GUEST COLUMN: Lyle triumphed in the end

But to this member of The Pennsylvania Gazette's outside board of professional advisors for over 20 years, Tony Lyle was a close incarnation of of Josiah Bounderby, the prosperous manufacturer in Hard Times. He was, as Dickens described him, a "bully of humility," who intimidated his acquaintances by claiming he came from such base stock and unspeakable poverty that it was a mark of his achievement that he had climbed so high in life.(It turned out he actually had impeccable middle-class roots.) Tony was a certifiable "bully of integrity," who intimidated his colleagues by his unwillingness to compromise his principles in the interest of getting along. His fixation was that The Pennsylvania Gazette was, first and foremost, a quality magazine -- to be judged by the same standards as, say, The New Yorker or Harper's -- and not as the neutered, neutral puff sheet that many in the University administration wished the magazine to be. The mission of the magazine as Lyle saw it (and as the many administrations he served for over 30 years also put it) was to be "an objective reporter on the University of Pennsylvania." Tony took that charge quite literally, but it turned out that successive Penn administrations thought the magazine was really only another instrument to raise enough big bucks from the alumni so that Penn officials (with the exception of its magazine editors) could be the highest paid in the United States. Indeed, the administrations almost invariably wanted the magazine to include a column from the then-current Penn president in every issue -- a potential avenue for self-aggrandizement and puffery which Tony resisted as best he could, on the grounds that the inclusion of such an official voice (and undoubtedly a ghost written one at that) would turn the magazine into a house organ. Penn presidents like Sheldon Hackney reluctantly backed off when the "bully of integrity" refused to cave in and run their columns. Current president Judith Rodin, though, was more successful. By this time, the "bully" was approaching his 60th year. His resolution had been ground down by an unfavorable performance report from an alumni relations poohbah which came, ironically, in 1995 -- the same year his magazine had been chosen by the editors of Newsweek and collegial publications as the winner of the Sibley Award, given to honor the best alumni magazine in the country! Penn's Gazette better than Harvard's? Better than Princeton's? Unthinkable. Penn is rarely voted best of anything. But this encomium, unfortunately, did not ameliorate Tony's unfavorable performance rating. Tony, in short. was being shown the door. The "bully of integrity" had run into the bullies of bureaucracy. Perhaps the flunking grade was awarded because of Tony Lyle's many other integrity hang-ups. He believed, for example, that any reader who sent the Gazette a letter deserved to have it published -- no matter how crackpot that letter was. As a consequence, the magazine's Letters column was one of its liveliest features -- Trustees were attacked, "water buffaloes" celebrated, politically incorrect opinions aired. In short, no view, no matter how provocative, went unpublished. Tony even ran letters from indignant alumni who threatened to write the University out of their wills because some article or letter had aroused their ire. The Serrano exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art -- with its "Piss Christ" photograph --was a particular b_te noir. Of course, despite the irate ranter or two, most of recipients loved the Gazette -- and the university that sponsored it -- precisely for its candor. Constantly short-funded by the administration, the magazine had to appeal to its 80,000 alumni readers (who get the Gazette for free) for donations to keep its quality up. And the alumni mailed in as much as $200,000 after each appeal to show their support for the magazine whose undeniable integrity reminded them of the best things about their Penn experience. But that is all history. The bad news is that the Gazette has now embarked on a search for another editor, preferably tamer than the last one. The good news is that the "bully of integrity" has parachuted safely back to Earth.

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