Former Digest Chief Believes in a New Breed

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 31, 1999 | by James P. Lucier

Ken Tomlinson's background as a reporter cultivated a healthy skepticism that government can solve all our problems, an editorial stance that took him to the very top of journalism.

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson retired in 1996 as editor in chief of Reader's Digest, the world's largest-circulation magazine, after also serving as director of the Voice of America, or VOA, under President Reagan and a longtime member of the Board for International Broadcasting. He was instrumental in returning the Digest to its roots after the deaths of its founders and forging an aggressive, conservative journalism.

Tomlinson was able to pursue his interest in serious horse breeding after he left the Digest and moved to horse country near Middleburg, Va. Recently he became president and director of the National Sporting Library, a 40-year-old Middleburg research center for horse and field sports. Insight caught up with Tomlinson in the paddock of his Springbrook Farm.

Insight: You came a long way as a country boy from the mill town of Galax, Va., to become editor of Reader's Digest. When you were a kid did you know what you wanted to do with your life?

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson: I dreamed of being a politician. My uncle was the county sheriff. My father was killed in the mills when I was 5 years old and my uncle was a kind of surrogate father. He was involved in the campaign for Eisenhower and he took me to see Harold Stassen at the county convention in 1956. Then a teacher introduced me to National Review and Human Events and so a kind of equal opportunity came to the mountains.

Insight: You started your career as a fresh-faced reporter in Richmond, Va. What did that background as a reporter give you?

KYT: It gave me a very healthy skepticism. I covered a lot of government -- especially county and state government. Being a reporter and covering politicians gave me perspective. I closely observed political figures -- and saw that when they didn't work very hard they lost. I came to understand that if you are a reporter and work harder than all the other reporters, you get better stories. So somewhere along the way I came to have great respect for the work ethic. That's why when I got to the top at the Digest I still was getting to the office at 4 a.m. to put notes on the editors' desks.

Insight: When did you go to work for the Digest?

KYT: In the spring of 1968, I went to work for the Washington bureau as a reporter. Almost immediately I was sent to Vietnam as a war correspondent. Then I was sent to the Paris bureau, which became a base for a lot of work in Europe, the Middle East, the Soviet Union and Africa. Thanks to all this international reporting, I came to understand the importance of international broadcasting in the struggle between East and West.

Insight: So is that why you made the leap from foreign correspondent to director of the Voice of America?

KYT: Well, President Reagan appointed me. But I was the third VOA director in his administration. I don't think there were a lot of people standing in line. I felt that what ailed VOA at that time could be handled by real journalism. When the pope went to Poland we did 24-hours around-the-clock coverage, nothing but focus, focus, focus, on the pope. No one could say we were politicizing anything, because we were just covering the news.

Insight: But you inherited a bureaucracy that was hostile to the Reagan values. Most bureaucracies are able to defeat anybody trying to change an agency.

KYT: I think whatever success I had was because as a reporter I had seen what would work in government and what wouldn't. I understood what was going on when the bureaucrats came to me, as they did in my first few weeks in office, and said, "Oh, we want to redecorate your office. We want to put in a new bathroom and new carpeting." I just put my hands up and said, "You're not going to do anything here until you put new carpeting in the offices of the Russian Service downstairs." That put an end to it.

Insight: But then suddenly you were back at the Digest. What pulled you back?

KYT: I spent two years at VOA and served on the Board for International Broadcasting all the way into the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, the Digest had been in disruption following the deaths of the founders, DeWitt and Lila Wallace. When a new editor in chief was named, he urged me to come help him get the magazine back on track. I went as managing editor and then became executive editor and editor in chief from 1989 until 1996. During that time we opened the Russian edition, the Hungarian edition, the Czechoslovakian edition, then went into Poland -- the Polish edition was very successful. The Digest is the largest-circulation publication in the world, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union our opportunities significantly widened.

I felt we had to get back to the journalism of DeWitt Wallace. He was an extraordinary man, a great visionary. He understood that, to communicate the best of true stories, one anecdote is worth more than a thousand words. Reader's Digest journalism was based on articles filled with anecdotes, articles filled with story-stories, with narrative. He understood you had to make people want to read the magazine. You had to make the magazine fun, with jokes and human interest. You had to make it valuable -- stories that help people cope with different problems in life. And you also had to have good journalism focusing on waste and abuse and the international threat of communism. It was an extraordinary time.