alumni profiles

Walker Lundy’s new task:
‘Work some magic in Philly’

Walker Lundy featured on cover of recent issue of American Journalism Review

by William McKeen

Walker Lundy, JM 1965, might not look like a magician, but a lot of people are hoping he can work some magic in Philadelphia.

Lundy is in the hot seat right now as editor and executive vice president of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

And if you don’t believe that “hot seat” stuff you obviously didn’t see the cover of the January/February American Journalism Review. There sits buttoned-down Walker Lundy, looking more like a history professor than the Amazing Kreskin, with a cover line that reads, “Crunch Time in Philly.” The newspaper he took over in November 2001 is described as “beleagured.”

Lundy would appear to have his work cut out for him.

But he is capable of rolling up his sleeves and working a little newsroom magic. When he was editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, word came down from the corporate level that he must cut 23 staffers from the newsroom. Lundy argued persuasively that such a move would cripple the newspaper in its competition with the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the corporation backed off a bit. Lundy saved 15 jobs.

In a newspaper world rife with change and uncertainty, morale is a major issue. Boosting morale is one of Lundy’s best tricks.

“I have found if you give people the opportunity to do great journalism and you treat them fairly, morale takes care of itself,” Lundy said.

At the Pioneer Press, Lundy created a three-foot-high “hell-raising” trophy awarded spontaneously to the reporter who shook things up most in the Twin Cities. The trophy (a “God-awful”-looking thing in the words of one winner) was passed around the newsroom in an example of hideous pride and healthy competition. But it helped Lundy get the staff’s adrenalin pumping.

And that’s apparently why he was hired in Philadelphia, where the Inquirer has been anemic in recent years, its circulation sliding dangerously low. Reversing this slide is Lundy’s greatest challenge.

His Pioneer Press staff won a Pulitzer Prize last year for uncovering academic dishonesty in the University of Minnesota basketball program. It was a touchy story—as all stories of athletic impropriety can be in a sports-crazy Big Ten town—but the Pioneer Press Sports Editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz knew Lundy would stand behind them, “The thing he emphasized was to take chances and make decisions on your own,” Garcia-Ruiz said.

The story of the basketball scandal broke the day before Minnesota’s third-round appearance in the NCAA tournament. Garcia-Ruiz said Lundy, like a good editor, “bore the brunt of the criticism and kept it from us and the writer. That was huge, because we could concentrate on the job.”

After 11 years with the St. Paul paper, Lundy joined an Inquirer reeling from the sudden departure of previous editor Robert Rosenthal.

Lundy was brought in to head a paper twice the size of the Pioneer Press and with the whole media world waiting to see if his magic wand works in a different Zip Code.

And he’s playing things close to his vest.

“I know of the paper’s reputation for great journalism and have followed from a distance its ups and downs over the years. I’ve known the past three editors and respect all of them tremendously,” he said.

Lundy, a 1977 Alumnus of Distinction, previously worked for the Detroit Free Press, the Charlotte Observer, the Tallahassee Democrat, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Arkansas Gazette.