The fiery McEachran was the newspaper's first Memphis-native editor. From "ripping up phone books and roping reporters to their chairs" to a dedication to "making a good newspaper better," McEachran will be remembered for his passion and fairness.
Angus McEachran February 1994 MM cover
ON NEW YEAR’S EVE 1992, the city was stunned by the sudden death of Lionel Linder, editor of Memphis’ daily newspaper The Commercial Appeal. Even those who criticized Linder’s conservatism or bristled at his boosterism were dismayed to hear how he died: At 6:20 p.m., a Nissan Stanza, driven by 20-year-old Thomas McLaurin, swerved across several lanes of Union Avenue traffic, finally slamming head-on into Linder’s 1992 Crown Victoria. For McLaurin – who’d come up from Jackson, Mississippi, for the Liberty Bowl and had consumed enough beer to register .12 on a blood-alcohol test – the collision meant a broken neck, a crushed hip, and four years behind bars on charges of drunken driving and vehicular homicide. For the 60-year-old Linder – who just minutes earlier had called his wife to say he was coming home – the collision was fatal; it shattered a family, ended a 39-year newspaper career, and plunged CA staffers into shock.
Meanwhile, about 700 miles away in Pittsburgh, another editor was grappling with death on a different scale. The Pittsburgh Press, that city’s afternoon newspaper, which for months was crippled by a Teamsters-led truckers’ strike, had been sold by Cincinnati-based Scripps Howard to Blade Communications, whose owners immediately announced it would close the 108-year-old newspaper. Overseeing its demise was Angus McEachran, who a decade earlier had been hired, ironically enough, to bring the moribund paper back to life. Considered for years a stagnant, stodgy old rag, the Press soon lost that image under McEachran, who, between 1983 and 1992, dictated drastic changes in its appearance and story content and drove it toward two consecutive Pulitzer Prizes. But thanks to an unresolved truckers’ strike, all that was history, McEachran realized as he shut the paper down. “He was so sad and hurt,” recalls a former Press employee. “This was a staff he’d built. We were like family, and he hated to see us scattered to the four winds.”
While still reeling from the shock and sorrow of the Press’ passing, McEachran (pronounced McArron) was spending New Year’s Day with family in Greenville, South Carolina, when he got word of Linder’s death. Even as he tried to grasp this news, to accept the loss of a friend and colleague he’d known for 25 years, another call came, a couple of days later, which would shape McEachran’s future and at the same time bring him back to his roots. The call was from Scripps Howard, which also owns the CA, asking him to assume editorship of the Memphis paper. And it was an offer McEachran accepted and had even been expecting as soon as he heard of Linder’s death.
Memphis, after all, was home; McEachran was born here in 1939, the son of a plumber and a school dietitian. He grew up in the Sherwood Forest area, and attended school and played football at Catholic High. But more significant than those bonds were the ones he'd forged with the CA from 1960 to 1977, when he climbed the ranks from copy clerk and intern to Metro editor and finally assistant managing editor, before leaving to take the helm of the Birmingham Post-Herald.
It was also at the CA that Angus McEachran built a reputation as a hard-charging newsman who demanded the best from his staffers and would let them know when they’d been found wanting in ways they wouldn’t soon forget. He’d rip up phone books, set fire to sorry news stories, and used a “BULLSHIT” stamp on anything he considered beneath his impeccable standards. He’d tear articles to shreds, stomp on their remains, and once, the story goes, he yanked a photographer up by his shoulder, hauled him down a corridor, and threatened to throw him through a window to a parking lot below. But even while McEachran could make a newsroom tremble, most staffers soon learned what triggered the theatrics and the eye-bulging bursts of wrath; a flair for the outrageous, certainly, but also the need to drive home a message – that this newspaper was here to cover the news as fairly and accurately as possible.
Today it’s only a slightly mellowed McEachran who sits in his spacious third-floor office at 495 Union Avenue, where several hundred employees churn out the city’s only daily newspaper for some 200,000 subscribers in the Mid-South area. Sporting red paisley suspenders over a crisp white button-down shirt, McEachran smiles often, and through a pepper-and-salt beard his dimples sometimes flash. “A lot of what I do is for effect,” he says. “It’s exaggerated humor – at least I think it’s funny. But in all cases, I do it to make a point.”
