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Nothing less than the highest ideals, the most scrupulous anxiety to do right, the most accurate knowledge of the problems it has to meet, and a sincere sense of moral responsibility will save journalism from a subservience to business interests, seeking selfish ends, antagonistic to public welfare. -- Joseph Pulitzer, 1904. With those words, Joseph Pulitzer defended his proposal for a school of jurnalism in a North American Review article. (1) Good journalism has always been the product of tension between editors and accountants. The eulogies for Lee Hills, who died in Miami in February 2000, recalled his legendary victories on behalf of the editors. It was Hills who led the efforts of John S. and James L. Knight to include long-term benefits to the communities served by their newspapers in the accounting process. Hills became the first CEO of Knight Ridder, which was formed by a 1974 merger, and he retired in 1981, just at the dawn of the new age of information technology that brought new ways of delivering news and information. New moral dilemmas are part of that package. (2) Today's corporate board chairs, presidents and chief executive officers preside over numerous divisions and disparate corporate activities. At least one business consultant believes that many large corporations have become so powerful they "no longer feel compelled to consider the public interest as they pursue their goals of maximizing profits." (3) Media companies are not immune from these pressures. Yet, newspaper cultures and journalism ideals inculcated within them are deeply ingrained. How robust are these cultures? Do they persist as leaders come and go? This question can be answered with data if we reframe it slightly: Which is the greater predictor of a newspaper executive's commitment to social responsibility -- the characteristics of the newspaper company over which he or she presides or his or her own personal background? This paper explores the question of a social responsibility manager effect by measuring the verbalized references of newspaper company CEOs to social responsibility on the one hand and profit on the other. (4) We define social responsibility as a concern for the welfare of readers and citizens, which must be balanced with the needs of employees and shareholders. We measure the two concerns by counting words that are often used to express them. Then we look into the backgrounds of the CEOs for predictors of a relative leaning toward one side or the other. Our study is limited to the publicly reporting companies (as of 1996, for which data were available) because their CEOs provide written statements of their goals and their progress every year. These statements are readily available as a non-reactive measure of their values. Literature Review Fred Siebert and other scholars have noted that social responsibility theory substantially pre-dated the 1947 Hutchins Commission Report that focused public attention on journalistic behavior and norms. Social responsibility was the hallmark of crusading editors for most of two centuries. However, the post-World War II years saw a rise of technology and industrialization that fostered mass media. As media organizations grew and expanded, "their ownership and management came to involve huge amounts of money," Siebert said. "No longer was the typical pattern a multiplicity of small media units representing different political viewpoints, from which the reader could select." (5) J. Herbert Altschull warns of other consequences inherent in media consolidation. "The financiers -- or the paymasters, as we can call them -- or the group they represent will not allow their media to publish material that frustrates their vital interests," he wrote. (6) In a commercial operation, content tends to reflect the views of advertisers and their owner-publisher allies. …