My son gave me a pocket tape recorder for Christmas because he’s seen me almost crash my car when I have one of my brainstorms and start frantically searching the front seat for a piece of paper and pencil to write with while driving along I-88 at 70 mph.
Cell phone users are no problem compared to a journalist trying to remember a “great” idea.
Much of my good thinking comes when I’m driving. Most of it is immediately forgotten once I reach home base. “Now what was it I was going to write about in my column when I passed the Highland Avenue exit?”
So during the past couple weeks I have filled the tape recorder, while driving safely, I might add, with all sorts of observations such as why modern communications allows us to talk clearly with an astronaut on the moon but I still have trouble ordering a cup of coffee at McDonald’s through the squawk box.
“Why doesn’t somebody do something about this? Column idea!”
Here are the contents of my first holiday tape in no particular order.
•The Chicago Bulls fired coach Scott Skiles on Christmas Eve. Our friends in the media acted like this was an act of unfathomable cruelty. The Tribune sports page even ran a list of other “famous” Christmas firings.
Now I don’t want to sound like Scrooge here, but give me a break. The guy has seven million bucks coming to him. Quick! Somebody fire me on Christmas with an obligation to pay me $7 million for doing nothing. It sure as heck beats a membership in the “Jelly of the Month Club.”
If anything, the Bulls probably did the Skiles family a favor. Instead of having to run another practice session, Scott got to stay home in his jammies on Christmas morning and open his presents. My bet is Mister and Missus Skiles will spend the rest of the winter in Florida or Arizona. Poor Scott.
•My friend Al was telling me about a particularly stressful time in his business career.
“Sales were tough. Cash flow was tougher. I had some personnel problems,” he recalled. “But I went to work one day determined to stay positive. I am a religious person with some strong opinions about theology.
“So I decided that day that after each telephone call, personal communication or relationship, I would just say ‘thank you, lord.’
“Early that day my largest client called to tell me that they were moving their business to another company. This was all I needed to jump over the cliff. But, I said ‘thank you, lord’, and moved on with my day, not exactly sure how I was going to save my company.
“Later that same day, I got another phone call from a prospective client that I had been working on for several months. He told me that we had won the business. In fact, it turned out to be the best piece of business we ever had, far eclipsing the one we had just lost. I hung up the phone and said ‘thank you, lord.’
“I’m not saying that there was heavenly intervention here. But, I just found a way to put things into perspective. Sometimes the big things aren’t so big, and the little things are bigger than they may appear. It was comforting to me to say ‘thank you, lord’ and things just worked out for me.”
•The end of the year brings us all the “Year in Review” stories on TV and in the newspapers. It’s a staple of the news industry. Holiday season? Slow news days? “Let’s do a year in review!”
There are certain stories that editors automatically turn to fill news holes. I have been assigned a few of these stories myself in a previous life as a daily newspaper reporter.
One assignment that I particularly dreaded while working for the Chicago Tribune was the Dec. 7 “man on the street” interview to ask people if they knew what that day was. (Of course, the answer was that it was the 30th, 31st, 32nd—whatever—nowadays we just passed the 62nd—anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor). A photographer went with me to provide a photographic record of these historical (or should I say hysterical?) moments.
When I was at the City News Bureau of Chicago, each year the reporter covering the Criminal Courts Building at 26th and California, was required to file a story on the anniversary of the escape from Cook County Jail of “Terrible Tommy O’Connor.” He was due to be hanged but has never been seen since. Ben Hecht wrote a wonderful screenplay based on this incident called “The Front Page.”
When it was my turn to do this story, I actually went to the basement of the building to see the pile of lumber that was the actual gallows still waiting for Tommy. This was in the early 70s. By then the story was more than 40 years old. I suspect Tommy has long since met his maker but it would not be beyond my imagination that some editor, looking to fill space, will eventually assign that story once again to some young reporter.
Oh well, it’s more exciting than writing obituaries.
And that’s all I have to report from my car.
Contact publisher Jim Elsener at jelsener@thebusinessledger.com or at 630-428-8788.