was an outsider only in that he had worked there and briefly left. The main reason for that inward focus is that the editor needs to know how to navigate the idiosyncratic culture of the newspaper (as it calls itself, never a “magazine”)—one which Andrew Sullivan, when he was editor of the New Republic, likened in a memorable hatchet job to “a combination of an English senior common room and a seminar at Davos.”

That’s certainly an apt description of the weekly news meeting. Each Monday morning, as many people as possible pack themselves into the editor’s office on the 13th floor of the paper’s London headquarters. A handful of the most senior get chairs; the rest stand, sit on the floor, or perch on the window ledges, blocking the views of Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace. The meeting can last an hour or more and the room quickly becomes hot and airless; latecomers crowd around the door, straining to catch the snippets of debate about what policy to prescribe to the European Central Bank or how America should deal with some recalcitrant dictator.


The editor must act as part coach and part referee, for there are many brilliant minds, including some world-class experts in their fields; discussion is polite, but pointed. The paper’s no-bylines policy and tight editing give it an air of collegial unity, but also mean that the editor is, even more than at other old newspapers, the custodian of a long intellectual tradition and an established way of doing things. All this makes it highly unlikely that a complete newcomer could win the staff’s confidence.

And that confidence is essential to getting the job. While it’s the company’s directors—all but one of whom are also men—who interview the candidates and recommend one to the trustees, a quartet of eminences who act as guarantors of the editor’s independence, all The Economist’s staff are encouraged to write in with their opinions on who should win. Naturally, this leads to intense lobbying behind the closed doors of the hutch-like offices, overflowing with books and papers, where the staff work (no new-fangled open-plan nonsense here).

The editorship has traditionally been not only a man’s job, but a young man’s one. Of Minton Beddoes’ 16 predecessors, all but five were under 40 when they were appointed. In her 1993 history of The Economist, The Pursuit of Reason, Ruth Dudley Edwards reveals that when Burnet was picked in 1965, the then-chairman of the board of directors, Geoffrey Crowther, wrote to the trustees that the board had considered many names, “but the search was narrowed down by the conviction that, in this rapidly changing world, we must have a young man, and that we would not therefore consider anyone over the age of about 40.”

Things have changed a bit since then. When Burnet took over, weekly circulation was around 70,000 copies, mostly in the U.K. Today, it is 1.6 million, mostly abroad, and the paper has many more journalists, of whom nearly one-quarter are women—a better proportion than among its readers, where they are only 13 percent. Still, the board is widely thought to favor relative youth; today, 50 is perceived as the informal cut-off.

You might imagine the selection process for such a bastion of the British establishment to include some arcane rituals, perhaps involving gowns and Latin. You’d be disappointed. After John Micklethwait, the incumbent, announced that he was leaving to head up Bloomberg News, hopefuls were asked to write a short email to the current board chairman, Rupert Pennant-Rea, to say they wished to run. Pennant-Rea, himself a former editor, wrote back with the unassuming directness that is the paper’s hallmark: “Dear Gideon: Thank you for telling me you want to be the next editor of The Economist.”

What happened next, however, could have happened nowhere else. An all-staff email went out containing the full list of candidates, including the two of us employed elsewhere, without so much as a request to keep it confidential. I briefly panicked; at any other newspaper, such a list would most likely have been leaked to a media gossip columnist within minutes. Not so at The Economist. It probably never even occurred to anyone to do such a thing.

We sent in memos; then there were interviews, held in the company boardroom on the 14th floor, a large and airy space compared with the warren of offices below it. After plugging in my laptop and giving a short presentation, I sat down at the long conference table to face a gentlemanly grilling from Pennant-Rea and two other members of the board. Behind me, large windows looked east, towards Parliament. Facing me, a set of shelves held a few dark, gold-lettered archival volumes of the paper’s very first years, a subtle reminder of the legacy I was proposing to take on. On the table were thick books containing all our memos, printed out and joined with a red comb binding—a trove of ideas, ambitions, and pretensions that will make fascinating reading for some future historian of The Economist.