His blue eyes twinkle as he tells a favorite tale – the time he roped a reporter to his chair to get him to write a story. “He’d written it three times,” McEachran says, “but every time it came out just as dull as dirty dishwater.” So McEachran took him by his belt, sat him down, tied him to his chair with a piece of clothesline, and “told him to write the goddam story like it ought to be written.”
“What if I have to go to the bathroom?” asked the hapless reporter. And McEachran told him, “You’ll just have to wet your pants.”
One can't help but wonder how a newspaper editor came to have some clothesline in his office, so McEachran offers an explanation. “I had it there on the contingency that I might have to make a point with this young man.” And did the reporter finally write the story to suit his superior? “He did.”
As for the photographer who nearly found himself burled through a plate glass window, McEachran says, “He stuttered a lot, but he became a much better photographer.” As for the infamous “BULLSHIT” stamp, McEachran laughs, pulls it from a drawer – inch-high letters, all caps – and tosses it across his desk. “I haven’t used it in a while,” he says, “but I know right where it is.”
Clearly no one who ever worked with McEachran would want to tangle with “an angry Angus,” as one colleague calls him. And some have found his antics immature and abusive, his style arrogant and controlling. “It was his way or the highway,” one former associate recalls. “There was no velvet glove over his iron fist. With Angus, the gloves were off.”
But most colleagues, from Birmingham to Pittsburgh to Memphis, sing Angus McEachran’s praises, calling him tough but fair, a consummate newsman, compassionate when the need arises, and willing to go to the mat for people and principles he believes in. Susan Adler Thorp, political columnist for the CA, sums up the feelings of several CA staffers when she says, “He’s the most direct editor I’ve ever worked for. If something’s good, he’ll tell you, and if it’s a piece of crap he’ll tell you. And anybody in this business who has any sense has got to appreciate that about him.”
McEachran seems to relish his fiery, flamboyant image and he readily admits to being a booming, in-your-face kind of boss. “I like to have fun,” he says, “and most people know I’m just trying to get a reaction. Some people are intimidated like crazy, but over the years I’ve learned to go back and praise.” Besides that, he says, a serious glint replacing the twinkle in his eyes, it’s all in the name of solid journalism: “I know a lot about covering the news. It’s been my life. What I’m trying to do is get the best out of people, to make them better at what they do. And I think if people will listen to me and follow me, this newspaper – which is already good – will get better.”
INDEED, MAKING “A GOOD NEWSPAPER” better is how McEachran, 54, described his mission when he took the CA reins in January 1993 (and, incidentally, became the first Memphis native to hold the job of editor). Unlike his previous assignments in both Birmingham and Pittsburgh, this job required no sweeping changes, no massive shake-ups. What it required, from McEachran’s standpoint, was getting a newsroom back to covering the news. Says veteran reporter Jimmie Covington: “With Linder, we had an agenda of things he believed we should cover – The Pyramid, the trolley, NFL, the Wonders series. With Angus, the word agenda has been wiped from the scene. We’re into news again, not promoting the city.”
McEachran confirms this, adding, “A lot of people have taken exception to the speech I made [to the Rotary Club] when I said I was not a cheerleader for this community. They took this as meaning I’m not a Memphis booster. What I’m saying is my job is first and foremost to tell you what’s going on and not sugarcoat it, so that people can make up their own minds. I think it would be wonderful for Memphis to have an NFL team, but I’m not going to use the newspaper to beseech readers to go out and buy tickets.”
McEachran also drew complaints from Wonders Exhibition Series’ staff who claim that the Napoleon exhibition suffered because the CA didn’t cover it adequately. “I went back and checked,” says McEachran, “and found that we devoted as much space to Wonders as we did last year. We covered it more from a reporting angle than a promotional angle. Promoting is not my job. It’s the job of the Chamber of Commerce and the Wonders staff.”
And the job of the CA, says McEachran, is “straight, factual, honest reporting.” In that vein, he adds, he’s working to raise the intensity level among the staff, conducting one-on-one interviews with each of his 199 full-time employees, and working to generate more stories “from the bottom up,” not the top down. “That’s not happening nearly as much as it should,” he says. “So I’m pushing for more depth, more enterprise, more turning rocks over to see what’s under them.”
