The day I fell head over heels for Bill Campbell

I only got to interview Bill “Coach” Campbell once.

My mind flashed back to that solitary encounter today upon hearing that he had died. I was working for the San Jose Mercury News as a columnist in February 2012 when a press release slipped into my inbox about some new partnership between Columbia University and Stanford University to create a bi-coastal future of journalism center.

Having been a professional journalist since 1992, and having watched my beloved newspaper industry get decimated over the past decade, I was keenly interested in any big bets about things looking toward journalism’s future. But what caught my eye in this case was a line near the bottom that noted that Campbell was among the institute’s advisors.

Campbell? Turned out when I talked to the folks who would be running the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation, they said Campbell played a critical role in making the whole thing happen.

So, hoping against hope, I called his office asking for an interview. And to my surprise, he agreed. (But only to talk about the institute and not Apple, where he was still a board member then.)

During the 30-minute interview, he lived up to his reputation as a salty, straight-talking, no-nonsense guy. Naturally, the best lines couldn’t be printed in the column that was subsequently published.

My simple question: Why the seemingly sudden late-career interest in journalism?

“You’ve got to be scared to death that journalism is going away,” Campbell said. “We’re going to be left with a blogosphere full of assholes. People without the capability or the credibility are becoming the purveyors of information. It’s distressing that’s the kind of thing that’s occurring.”

Swoon.

Having been through several rounds of newspaper layoffs (that have never stopped ever since) and seen so many great journalists discarded — well, it was easy to be a sucker for someone who knew how to show his appreciation for our livelihood.

“I read four newspapers a day,” he continued. “The Merc is the first one I read every day. Then the Chron (San Francisco Chronicle), the (New York) Times, and the (Wall Street Journal). I’m an early riser.”

More, please.

“I try to read on the iPad,” he said. “But I work out a lot. And I like to have a hard copy of the paper. I thought about giving up the Journal. It’s a little bit of money. But I’m still a newspaper person.”

Thank you sir, may I have another?

“I’m also helping Mike McCue with Flipboard,” he said. “How do I get high quality information where I can read it? And trust that what I’m reading has been actually vetted.”

Perhaps the Brown Institute may never change the world, but it also encapsulated the way he worked. And at least publicly, he could be both brash and humble.

As a former Columbia football coach and on the board of the trustees, and having been deeply involved at Stanford, he described his role as simply being a bridge between East Coast and West Coast. Between a university near the nation’s media capital and another in its innovation epicenter.

“This was the easiest thing you’ve ever seen come together,” he said. “I wouldn’t overstate my role. My role was just getting people in a room together. I spend a lot of time behind the scenes and try to help people do the right thing. There are a lot better people in Silicon Valley who are a lot smarter than me.”

Of course, no one else I talked to agreed that his role has been so minimal. His role as leader and advisor had spanned several decades by this point, and people listened when he talked.

Most notably, Campbell had been a former marketing director at Apple who joined the board when Steve Jobs came back in 1997. He would be a trusted advisor during Jobs’ second stint. Campbell was just finishing a stretch as CEO of Intuit in 1998, and he would remain chairman of Intuit’s board until this past January.

He had the ability to help others find their way forward. And in the case of the Brown Institute, clearly, his enthusiasm, his passion, his vision, and his ability to connect others to solve problems had once again worked its magic.

“I’m excited and optimistic that we can figure this out,” Campbell said that day. “People want high quality journalism.”

RIP, Mr. Campbell.