My questioners were polite, attentive, and inscrutable. Pennant-Rea, a man of famously fierce intellect who as editor was known to rise at four in the morning to write his leaders, fixed me throughout with an inquisitive gaze that betrayed no sign of whether he thought I was unexpectedly impressive or an upstart fool. An hour passed quickly.

Mine was the last interview but one. Soon we would learn who had been shortlisted for an interview by the full board. To celebrate our last moment as equals in rivalry, 12 of the candidates (the 13th wasn’t around) went for lunch in Chinatown, where we squeezed around a single table at a dim sum joint like a low-rent version of Dorothy Parker’s clique at the Algonquin and reminisced about foreign assignments, office scandals, and recalcitrant dictators we had known or pontificated about.

The winnowing-down was brisk and efficient. That afternoon, as I hung around the office chatting to former colleagues, the emails started arriving from Pennant-Rea. “As you know, we have had a large number of excellent applicants,” he wrote, “and a few of them have proved stronger candidates than you. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I hope you understand.”

Gideon Lichfield is a senior editor at Quartz..



我竞聘《经济学人》编辑
13名候选人之一讲述了遴选过程

吉迪恩-利奇菲尔德和石英报道

马特-布朗/Flickr
2015年1月24日


昨天，《经济学人》选择赞尼-明顿-贝多斯(Zanny Minton Beddoes)为其171年历史上的第一位女性主编。你可能会说，"是时候了"。

但在其同行中，这本古老的英国出版物--我在离开这里帮助创立石英之前在那里工作了16年--实际上是一个先驱。金融时报》、《华尔街日报》、《华盛顿邮报》和《洛杉矶时报》从未有女编辑，英国的《泰晤士报》、《电讯报》和《卫报》也没有。纽约时报》在2011年才有了第一位，《世界报》在2013年才有（两人后来都离开了）。时代周刊》和《新闻周刊》在过去的半个月里都有女性掌舵，但《商业周刊》却从未如此。甚至《旧金山纪事报》也是在上周才任命其首位女主编。


不过，在申请《经济学人》最高职位的13名候选人中，明顿-贝多斯是唯一的女性。他们都是《经济学人》的现任或前任工作人员。我是其中之一。

自从外人阿拉斯泰尔-伯内特（Alastair Burnet）被任命为总编辑以来，已经过去了50年，而他之所以是外人，只是因为他曾在那里工作并短暂地离开。这种内向性的主要原因是，编辑需要知道如何驾驭报纸（正如其自称的那样，从来不是 "杂志"）的特异文化--安德鲁-沙利文在担任《新共和》编辑时，在一次令人难忘的抨击中把这种文化比作 "英国老年公共休息室和达沃斯研讨会的结合"。

这当然是对每周新闻会议的恰当描述。每周一上午，尽可能多的人挤在报纸伦敦总部13楼的编辑办公室。少数最高级的人得到了椅子；其余的人站着、坐在地板上，或者栖息在窗台上，挡住了海德公园和白金汉宫的景色。会议可能持续一个多小时，房间里很快就变得炎热和没有空气；迟到的人挤在门口，努力捕捉关于向欧洲中央银行开出什么政策的辩论片段，或者美国应该如何对付一些顽固的独裁者。


总编辑必须扮演部分教练和部分裁判的角色，因为这里有许多杰出的人才，包括一些在各自领域的世界级专家；讨论是有礼貌的，但很尖锐。该报的匿名政策和严格的编辑工作给它带来了同事间团结的气氛，但也意味着编辑比其他老牌报纸更像是一个长期知识传统和既定做事方式的监护人。所有这些都使得一个完全陌生的人不太可能赢得员工的信任。

而这种信心对于获得这份工作是至关重要的。虽然是公司的董事--除了一个人之外，都是男性--对候选人进行面试，并向受托人推荐一个人，而受托人是由四位杰出人士组成的，他们是编辑独立性的保证人，但《经济学人》的所有员工都被鼓励写信，就谁应该获胜发表意见。自然，这导致了员工们在充满书本和文件的小屋式办公室里进行激烈的游说（这里没有新式的开放式的胡闹）。