As a prime example of poking under rocks and sniffing out news, he cites reporter Louis Graham’s coverage of Shelby County Correction Center inmates serving as caterers at private fund-raisers for gubernatorial candidate (and Shelby County Mayor) Bill Morris. Other stories done in the past year that rate kudos from McEachran are the NFL coverage, the three-part series on Tunica’s casinos, the article on gang warfare at a Beale Street nightclub, and the follow-up story on former kidnapping victim Leslie Gattas. “These are all different aspects of journalism,” he says, “but they all step back and take a look at the overall picture, at the impact, and try to tell what the future holds.”
To get a better sense of “what’s happening in this town at night,” McEachran says, the paper is beefing up its night coverage. “I think because we’re the only game in town we’d sort of gotten into a 9-to-5 mentality, so we’re shifting back to being here into the late hours.” That most likely will result in more crime coverage, which, he says, has already increased under his tenure. “I don’t know if it’s been a deliberate emphasis on my part or simply the fact that there have been more crimes, especially of a heinous nature. But I think it’s a very important subject for Memphis and one that concerns us all, to report the crimes and to show how they impacted people, especially the victims.”
Besides, an increased focus on crime and on more investigative and explanatory articles, other changes either already in place or on tap for the paper include an “improved” Neighbors section, based on response to a January readership survey; more sports coverage; an expanded tv section to cover the anticipated increase in cable channels; more analysis of computerized data to aid reporters; and, in terms of appearance, a cleaner and more horizontal layout.
“A lot of times it looks as though we don’t have a dominant element on the front page of a section,” says McEachran, taking an Appeal section from the top of a cluttered credenza. “Look at this,” he says, his finger tracing the various headlines and columns of copy. “It’s hard to follow; your eye jumps all over the place. And here” – he points to a photograph – they’ve stuck a man’s face in a box with a third of his head sticking out of the top. That’s crap. And look at this. Why, it’s the back of a goddam head.” McEachran laughs, lays the paper aside, and says, “We’ve got a really good photographic staff, but I don’t think we’re using them as well as we could. I told them to be loose – maybe they’re too loose.”
But while the newspaper’s appearance is important to McEachran, it takes a back seat to his demand for accuracy in reporting. “I’m on a real warpath about errors,” he says. “If a story is inaccurate it’s gonna have more than ‘bullshit’ stamped on it. It’s gonna have a personal conversation. I won’t abide stupid, careless mistakes.” If a pattern of making errors persists, the employee who make them receive fair warning; they might find themselves suspended – or looking for a job. As McEachran so ominously phrases it: “It’s a treacherous path to walk down, and in the end it’s a long fall.”
Once, in May 1993, an inaccurate story resulted in more than just a mention under Corrections and Amplifications (the number of which appalls McEachran); it resulted in a front-page apology. The original story stated that General Sessions Court Clerk John Ford was requesting $50,000 in training and travel to improve his employees’ “people skills.” Following a complaint from Ford’s chief administrative officer Percy Harvey, the CA reported that Ford was asking for $25,000 to train his staff in several areas, not just customer relations. In the follow-up article, McEachran said that by omitting critical information, the sense of the story was distorted. “The purpose of this story is to put the issue in context,” he concluded. “We sincerely regret we didn’t get it right in the first place.”
That would have been easy enough, he says now, because there was a tape of the meeting: “All we had to do was listen to it.” McEachran says he can take the heat on a lot of things, “but if we make an error, it ruins my day, and therefore it’s my job to ruin somebody else’s day.”
He certainly takes some heat on Michael Ramirez, the conservative editorial cartoonist who generates a considerable amount of mail from irate readers. “Some people take Michael’s stuff very literally,” says McEachran, referring to Ramirez’ acrid caricatures of gays, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and various other liberal targets. “Michael is more conservative than I am,” says McEachran, “but I think this country needs more conservative cartoonists; most are pretty left of center. I think Michael is very talented, but at times I’ve found a cartoon to be unfair or in poor taste, and I’ve told him so.” In fact, McEachran has been accused by some Ramirez supporters of censoring the cartoonist. “I have him run his cartoons by me before they appear in the paper, the same as I do with stories and editorials,” says McEachran. “I don’t consider that censorship. It’s part of my job to see that we’re in the bounds of decency and taste.”
Another item which sparked readers’ ire during the past year was the graphic photo – which the CA ran with a front-page story on October 5 – of an Amerian soldier’s body being dragged through the streets of Somalia by taunting natives. McEachran’s response to criticism about running the photo was and still is: “How can we not run this picture? Photographs, images of starving children – they resulted in our being in Somalia in the first place. It made this country say, ‘For God’s sake, let’s do something.’ And the picture of the dead soldier had the same impact. It made us think that if we’re going to be there, why can’t we protect our own people? And two days after that photograph ran, the government changed our whole policy over there.” Beyond that, McEachran adds, “I don’t think it’s my judgment to say a picture like this is not fit for a morning newspaper, that it’s too rough for coffee and croissants.”
