Executive Editor Mark Baldwin greets Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker during the Rockford Register Star Editorial
Board meeting on June 6, 2019, at 99 E. State St. in Rockford. (Scott P. Yates/rrstar.com staff)

Rockford Register Star executive reflects on 40-year career in journalism

By CHRISTOPHER HEIMERMAN
For Illinois Press Association

ROCKFORD – In 2012, Mark Baldwin was greeted in the Register Star newsroom by wringing hands. Financial realities were bearing down and forcing newspapers to get leaner, fast, or edge anxiously toward their demise.

Like most newspaper chains, the Register Star’s owner, GateHouse Media, was going through mass layoffs and buyouts.

“I had to deliver a lot of bad news, and he had to absorb the news and deliver the news,” said Paul Gaier, then the publisher of the Register Star. “Whereas others have gotten jaded, Mark was able to sit back and say, ‘OK we have to make these changes, because the business is changing, but you know what? These aren’t easy decisions, but they’re the right decisions.’ He always does the right thing, regardless of what that means.”

Baldwin announced the week of Dec. 14 that he’s retiring at the end of the year, capping 8 years as executive editor at the Register Star, and a 40-year legacy in journalism.

For him, doing the right thing has meant hiring a diverse workforce and developing talent. It’s meant stepping down from the Register Star’s (literal) tower and meeting the community on its level, giving back when possible, and being willing to join every corner of the community during a civil rights reckoning. It’s meant embracing the media’s role in one of the greatest battles it’s ever had to fight: a massive decline in media literacy.

Those hurdles are taller than collapsing advertising revenue, in Baldwin’s estimation.

“The greatest challenges aren’t going to be economic. They’re cultural,” he said. “You’ve spent years now being battered by accusations of fake news. People often misunderstand our role, people whose world view is not amenable to our role. Our role is not to confirm your comfortable view of the world.”

Expanding the comfort zone

Corina Curry had nearly 20 years of experience as a reporter when Baldwin, who’d settled into his office after about a year with the Register Star, called her into his office.

She’d been covering City Hall for several years. He wanted her to take on the education beat. Her head spun.

“I wasn’t sure why he was doing it,” said Curry, who’s been with the Register Star since 1999. “As a reporter, your mind goes to, ‘He must not be happy with what I’m doing.’”

With newsrooms being decimated industrywide by financial hardships, it’s become more and more common for such decisions to be made, and then for the reporter to be tossed back into the proverbial pond and told to sink or swim.

“That’s definitely not something we do here,” Curry said. “He’s always very supportive and nurturing, and challenging to reporters. He’s always wanted to give them opportunities.”

Baldwin saw plenty of opportunities the newsroom was missing on the education beat, Curry said.

“He helped me get settled, and he put a lot of confidence in me,” Curry said. “He told me I was going to do this really well, ‘I picked you to do this because I have a lot of confidence in you.’ “I think he saw how my skill set fit well with the sort of stories he wanted to see out of that topic, and it led to some of the best work I’ve ever done.”

In 2017, the national journalism society Sigma Delta Chi gave Curry one of its coveted awards for excellence in journalism for her coverage of racial inequities in Rockford’s public schools

“Corina’s work made people uncomfortable, in the best possible way,” Baldwin said in a Register Star report on the award.

Taking a stand on civil rights

Baldwin wasted no time weighing in on a tragically common incident that unfolded in August at the city’s popular downtown market.

On Aug. 21, Register Star reporter Shaquil Manigault, who is Black, was denied access to the market by a police officer, until photographer Scott Yates confirmed he was, in fact, a reporter.

Demonstrators approach the City Market Pavilion where officers from Park District Police (left) Rockford Police (right) and Metro Enforcement (not pictured) block the pavilion entrance to demonstrators on Aug. 21, 2020, in Rockford. A Metro Enforcement officer initially blocked a Register Star reporter from entering the public space but quickly backed down after the reporter's colleague vouched for him. The Park District and Rockford Police departments were not involved in the incident. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star)

Baldwin zeroed in on the officer’s language.

“I don’t believe you,” Baldwin’s editorial response reads, using italics for emphasis.

“That comment may be the most infuriating part of the incident because of the way it denied one man the benefit of the doubt for one reason only, the color of his skin. And that’s wrong,” it continues. “Yet encounters like that are all too-routine for people of color, whether they’re professionals like Shaquil or students, teenagers or old folks. And it shouldn’t take a white colleague, classmate or friend to make things right.”

Urban planner Michael Smith and dietician Jody Perrecone are community members who, along with Baldwin, round out the Register Star’s editorial board. Smith marvels at Baldwin’s rapid, thoughtful responses to what’s happening in the community, with which Baldwin has established a deep connection.

“That editorial was quick,” Smith said, laughing a little with appreciation. “He can turn on a dime to make sure the organization and the content therein reflect the times we’re living in.”

The Register Star has doggedly covered civil rights protests this year, and Baldwin has firsthand knowledge of the target that fair and balanced coverage paints on journalists’ backs. He said he recently received a crude piece of hate mail at his home, “even though my address is nowhere to be found. That was a first.”

Baldwin said the letter’s return address was a local police department, and that its contents attacked the paper for spotlighting a local demonstrator.

“Even though we’re being intimidated, we have to cling to what’s true: It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “Some people would say this is crusading, but I just don’t agree. The press in this country is a child of our constitutional values.”

Baldwin has always insisted his team cover its community holistically – which means not just covering festivals and events centered around People of Color’s traditions and history.

