Bob Andelman's Article Archives

(The following story is a longer, unedited version of what appeared in Jacksonville Magazine in 1994.)

Here's a story you're not likely to read about the publisher of the Florida Times-Union in his own newspaper:

Carl Neil Cannon and four friends were driving home after a track meet in which they represented tiny Vidalia (Georgia.) High School when their car hit a truck carrying a load of sawdust. Except nobody knew it was sawdust at the time. A couple in the car behind the boys ran up and said to get out quickly, the car was going to explode!

That was all Cannon, who lettered in three sports for the Vidalia Indians, needed to hear.

"He got out of the car, somehow, ran 20 yards down a paved road and up a dirt road another 30 yards and hunkered down," recalls his best friend and fellow passenger in that car, Don Drury.

The car never did explode, of course. But since Drury and the car's driver spent a few days in the hospital recovering from the accident, Cannon will never hear the end of it.

Was it a coincidence that his senior high yearbook said of Cannon, "He'd rather make history than study it"?

As goes the Times-Union, so goes Jacksonville, according to many movers and shakers in the city. That's reflected two ways, first in the perceived quality of the paper, which until recently was nothing to brag about; and second in the way the paper shows support for the community, which until recently was also nothing to brag about.

Jacksonville is perhaps the most business- and economic development-oriented city in Florida. It proudly reeks of rah-rah, sis-boom-bah boosterism. But the Times-Union's support of community goals was considered tenuous at best.

"That practically changed overnight when Carl came to town," says City Councilman Don Davis, who is also vice president of Gate Petroleum Co.

Business and political interests are never happy with their daily newspaper. Too much bad news everyday about crime and corruption. Some papers balance their editorial side with community activists on the business side. Davis says the Times-Union lacked such a person until Cannon arrived.

"He is accessible and open to us. Before, we could never seem to get the paper to join in with us," Davis says. "Carl tells us he's not going to tell reporters how to report their stories. But there are other ways he can help promote our city and we can occassionally ask him to help us with editorial comment on things that are important to the city."

Davis speaks from experience on this.

As every football fan alive in Jacksonville today knows, and as every future fan raised here in the generations to come will know, Carl Cannon is the man who, when it seemed all was lost in Jacksonville's NFL expansion effort, when the final seconds of a 20-year drive were ticking off, carried the ball into the endzone and put the city in scoring position for a sudden-death victory.

Ironically, it was Don Davis who first learned the football drive could be salvaged and who turned to Cannon. "I thought if I did it, people would think it was a political move," Davis says.

As the story goes, after talks between Jacksonville Mayor Ed Austin and would-be NFL team owner Wayne Weaver broke down a year ago, Davis called an acquaintance with the league and asked how seriously the city was being considered. The answer surprised and inspired him. He dropped in, unannounced, on Cannon, at the Times-Union.

"We have a slim chance of getting an NFL team," the then-president of the city council told the newspaper publisher. "You have to pick up the flag and run with it."

The next day, Cannon was at his home in the Jacksonville Golf & Country Club, staring out the window, mulling over the load that had been dropped on his shoulders.

"I called Wayne Weaver that afternoon and came to the conclusion that he did want to get involved again," Cannon recalls. That's when he noticed that across-the-street neighbor was home.

Of course, this neighbor wasn't the average guy on the block. Dr. Adam Herbert, president of the University of North Florida, was also chairman of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce at the time. Like Cannon, he was still a new kid in town, having arrived only six months ahead of the newspaperman.

"He called me up and said, 'What're you doin'? If you have a few minutes, c'mon over,' " Herbert recalls.

"I needed somebody to talk to about it because I had not talked to anybody else to find out if this was a viable thing or if I was headed off onto another track that wasn't going to work," Cannon says. "Adam's immediate response after hearing what had gone on was, 'Let's go for it.' He was very enthusiastic."

In Cannon's living room that Saturday, they discussed what it would take to get Jacksonville back in the race. "We talked for hours about what the impact on the community would be if we brought this back up and it didn't work out again," Herbert says. "We decided it was something we just had to do."