But as rabid as the reaction was to the photograph of the dead soldier, McEachran says it was minor compared to the firestorm created by a comic strip. When For Better or For Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston developed a storyline about a teenager grappling with his homosexuality, McEachran thought it wise, in this religiously conservative market, to run a story warning readers that it was coming. “That story set off rockets,” says McEachran. “People who didn’t even read the strip were calling here; pastors were cancelling their subscription. Judy [his assistant] was going crazy. We had to hire a temporary to help answer the phone.” McEachran read the strips in advance and considered them well-done and tasteful. “And homosexuality isn’t something children haven’t come in contact with,” he adds. McEachran says if he had it to do again he’d run a shorter story the day of the strip instead of several days in advance. “I think this was a case of my ethics creating a real problem for us.”
And ethics in journalism are important to McEachran, who in 1985 was a primary author of Scripps Howard’s ethics manual. Maddy Ross, managing editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who worked with McEachran at the Press, says what she admied most about McEachran was his journalistic integrity. “He was adamant,” she recalls, “about journalists not getting involved in outside organizations if there was any chance it could affect the balance of a story. At first, some people bridled at this edict, but down the road they saw the wisdom in it, how you could get involved in some messy situations.”
McEachran says that plenty of people would argue that an editor should be involved in civic organizations and he points to United Way as an example. “People will say, ‘How can you not support United Way? It’s not controversial.’ Yet just a few years ago the agency’s national president was fired for using its money for condos and limousines. Anytime there’s money involved, there can be controversy. And I don’t think you can chair the United Way campaign [as former CA Executive Editor David Wayne Brown did in 1986] without somebody questioning your impartiality.”
But while he may not chair campaigns or sit on boards, McEachran serves the community by speaking to civic groups, churches, and “anybody who’ll have me.” He says he’s no great shakes as a speaker and told his wife recently that he started his day by listening to the dullest sonofabitch in America. “Unfortunately that was me,” he adds with a grin. But somebody must want to hear what he has to say, because he’s spoken to more than 55 groups since his return to Memphis.
Asked if he thinks Memphis changed much during his 16-year absence, he says, “When I left, this city was seriously consumed with race, crime, and getting an NFL team. Today, it still is.” But he does note some changes, several of them positive: “I see a growing black middle class. I see a city more receptive to change. Not that we don’t still have some deeply entrenched views on all sides. But I see a city whose white and black middle classes realize that their futures are tied to one another. And if we don’t find a way to work together to overcome what both sides acknowledge as serious problems – poverty, crime, illiteracy, illegitimacy – our future will be pretty bleak. We’ve got a lot of people running [to the outskirts of the city], but they can’t run from the fact that their fortunes and futures are still tied up with Memphis, Tennessee, and as Memphis rises or sinks in the Mississippi River, so will they, ultimately.”
McEachran – who himself currently lives in an East Memphis apartment but is building a house on Mud Island – says that while he considers himself a moderate on social issues, he gets calls every day from people accusing him and the CA of being too liberal. “But I’m sure even Lionel Linder got those calls,” he says. “This is a real conservative market.”
It’s also a market that tends to see everything in black and white. McEachran, an avid hunter and fisherman, tells of meeting a man at a deer camp who, upon learning that he was the CA editor, said, “You know, if y’all didn’t have niggers to write about, you wouldn’t have nothin’, would you?” McEachran told him, “Yessir, that’s right. Niggers and rednecks.” The guy responded, “I think you just insulted me” And McEachran retorted, “Well, have you figured out how?”
On the flip side of the issue are McEachran’s black friends who don’t think the CA covers the black community fairly. “They see the paper historically as first, segregationist, then obstructionist, then maybe just laid-back racist,” says McEachran. “I don’t think that’s true, although we weren’t as progressive as we could have been. My philosophy is to listen to their concerns. Some say that we place different value on human lives, that if a white person’s murdered, it’s page one, if it’s a black person, it’s a Metro Brief. Some murder stories warrant more coverage than others simply by the circumstances.” Other murders, he adds, happen late at night which makes it harder to get information for a story. “I do think putting a murder in a Metro Brief is dismissive,” he says. “That’s why we’re increasing our night coverage, so we can break those stories out more.”