“There’s an awful lot of coverage of communities of color that’s been the bread and circuses variety,” Baldwin said. “You cover festivals, or Cinco de Mayo or Juneteenth. That’s not journalism for the community. That’s journalism done by nice white people.”

Teaching Media Literacy

Another steep-hill climb for journalists is the battle against misinformation that, in a single generation, transformed from snail mail crawling to small audiences to tweets instantaneously poisoning large wells of public discourse.

“We need to build better news consumers,” Baldwin said. “Democracy doesn’t work unless we agree that facts are facts. The industry has a big role in helping to build that more discerning news consumer.”

About 5 years ago, he and now-retired Opinion Page Editor Wally Haas began taking the Editorial Board on the road, meeting with the community in various neighborhoods, at library branches and other community centers.

Wally Haas (right) opinion editor of the Rockford Register Star, listens as Mayor Tom McNamara (left) proclaims the day Wally Haas Day on Jan. 28, 2020, at the newspaper’s office in Rockford. The day marked the 40th anniversary of Haas' employment at the newspaper. Mark Baldwin (middle), the executive editor, listens as well. (Scott P. Yates/rrstar.com staff)

“It’s very important to reach the corners of the community that oftentimes don’t see upper-middle-class professionals,” Baldwin said. “It was important to meet with diverse people in the community, and not necessarily people who subscribe to the newspaper. We shape the news environment more than any other news organization.”

And they do it from a literal tower, he pointed out.

“We work in a downtown tower next to the Rock River,” he said. “It’s kind of a fortress, and it can be intimidating. If anybody’s going to get out of their comfort zone, it ought to be us. We have to wield our influence with some level of humility.”

Baldwin urged said tools are available for publications that are re-examining how they’re doing their job, even going through self-evaluation and -training on media literacy. It’s become common for even down-the-middle journalists to retweet information without properly vetting it.

“Some of the outrageously false falsehoods are pretty easily debunked by individuals who take the time to read horizontally, as they say in the news literacy movement,” Baldwin said. “Check sources to confirm what you’re reading.”

He recommended the News Literacy Project, specifically.

“It’s the leading advocate and provider of training tools,” Baldwin said. “There’s some great free material, and they want local partners.”

He’s introduced the group to educators in the Rockford area.

“You have to be very intentional about [media literacy] and make it a priority,” he said. “The First Amendment assumes a news-literate public.”

Retirement plans

Baldwin will have to give up at least one of his crusades in retirement, including his seat on the board for News Leaders Association, which is working to help newspapers align the diversity of their newsrooms with the communities they cover. NLA was formed when the Associated Press Media Editors, for whom Baldwin was a longtime board member, merged with the American Society of News Editors in 2019.

In August, Gannett, which merged with GateHouse in late 2019, pledged to achieve NLA’s ambitious goal by 2025.

The city of Rockford is 22 percent Black. While the Register Star’s newsroom is 17 percent Black, its two most recent hires have been women of color.

Without the pressure of putting out a daily newspaper, Baldwin will have a lot more time on his hands – which bodes well for the community in which he and his wife, Sydney, call home.

“He’ll actually have the time to use his connections,” Smith said.

During his time in Rockford, Baldwin has been involved with many groups, including 815 Choose Civility, a project through which the media, public and private sectors address civility and civic dysfunction. The project was born from Transform Rockford, a nonprofit creating and executing a strategic plan addressing the city’s socio-economic shortfalls.

“How do we as humans and neighbors get better at talking to each other about issues that are contentious – race, education – issues that can get really heated?” Smith said. “[Baldwin] believes very deeply in being able to have civil conversations, in an informed manner.”

“He’s been able to really defuse situations when they’ve gotten heated,” said Smith’s wife, Jennifer, who is engagement director for the Community Foundation of Northern Illinois.

The Smiths and the Baldwins became close friends after meeting at church about 5 years ago.

“He’s someone you can come to, and he always has a level head about those situations, including hyper-political situations in the community,” Jennifer Smith said. “It doesn’t hurt that he has an excellent sense of humor. He’s a person who sees people who want to be involved, and people with talents and connects them with opportunities.”

Baldwin said for all of Rockford’s socio-economic struggles, it’s a city with a great entrepreneurial spirit and prized infrastructure such as Chicago Rockford Regional Airport and the Rock River.

“People are proud to be from Rockford,” Baldwin said, “and there are some sharp people in positions of political leadership who are bent on doing the right thing, and frankly have been unafraid of making tough decisions.”

One initiative he’s particularly excited about is the city’s agreement with Rockford Promise to use casino revenue to invest $1.5 million annually into scholarships at Northern Illinois University.

Michael Smith said Rockford Promise for the past 15 years has funded scholarships at Rockford College, a 2-year institution.

“In a community where educational attainment isn’t as strong as it could be, [the NIU scholarships] are a
big deal,” Baldwin said.

He said his chief goal in retirement is as hyper-local as it gets.

“I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted with my long-suffering wife,” he said. “The only reason this has worked is because of her.”

After a career in journalism and consulting that’s taken him throughout the Midwest and New York, Baldwin said he’s dropped anchor in Rockford. It’s easy to skip over to the city and catch a flight to see their three daughters, in Missouri, Albuquerque and Singapore – that is, once travel is safe and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control.

A year of hiring, coaching, counseling and editing via Zoom is hardly the way an editor of Baldwin’s ilk would like to go out. But he said the stars have aligned for his retirement, and he has seen the silver lining in the pandemic.

“We’ve actually learned, the pandemic has taught a lot of us that we don’t need to consume as much as we thought we did,” he said. “We can live smaller and, in some ways, happier.”