From that point on, Cannon - the former (POSITION) whom some describe as the most powerful man in town because of his position atop the newspaper - devoted his full energies to resuscitating the Jaguars.

"If it hadn't been for Carl Cannon, we wouldn't have a football team," says Tom Petway, the man who carried the city's football dream on his own shoulders for more than a decade. "We were absolutely dead in the water. He and Don Davis got us back to the table."

If he had it to do over again, does Davis wish he had done the job himself?

"Sure," he says, chuckling. "The recognition and the personal satisfaction that Cannon experienced? Yeah. But I'm not sure the outcome would have been the same."

Cannon and the former Rita Rattray will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary on XXXXXXXXX. It's a match that goes way back, according to Rita's older sister, Sandy Jones.

"He and my sister started being boyfriend and girlfriend in the 5th grade," Jones says. "I remember having a dance in my living room for her on her 10th birthday and they were learning to dance together. They never really dated anybody else."

They grew up a few blocks apart in Vidalia in those days when everyone knew Cannon as "Neil," his middle name, the name by which family and old friends still call him. Although small for an athlete, Cannon excelled at whatever he tried, taking his high school basketball to the state finals for the first time. He also played football, tennis and golf.

Rita's parents encouraged her to date other boys, "but they really stuck with each other," Jones says. "Going steady was really the thing then; my folks never could convince Rita not to go steady with him."

Cannon's dry sense of humor finally won over his future father-in-law. The final straw was when the young man won a forgotten challenge with Rita's father by mailing him a rotten onion. "It tickled my father a lot," Jones says.

Lucky for Cannon, according to his old chum Drury. "He married the brains in the family. Rita is brilliant." (In fact, she won a full scholarship to XXXXXXXX, earning straight A's in a double major, chemistry and math.) Their 1961 graduating class of 60 named Cannon its "cutest" and "wittiest" senior; Rita was "most dependable" and "friendliest."

"We have loved each other for a long time and have had a great relationship all through the years," Cannon says. "She's been a tremendous partner and very understanding of all of what I'm involved in."

The spirited way Cannon took on the NFL expansion drive evinced itself repeatedly throughout his life. A devoted golfer before marriage, Cannon refocused his energies on his family. When the young couple bought their first home, he bought books on landscaping and did the work himself, expertly. He bought books on antique furniture and how to buy it, then moved on to antique car restoration, focusing his attention on a late 1920s Rolls-Royce which he restored and drove from California to New York in the "Great American Race."

"When he decides on a project, he puts himself into it completely and totally," Jones says.

That goes for Rita, too. Now that their three children (Kevin, Brett and Kerri) are all grown up and in college, she serves on the boards of the Salvation Army and the public library, and last year was chairman of the Jacksonville Symphony Association's Ways & Means Committee, in charge of fundraising.

"She's someone I believe many people admire," Cannon says, his pride showing.

Rita was Carl's entree to the symphony, of which he is now chairman, "Carl says he found out he was sleeping with the ways & means chairman and that motivated him to be very supportive of the symphony," says Travis Storey, managing partner of Arthur Andersen.

(Calling Cannon "supportive" of the symphony may be a huge understatement; in the days after Storey made that remark, Cannon's boss Billy Morris donated $3-million toward rebuilding the old Civic Auditorium, which will now be known as the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts.)

Much of the Cannons' socializing occurs in conjunction with more formal community events, but they do have their favorites, including Tom & Betty Petway (of Touchdown Jacksonville and Prudential Network Realty fame), the Jay & Cindy Stein (Stein Mart), Ed & Patricia Austin (with whom the Cannons went to Europe in 1993) and, of course, Adam & Karen Herbert.

"One of the interesting sights in our neighborhood is to see the two of us walking our dogs," says Herbert, who has a schnauzer and a cairn terrier; Cannon has a white standard poodle. "Once I couldn't get home and he walked my puppy for me."