McEachran feels he’s making progress in changing the CA’s negative image among some black readers. And U.S. Congressman Harold Ford – who was often vitriolic in his criticism of the paper under Lionel Linder – has this to say about the current editor’s direction: “I don’t think all problems are behind us, but I feel the news coverage is more balanced, more open to other issues than those Linder wanted to cover. I think McEachran is doing what should have been done 20 or 30 years ago – covering all parts of the community and letting people know the newspaper has a social responsibility.”
Although changes to the Viewpoint section have been minor – running columnist Ellen Goodman more often and adding Clarence Page, an African-American and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for commentary – McEachran says he’s received positive response from readers: “My idea of a good op/ed page is a blending of ideas, to the right, to the left, and middle of the road. So I’ve tried to include more views and I’ve gotten good feedback about that.”
As for CA editorials, readers have seen few, if any, radical changes, but a definite trend from far right to dead center has been apparent. While Editorial Page Editor David Vincent usually writes the opinions, they’re shaped by an editorial board which McEachran established and which rotates to include different staff members every three months. “I looked at David and myself and Charles Brown [former editorial writer for the Press Scimitar],” says McEachran, “and I thought, hey, we’re just three slices of white bread here. We need more women, more minorities, more diversity of opinions and ideas.” Some women and minorities who have served on the board include Susan Thorp, business writer Laurel Coleman, and Neighbors section editor Jerome Wright.
(Scripps Howard also has an editorial board in Washington, which sends the CA editorials each day. “We run them if we see fit,” says McEachran, “or change them if we feel strongly another way.”)
In discussing the impact of CA editorials in the community, he mentions the one which supported the resolution to bar members of all-white country clubs from being named to city and county boards. “It had some impact as far as the county passing its bill,” says McEachran, “but the city waffled on the issue when Mayor Herenton said it wasn’t on his agenda. But I think it had some impact and will continue to.” McEachran himself has taken a strong stand on the issue. In Pittsburgh, he refused to send reporters to cover a golf tournament played at an all-white club in Birmingham. And he resigned from the Birmingham Rotary Club because its charter at the time limited membership to “any white male person of good moral character.” Says McEachran now: “I’ve listened to the argument that if you eliminate members of all-white private clubs from public boards, you’re going to eliminate some of the cream of the crop in Memphis But I just fail to see how membership in a country club makes you a better contributor to this city than somebody else. I don’t think we should be looking to those people for our leadership. That attitude of exclusivity permeates everything in society.”
Regarding the CA’s role in shaping public opinion on an issue, McEachran says, “It’s pretty sobering. I’ve had people sit in that chair and tell me they’d like to introduce a bill but they don’t want to do it if they think the paper will come down on them. I tell them to have the courage of their convictions, put it out there, and let people respond to it. I’m not interested in having the paper be a power broker, but I know what w say has impact. Otherwise, I’d devote that space to Ann Landers.”
SINCE THE PRESS SCIMITAR’S DEMISE IN 1983, the CA has been Memphis’ only daily newspaper – or “the only game in town,” as McEachran calls it. “I don’t think that increases our power so much,” he says, “as it does increase public perception that readers are getting only one view. That’s why I think it’s triply important that we present the whole story without any spins or agenda.”
But is the CA the only game in town? Don’t some of the other Memphis media keep the daily paper on its toes? Not according to McEachran. Television newscasters he dismisses as “blowhairs,” and when discussing investigative reporting, he says with a snort, “You think that’s gonna happen on the six o’clock news? Those guys wouldn’t know what to look for. They can barely find their way to work.” He adds that while a newspaper can never compete with tv for instantaneous news, “we can fill in the details, the reasons, the reactions in a story you can put your arms around.” The Memphis Business Journal, a weekly with 14,500 paid subscribers, he says “is fine as a niche publication but presents no competition we can measure.” And The Memphis Flyer, the five-year-old free newsweekly that now distributes 50,000 papers every Wednesday, he shrugs off as entertainment, although he says he seldom reads it, and he adds, “Is it a source of information to readers? I think not.” Asked if he thought its editorials or news coverage presented different stories or slants from those covered by the CA, he says, “If I thought that, I would really be upset – that another publication is giving information that the CA wouldn’t report. That flies in the face of my whole philosophy.”
