The Life and Times Of Marianne Paskowski

A few years back Marianne Paskowski asked Henry Schleiff, “What keeps you up at night?” during the tail end of a panel session at an industry media event.

Schleiff, chairman and CEO of Court TV, was quick to reply: “I’ll tell you what keeps me up at night, Marianne: You do. I have a picture of you on my bedside table.”

That response had resonance for Jim Robbins, president and CEO of the MSO Cox Communications Inc.

“He thought it was really funny,” Schleiff recalls.

So when Robbins came to visit Schleiff at his house in the Hamptons to play golf one weekend, “we had a couple of drinks, and I put him in the guest room, and there was a picture of Marianne Paskowski by the bed. He came running out into the hall in his skivvies and said, 'What’s this?’ ”

What is it about Paskowski that sends such fear into the hearts of industry executives? As Paskowski, who has served as the leader of Multichannel News over the last 15 years, segues from her role as editor in chief and vice president of editorial development for the newspaper and the Reed Television Group to a new role as a consultant and columnist for Multichannel News, there appears no better time to investigate this important question as well as a host of many others.

For example, could it be true that Paskowski gave one of her business associates an S&M “gift” as a 50th birthday present? Why is it that one highly placed industry executive refers to her as Nurse Ratched, the icy presence in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — and another refers to her as Dorian Gray, the surreal character in Oscar Wilde’s famous novel?

Worse yet: Is it possible that this woman of a “certain age” still does not know how to fill a gas tank?

Carole Shander, vice president of public relations at Court TV, ’fesses up: “Neither Marianne or I ever pumped gas … Every time we drive to CTAM in Boston or anywhere, it’s always the same problem. We can go from gas station to gas station praying that something will say 'full serve.’ It’s pathetic.”

And yet, pathetic as Paskowski may be to some, others note a certain allure about her.

“She came to our Oxygen lunch at the NCTA [convention in June], and when Fabio came riding in on a white horse, he picked her out as the one he was going to swoop down and pick up,” recalls Geraldine Laybourne, chairman and CEO of Oxygen Media. “He knew instinctively that she’d ham it up.”

“Marianne was always like Dorian Gray for me, because her headshot never changes,” comments Michele James, founder of the executive-search firm James & Co., in speaking of the photo of Paskowski that has appeared for countless years with her editorial column. “The tartan plaid jacket makes her look like a Scottish piper, but she doesn’t care.

“She always said Reed’s too cheap to take another,” says James, adding that she believes a more vain motive is at hand.

It gets worse. “She finds me great fodder for constant mockery and ridicule,” reveals Meredith Wagner, executive vice president of public affairs at Lifetime Television.

Six years ago, Wagner was hobbling on crutches in San Francisco, on her way to a Lifetime party at the famed Fillmore West. She was exhausted, desperately trying to find a cab, when out of the blue a car window rolled down and Paskowski showed her face.

“This is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Paskowski said, looking Wagner up and down and demanding that she get in the cab. Says Wagner, “She became my Florence Nightingale, although she’s really more like Nurse Ratched.”

Paskowski’s career path started out in an unusual way. As she often reminds Multichannel News art director Nimish Shah, Paskowski went to art school.

Bob Donath, who is a consultant and writes about business-to-business marketing, explains that in her early career, Paskowski was an art director of Business Marketing, where Donath served as editor.

“At the time, we had a young reporter on the staff who was a 'J’ school grad, and as soon as we got Marianne and this woman on staff together, they started trading jobs. Marianne was fascinated with the idea of interviewing and writing stories. Meanwhile, the reporter became our star art director.”

Eventually, Paskowski left Business Marketing to join the edit staff of Adweek. But Donath reaped the rewards. Within two months, he and Paskowski were dating. A year later, they were married. “The best thing that ever happened to me was when my star reporter quit,” he says.

Donath’s tale gives pause for thought. Could the “P” in Paskowski actually stand for certain “positive” qualities?

Further questions reveal another side of Paskowski. Donath recalls that she quit her job as editor of a certain broadcasting trade publication because of management changes she didn’t agree with.

“It was like a Saturday-night massacre,” Donath says, explaining that her bosses asked her to lay off part of her staff.

“I think that as a manager, she’s shown that you can be tough, but compassionate,” Shander says.

“I’ve worked with Marianne for 15 years, and she’s been the greatest boss and a mentor for me,” says Carol Jordan, group deputy editor of Multichannel News. Jordan recalls that when Paskowski left her job as New York bureau chief of Electronic Media (now Television Week) to join Multichannel News, her desk consisted of an old door resting on two file cabinets.

“There was no rhyme or reason about how the magazine worked,” Jordan says. “She’s taught me so many things about how to work with people, but she’s also taught me how to keep it light and keep it fun.”

“One of the reasons I love Marianne is that she is so ready and eager to defend us, when 'people’ go after us,” says Leslie Ellis, an independent technology analyst who writes a bi-weekly column for Multichannel News. “There were more than a few occasions when whichever vendor would take issue with something I’d written, and she was like a dog with a bone in defending me. Not blindly, mind you.

“We’d talk, and I’d tell her what my version of the story was. She’d ask if I was sure I was right, and then get on the phone and Be The Boss in a way that always made me proud to be part of her staff.”

Ellis adds: “Once I thanked her for it, and she said something about loving the calls she got from tech vendors. 'It’s like candy,’ she said.”

Paskowski’s penchant to reveal the truth has made at least one executive wince: Char Beales, CEO of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.

On one occasion, “I revealed some sensitive info about a change at the top of another association. Yikes. MP was on the phone with the powers that be in minutes,” Beales recalls.

“Although they had no proof it was me who spilled my guts, I suspect that everyone knew. I learned a big lesson that day, and again when it was a page 1 story at Multi.”

Her “truths” are instructive in other ways, as well. In her editorial columns, “she has an uncanny ability to look at business issues that we think of so seriously and narrowly, and translate them back to us into how [they impact] the average household,” says Decker Anstrom, president and COO of Landmark Communications and a former president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

“As much as people get up at CTAM and we hear them say that the customer comes first, we need someone to remind us [when the customer service is lacking],” says Chris Moseley, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of the Hallmark Channel.

“Marianne, for me, is part of my Monday-morning ritual,” says Pam Euler Halling, senior vice president of marketing and programming for the MSO Insight Communications Co. “I get a cup of coffee; I turn on the computer, and I open up Multichannel News and read her column.

“I love to hang out with her — to learn from her and share stories with her,” Halling adds. “Because she knows what questions to ask and how to ask them.”

Court TV’s Schleiff puts it a slightly different way: “There are reporters and editors who are smart, and there are reporters and editors who have a great sense of humor. But there are very few individuals anywhere that are smart, funny and really wise. And that combination of virtues always has distinguished Marianne from so many others in the field.”

“This is going to sound like she died,” says Wagner. “But the respect for her in the industry is really off the chart.”