The two companies for which Carl Cannon has given over his professional life met with very different fates. His first job out of the University of Georgia in 1965 was with the Atlanta Times. It ceased publication three months after he arrived.

Looking for a newspaper job 29 years ago he wound up in Augusta, Ga., working for William S. "Billy" Morris 3d, chairman and chief executive of a then small but successful southern publishing company. Morris put the raw recruit to work selling advertising at the Augusta Chronicle and never looked back.

"He did a great job in our sales department and quickly rose to the forefront," Morris says, "He was somebody to watch. The first time I had an opportunity to put him in a management position, I did it."

Studying his first job for Morris and his sales staff, Cannon went home and told his family, "I have to challenge these people. I have to give them incentive." His program worked and he pocketed a substantial bonus.

Military service interfered with Cannon's career. After swearing him in at the Mayport Naval Station, the army sent him on a year-long tour of Vietnam, where he wrote letters of sympathy to the next of kin of servicemen who were killed in the undeclared war. He came back to the States and Morris moved him into sales management.

"I was a pretty good salesman," Cannon says. "My degree is in public relations and advertising from the journalism school. I was going to work at a newspaper to get a couple years experience, then go off into public relations. I never left the newspaper, but now what I do is at least 50 percent public relations and working with the public, so I'm putting my degree to good use."

In 1972, Morris bought two dailies in Texas, making Cannon the director of advertising for the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, circulation 75,000. He stayed there for the next 10 years until Morris bought the Florida Times-Union from CSX Corp. for more than $200-million. Jim Whyte, then the publisher of Morris' Amarillo Daily News-Globe Times, relocated to Jacksonville and Cannon graduated to publisher in Amarillo.

As they had in Lubbock, the Cannons made many friends in Amarillo and became participants in the local community. In '86, Morris promoted Cannon again, this time bringing him home to the corporate offices in Augusta where he supervised the publishers of the Morris papers.

"Each position has been a step up, has contained more responsibility than the previous one and he excelled in each one," Morris says.

His big break came in January 1990 when Jim Whyte retired. Morris sent his Georgia Bulldog into Florida Gator territory - a challenge if ever there was one - and Cannon's been winning friends and influencing enemies ever since.

"I knew that what you do when you first come into a newspaper is you don't put both feet down," Cannon says of his quiet early days in town. "You come in and learn what's going on. Every organization's different. This is, by far, the biggest paper in our group and it was the largest that I had managed by far. My first job was to come in here and take charge of this newspaper."

The first six months or so Cannon sidestepped community work so he could focus on learning the Times-Union's core business and function. In his first year his emphasis was on customer service and quality, both external and internal. He took his time building a management team which reflected his own goals and values. Some people who didn't fit into his vision left the company, one died and others retired. He retained the directors of production, distribution and public affairs, as well as editor FRED HARTMANN, bringing on new circulation, advertising, accounting and personnel managers.

What exactly does the publisher of the Times-Union do?

"My job is to run the company," Cannon says. "News-wise, it's to set the tone for what we do here and how we do it. It is not to daily manage the newsroom. But it is certain to daily manage the editorial product as a whole, to specifcally manage the editorial pages the advertising, revenue and circulation side of the business. And to maintain relations with and work with all the personnel here, some 1100 total people (up from 800 in 1992).

"A publisher's job on the outside, if he chooses it to be, then becomes much more public, a proactive thing to be done in the community," he says. "And I've done quite a bit of that. Should a newspaper be a leader in the community? Should a publisher step out front and make something happen that is good for the community? Absolutely!"

Mr. Excitement, he's not.

"He doesn't have the outward charisma of the guy who walks in the room and everybody turns their head," says one prominent businessman who prefers to be anonymous. "Carl just goes about his business in a very quiet, deliberate, forceful way."

"Not a lot of flash 'n splash there," agrees Carson Eddings, president and CEO of The William Cook Agency. "But we had a lot of that in the past that didn't deliver. He's transcended petty politics. His action speaks for him, not his words; he's a breath of fresh air."