In fairness to other Memphis media, we asked for a reaction to McEachran’s remarks. Tim Morrissey, news director at WREG-Channel 3, declined to comment. Bruce Whiteaker, news director of WMC-Channel 5, says he won’t dignify the remarks about tv newscasters with a response except to say, “You reached me at work [so apparently he found his way], and our news comes on at five o’clock [not six].” David Janecek, news director at WHBQ-Channel 13, says, “The arrogance of Angus is ridiculous – to pretend that [the CA] has the license to news reporting in this city. And frankly, with the legion of employees that surround him, he ought to be doing a lot more than he is.”
As for print media, the MBJ’s editor, Barney DuBois, was not available for comment. But Dennis Freeland, managing editor of The Memphis Flyer, which recently won two awards from the National Newspaper Association, says, “Apparently Mr. McEachran is out of touch or hasn’t been back in Memphis long enough to know how widely read the Flyer is by politicians, city leaders, and a lot of important people. They read our news coverage, not just the entertainment features, and they write us plenty of letters telling us what they think.” One of these letters, printed in the December 2-8 edition, was from Richard Swiggart, Mayor Bill Morris’ chief administrative officer, who cited what he considered several factual omissions in the CA’s coverage of Morris’ office use of county inmates at a gubernatorial fund-raiser – a story which McEachran touts as a model of “straight, factual, honest reporting.” Swiggart thanked the Flyer for its follow-up coverage and “for setting the record straight.” Freeland also cites several stories that were Flyer scoops – one of which concerned a topic seemingly close to McEachran’s heart: the recent integration of the formerly all-white University Club. “That was something we should have covered and didn’t,” McEachran concedes, “it’s certainly newsworthy.”
Nonetheless, instead of any other news media, McEachran sees his biggest competition “within ourselves. Part of my mission is that we don’t get complacent and sit on our butts. We’ve got to be thinking ahead, planning, looking for ways to be more compelling,” he says. “That’s my competition – keeping people saying, ‘Did you see that story in the paper today?’”
Compelling is a word some readers might use to describe the CA, but in its 154-year history it’s developed more of a reputation as solid, reliable, and conservative. While McEachran goes so far as to say, “There’s a tremendous amount of respect for this newspaper and its being an influence and a visionary for the whole region,” some readers would scoff at that, as evidenced by occasional letters to the editor from readers critical of the CA’s coverage and bewailing the fact that Memphis is a one-newspaper town. And if winning Pulitzer Prizes is any indication of a newspaper’s quality, the CA hasn’t received one of those since 1923. McEachran says, “The climate here is right for a Pulitzer. We’ve got a good level of trust. We’ve got the financial resources. And we’ve got the risk-takers.” But he adds, “We don’t approach stories hoping to win prizes. We go after stories that will make a long-term difference in a community.” And indeed the Pulitzers which the Press won under McEachran – in 1986 for its series on the international organ transplant network, and in 1987 for its coverage of drug abuse by airline pilots – resulted in significant changes: Laws were written making it illegal to buy human organs, and the FAA changed its drug abuse policies.
As for the CA’s image, McEachran says, “I want us to be lively, controversial, sometimes irreverent. I want the paper to be something that, if it doesn’t arrive one day, the reader won’t just think, Well, that’s one less thing to throw in the garbage can.”
As for criticisms about the paper, McEachran says, “We’re not going to please everybody. But the times I get most upset are when readers don’t think a story is balanced or fair. If I have an epitaph, I hope to God it would be this – that I was fair, to the staff and to the reader.”
WHILE MCEACHRAN GENERALLY HAS A REPUTATION FOR BEING not only fair but a hands-on, take-charge boss, there was a time during his last year at the Press when he was accused of being out of touch with his editorial staff, which at the time was trying to organize a union. It was a difficult period, when McEachran had his hands full with duties beyond his role as editor, including ongoing negotiations with the Teamsters Union over the truckers’ strike. “It wasn’t true that I’d lost touch, that I didn’t care about the newsroom anymore,” he says, “but perception is reality, and I took the charges very personally. My door has always been open, but there were a lot of people who were intimidated. So I had to go out the door. I had some real come-to-Jesus meetings in the newsroom.” As a result of those meetings, he appointed a newsroom committee which met monthly and let employees discuss grievances over salaries, benefits, and other issues that lay behind efforts to form a union.