传统上，编辑工作不仅是一个男人的工作，而且是一个年轻人的工作。在明顿-贝多斯的16位前任中，除5位外，其他都是在40岁以下被任命的。露丝-杜德利-爱德华兹（Ruth Dudley Edwards）在她1993年的《经济学人》历史《理性的追求》中透露，1965年伯纳特被选中时，当时的董事会主席杰弗里-克劳瑟（Geoffrey Crowther）写信给受托人说，董事会考虑了许多名字，"但由于坚信在这个快速变化的世界中，我们必须有一个年轻人，因此我们不会考虑任何超过40岁的人，所以缩小了搜索范围。"

从那时起，情况有了一些变化。当伯内特接手时，每周的发行量约为7万份，主要是在英国。今天，发行量为160万份，主要是在国外，该报有更多的记者，其中近四分之一是女性--比其读者中的比例要好，女性只占13%。不过，人们普遍认为董事会偏爱相对年轻的人；今天，50岁被认为是非正式的界限。

你可能会想到，这样一个英国机构的堡垒的选拔过程包括一些神秘的仪式，也许涉及到长袍和拉丁文。你会感到失望。在现任董事约翰-米克尔斯韦特（John Micklethwait）宣布他将离开，去领导彭博新闻社（Bloomberg News）后，有希望的人被要求给现任董事会主席鲁伯特-彭南特-雷亚（Rupert Pennant-Rea）写一封简短的电子邮件，表示他们希望参选。彭南特-里亚本人也是一名前总编辑，他在回信中表现出了该报的特点--不卑不亢的直接态度。"亲爱的吉迪恩。谢谢你告诉我你想成为《经济学人》的下一任编辑"。

然而，接下来发生的事情，不可能发生在其他地方。一封全体员工的电子邮件发出来了，其中包含了所有的候选人名单，包括我们两个受雇于其他地方的人，甚至没有要求对其进行保密。我短暂地惊慌失措；在任何其他报纸，这样的名单很可能在几分钟内被泄露给媒体的八卦专栏作家。在《经济学人》则不然。可能根本没有人想到要做这样的事情。

我们发送了备忘录；然后是采访，在公司14楼的会议室进行，与下面的办公室相比，这个空间很大，很通风。在插入我的笔记本电脑并做了一个简短的演示后，我坐在长长的会议桌前，面对彭南德-雷亚和其他两名董事会成员的绅士式的拷问。在我身后，大窗户向东看，朝向议会。面对我的是一组书架，上面放着几本深色的金字档案，是报纸最初几年的资料，微妙地提醒着我所要继承的遗产。桌子上放着厚厚的书，里面有我们所有的备忘录，打印出来，用红色的梳子装订在一起--这是一个思想、野心和自命不凡的宝库，将成为《经济学人》未来某个历史学家的精彩读物。

我的提问者很有礼貌，很细心，而且难以捉摸。Pennant-Rea是一个著名的智力超群的人，作为编辑，他被称为早上四点起来写他的领导，他自始至终用一种好奇的目光盯着我，没有任何迹象表明他认为我是出人意料的，还是一个新起的傻瓜。一个小时很快就过去了。

我的是最后一次面试，只有一次。很快我们就会知道谁入围了全体董事会的面试。为了庆祝我们平等竞争的最后时刻，12位候选人（第13位不在）去唐人街吃午饭，我们挤在一家点心店的单人桌旁，就像多萝西-帕克在阿尔贡金酒店的小团体一样，回忆着我们曾经认识或论述过的国外任务、办公室丑闻和顽固的独裁者。

筛选的过程轻快而有效。那天下午，当我在办公室里和以前的同事闲聊时，彭南特-里亚的电子邮件开始发来了。他写道："如你所知，我们有大量优秀的申请者，"他说，"其中有几个人被证明比你更有实力。我很抱歉让你失望，但我希望你能理解。"

吉迪恩-利奇菲尔德是石英公司的高级编辑。