Cannon didn't come to Jacksonville expecting to set the world on fire. "I don't think I planned to do anything I've done here," he says. "I didn't plan to get involved in the NFL Now! ticket drive. It just happened. Somebody had to do it."

"Maybe we could use a few more people from Vidalia, Georgia, blowing into town," Eddings says. "Maybe Carl came to town and he didn't understand all of our politics so they didn't become obstacles to him."

The Jaguars experience would have been enough for some community leaders to comfortably rest their backsides on for the rest of their careers. Don Davis could probably have been elected mayor if he had done what he asked Cannon to do. But Cannon's a doer. He eased off the Jaguars effort and into the presidency of the Gator Bowl Association at a critical time, just as the bowl alliance was soliciting million-dollar bids to organize a national college football championship.

When his Gator Bowl bid fell short, Cannon didn't retreat from public view, he just changed titles again, this time taking charge of the Jacksonville Symphony Guild.

"I'm still doing whatever I can, whenever I can," he says. "I think somebody who saw what we did with the ticket drive must think I'm some kind of sports nut, but that's just not the case. I've got an interest in sports. Not a consuming interest. I'm not a tailgating Florida Gator. I'm a Georgia Bulldog. But I'm not the type of football fan who goes to games every weekend."

Newspaper reporters and editors aren't the kind of people anyone should trust with a secret. Their job descriptions include the phrase "turn on the lights and watch the rats run." Publishers subscribe to a different school of thought and modus operandi. The proactive community boosters often operate in the shadows, bringing the power of their institution to the table and leaving the newshounds baying outside the gates.

Carl Cannon is just such a proactive publisher and the kings of power in Jacksonville love him for it.

He knew this profile would include questions about his role in bringing the Jaguars back to the table and then jump-starting the club seat sales drive. When the question started, Cannon didn't wait for its conclusion before answering.

"We were very careful how we handled that here," he says. "My staff knew I was on the other side. They pursued me with vigor. I went about 57 days when we were negotiating the lease agreement between the mayor and Wayne Weaver. We did it in total privacy because we didn't want to raise the expectations of the public any more. I mean, their expectations had been up and down like a yo-yo. So we said, 'We'll try to do this. If it works, then it will become public. If it doesn't work, then we'll just forget about it.'

"Well, my reporters picked up on it and they showed up on my doorstep. They said, 'You've got your hands all over this - start talking.' I said, 'I can't give you anything.' So it was clean. Very clean."

His friends in town trust Cannon to keep their secrets. It may not thrill his reporters, but it keeps the publisher welcome in many circles.

"When I want to talk to him off the record, he allows me to do that," Tom Petways says. "I have put him through some extreme tests and he has never let me down."

"The day we started working on the ticket drive, Bobby Martin and I put out a memo to our staff: 'We are stepping aside for the next 10 days and all of our efforts are going to go to this ticket drive.' I left it up to the department heads to run the company. It was reported back to our corporate office that 'Cannon didn't come to work for 10 days,' which was pretty funny because Billy Morris was a big supporter of what we were doing."

When Cannon switched from wildcats to gators and tried ramrodding the Gator Bowl into contention for a national college football championship game, he was once again in direct conflict with his staff.

"My sports staff, they call me just like any other source," he says. "I have a lot of things that they just don't ever know."

Mayor Ed Austin and Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver trusted Cannon to keep the scope and depth of their discussions private and he didn't let them down. That no doubt frustrated his reporters in the short run but gave them better stories in the long run. Not to mention a chance top play cat-and-mouse games in print with the boss.

"I just don't leak things to anybody," Cannon says. "(Austin and Weaver) knew that. If something gets out, It wasn't going to come from me. I will work with our reporters and editors as best I can at the appropriate time and give them information as soon as I possibly can. I want them to have the information, but I can't do it prematurely. My staff works very aggressively with me. They want all the information they can get out of me, but at the same time they understand that I can't scoop anybody, nor can I give them information that's not appropriate."