Although as a manager he was ineligible to vote, McEachran strongly opposed the union, which was ultimately voted down. “I didn’t see the need for one in the newsroom,” he explains. “Unions don’t allow the flexibility that a free and understanding management can provide.” To make his point, he tells of a Press employee who eventually died of leukemia. “I was able to carry [him] on the payroll a year beyond what his sick pay allowed,” says McEachran. “With a union, that wouldn’t have been possible. You make one exception, you have to make one for everybody,” says McEachran.
Here, however, he’s required to deal with a union – the Newsroom Guild, which covers 440 employees in seven departments. “I respect its leadership,” he say, “and I follows its rules exactly, but I think it gets in the way of management and takes away your flexibility.”
Lela Garlington, president of the Guild, which recently signed a new three-year contract, says of McEachran, “Since he’s been here only a year, it’s been sort of wait-and-see. But as a former member of the Guild, he knows we have a long history and a worthy purpose – and that’s to protect the rights of workers. I respect him as a journalist and I think that if he’ll abide by the new policy, we can form a partnership with management.”
TO EASE THE PRESSURE OF A DEMANDING job, McEachran finds several ways to let off steam (besides ripping up phone books and roping reporters to their chairs). Running helps – four miles every morning – as do racquetball and weight-lifting, bass fishing and duck hunting. He also loves to cook, especially bouillabaisse (fish stew), Italian dishes, and most anything smoked, especially turkey and salmon. And he has a wine cellar well-stocked with one of his favorites – a California cabernet called Silver Oak. “It’s hard for me to lay off of it,” he laughs. “It’s like having fudge in the refrigerator.”
He and his wife Ann, who’s finishing her doctorate in biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh, currently have a commuter marriage. “We manage to get together about every three weeks,” he says. And as often as possible, he sees his son Gib, 32, who’s with Jefferson-Pilot Corp. in Greenville, South Carolina; and his daughter, Amanda, 25, who attends Indiana University. Of Amanda, he says with a laugh, “She’s in her sixth year, the only student in the history of the school to have tenure. Right now,” he adds with a wry lift of an eyebrow, “we’re in the school of sculpture, thank you. But she had to learn how to use a torch, so at least now she has a trade.”
McEachran also enjoys travel, and a few years ago he and his family visited Scotland, the home of his ancestors. “At Edinburgh Castle,” he recalls, “they’d have a roll call of those killed during the wars. There were a lot of Angus McEachrans called out. They must have been terrible shots.”
He says he took a lot of teasing about his name all through grade school and for a long time people would just call him Buddy – a moniker he now hates. And when he wrote his first front-page article for the CA, his byline was misspelled as Agnes and later, in an effort to correct it for the second edition, it came out Anus. “I told them to change it back to Agnes,” McEachran once said in an interview for Pittsburgh magazine. “I’d rather be a sissy than a you-know-what.”
Looking back at those early days at the CA, McEachran recalls that he was hired as a reporter by Frank Ahlgren, CA editor from 1936 to 1964, on the stipulation that he’d get his degree. “I never did,” he says, although he attended both George Washington University and Memphis State. “I’d get so excited, so caught up in an assignment that I didn’t want to stay in school. And to this day, at the age of 93, Frank Ahlgren still reminds me that I’m not gonna amount to a damn thing if I don’t get that degree.”
It’s obvious that McEachran still feels the same excitement – the kind that drew him out of the classroom and into the newsroom, that carried him from those heady days when he covered the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King to the death of Elvis, which occurred shortly before he left Memphis in 1977 and resulted in what he calls “my swan song, a real coup,” Members of the media were barred from Elvis’ funeral, but, McEachran, as Metro editor, managed to get a reporter disguised as a funeral home attendant to cover the event and write a story the next day describing the mausoleum.
Today, back in Memphis after various twists and turns of fate, the excitement and intensity still drive McEachran, just as they did 30 years ago. The intensity seems to burn most fiercely when he talks about “the fairness doctrine.”
“I like to have fun and laugh and to make people laugh. And I don’t take myself very seriously as part of the power structure,” he says. “But when it comes to fairness, accuracy, thoroughness – I take those things real seriously. I want our readers to know that. We ask ourselves everyday, Is this fair? Is this an accurate portrayal of the event as we know it? I can’t emphasize enough how important that is – not only to my life but to the life of this newspaper.”
This article originally appeared in the February 1994 issue of Memphis magazine.
