Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [80]
He shrugged just as Beatrice the receptionist came in with coffee and milk.
“It feels as though I’m already operating at half speed. Actually I don’t want to talk about it. You walk around feeling like a teenager and immortal your whole life, and suddenly there isn’t much time left. But one thing is for sure – I don’t mean to spend the rest of it in this glass cage.”
He rubbed his chest. He had heart and artery problems, which was the reason for his going and why Berger was to start several months earlier than originally announced.
Berger turned and looked out over the landscape of the newsroom. She saw a reporter and a photographer heading for the lift, perhaps on their way to cover the May Day parade.
“Håkan … if I’m being a nuisance or if you’re busy today, I’ll come back tomorrow or the day after.”
“Today’s task is to write an editorial on the demonstrations. I could do it in my sleep. If the pinkos want to start a war with Denmark, then I have to explain why they’re wrong. If the pinkos want to avoid a war with Denmark, I have to explain why they’re wrong.”
“Denmark?”
“Correct. The message on May Day has to touch on the immigrant integration question. The pinkos, of course, no matter what they say, are wrong.”
He burst out laughing.
“Always so cynical?”
“Welcome to S.M.P.”
Erika had never had an opinion about Morander. He was an anonymous power figure among the elite of editors-in-chief. In his editorials he came across as boring and conservative. Expert in complaining about taxes, and a typical libertarian when it came to freedom of the press. But she had never met him in person.
“Do you have time to tell me about the job?”
“I’m gone at the end of June. We’ll work side by side for two months. You’ll discover positive things and negative things. I’m a cynic, so mostly I see the negative things.”
He got up and stood next to her to look through the glass at the newsroom.
“You’ll discover that – it comes with the job – you’re going to have a number of adversaries out there – daily editors and veterans among the editors who have created their own little empires. They have their own club that you can’t join. They’ll try to stretch the boundaries, to push through their own headlines and angles. You’ll have to fight hard to hold your own.”
Berger nodded.
“Your night editors are Billinger and Karlsson … they’re a whole chapter unto themselves. They hate each other and, importantly, they don’t work the same shift, but they both act as if they’re publishers and editors-in-chief. Then there’s Anders Holm, the news editor – you’ll be working with him a lot. You’ll have your share of clashes with him. In point of fact, he’s the one who gets S.M.P. out every day. Some of the reporters are prize primadonnas, and some of them should really be put out to grass.”
“Have you got any good colleagues?”
Morander laughed again.
“Oh yes, but you’re going to have to decide for yourself which ones you can get along with. Some of the reporters out there are seriously good.”
“How about management?”
“Magnus Borgsjö is chairman of the board. He was the one who recruited you. He’s charming. A bit old school and yet at the same time a bit of a reformer, but he’s above all the one who makes the decisions. Some of the board members, including several from the family which owns the paper, mostly seem to sit and kill time, while others flutter around, professional board-member types.”
“You don’t seem to be exactly enamoured of your board.”
“There’s a division of labour. We put out the paper. They take care of the finances. They’re not supposed to interfere with the content, but situations do crop up. To be honest, Erika, between the two of us, this is going to be tough.”
“Why’s that?”
“Circulation has dropped by nearly 150,000 copies since the glory days of the ’60s, and there may soon come a time when S.M.P. is no longer profitable. We’ve reorganized, cut more than 180 jobs since 1980. We went over to tabloid format – which we should have done twenty years sooner. S.M.P. is still one of the big