Does bringing an NFL team to Jacksonville or raising money so the symphony can play in state-of-the-art digs increase the Florida Times-Union's bottom line? Probably not. So what does a guy like Carl Cannon get out of all the long hours and hard work?

"Well, (having the Jaguars) is going to cause my expenses to go up, that's for sure," he says, laughing. "In an indirect way, it has to help us. But that's not why we did it. We did it because it's going to be great for this community. Whatever we do that's good for the community is good for the newspaper, and vice-versa. I'm working on the symphony board. The symphony is a cultural asset for the community. Does that help the newspaper? Not directly. But the growth and sophistication of our community, long-term, certainly helps the newspaper. So it's all wrapped together to me."

"Football is the biggest thing we've ever done in Jacksonville," he says. "It's unfortunate that football carries that mantle, but it does and we need it. I knew how important it was - that's why I didn't want to let it die. I mean, if it meant goin' the extra mile to get it, we went the extra mile."

The Florida Times-Union was once the laughingstock of the state's daily newspapers. It wasn't pretty, it read poorly and left many who read it regularly hungry for more.

"The Times-Union was a horrible newspaper in the 1960s," says Fred Seely, a former Jacksonville Journal sportswriter who came up through the ranks to become managing editor of the Times-Union from 1976-80. "It's a better paper now, better than it was five years ago. That's not to say it's good paper. But it's a better paper. I think Cannon has been part of that."

It's not yet the Miami Herald or the St. Petersburg Times, but the Times-Union has come many miles along the path to respectability under Cannon's watch. Who else says so? Carson Eddings, for one.

"I think it's a bit more readable," says the ad man. "Overall, I get the sense that the control and quality of the paper is broader. I think maybe he's brought it up a notch or two. From an editorial point of view, it's become more balanced. I think it's showing signs of becoming a substantial newspaper. And I have not held that opinion in the past."

Cannon will no doubt graciously accept such back-of-the-hand compliments, while simultaneously denying his newspaper ever had a quality problem, either on his watch or his predecessor Jim Whyte's.

"I think that's never been accurate," he says, answering an oft heard criticism. "(Newspapers in) Miami, Ft. Lauderdalen and Orlando are much bigger than we are. They have more assets to work with. But the quality aspects of what we do - I talk quality all the time. And I talk content all the time. I think very, very early on when we bought this paper, we were a small company from Georgia and there were a lot of old staffers here that would have preferred that a nationally known, renown journalism company bought the Times-Union.

"We've been trying to be a better newspaper. We talk quality all the time. we have 'Employee of the Month' luncheons every month. We talk about their commitment to the paper and the community, their relationship with their fellow employees and how they can be leaders in our company. We want to be the best. We just spent $25-million on new presses. We are continually updating our systems and our creature comforts. We're going to be a better newspaper because this is going to be a better community."

What's next for Carl Cannon?

In less than five years in Jacksonville, he's already accomplished more with his business and civic involvements than many of his contemporaries. How long will he stick around?

"I hope forever," says his boss, Billy Morris. "He's doing a great job in Jacksonville."

Would Cannon be content to ride his laurels until reaching retirement age more than a decade from now? Or is he thinking about running Morris's recent $283-million acquisition, Stauffer Communications, which includes 4 radio stations, 7 television stations, 8 weeklies (including Grit) and 20 daily newspapers in 14 states?

"We didn't buy anything bigger than we own now," Morris says. "None of those (management) decisions has been made yet, but certainly, he's a player. To put him into the Stauffer organization would be a step down, unless we put him in charge of the whole thing. He is a candidate."

"I like Jacksonville," the publisher of the Florida Times-Union says, holding his cards tight to his vest. "We're comfortable here. I enjoy the work I'm doing and I think I'm having some positive effect on people. I have worked in our corporate office and that's rewarding work, too.

"The future is yet to be known, as far as what I'm going to do," he says. "Mr. Morris is the secret to all that I've been able to accomplish. There are going to be greater responsibilities corporately that will be available and I'm going to look at those. But I certainly would not be disappointed at all if I continued here and ran this newspaper."