Bob Quincy, my boss at The Charlotte News where I worked the summer after I graduated high school in 1960, taught me my first newspaper lesson.
Quincy said he was writing a column on deadline when he typed an offensive word to describe someone with a cleft lip. His gut said STOP but he didn’t. He kept typing, writing as fast as he could, trying to make deadline. Already, he said, his mind was composing the next sentence, and the next. But his gut still said STOP. Something is wrong. Find it. Fix it.
But he didn’t.
After the paper came out that afternoon, Quincy said, he got a telephone call from a father whose daughter was born with a cleft lip. He told Quincy how much the word he wrote in his column had hurt and he asked, “Why did you do that to my daughter?”
The lesson?
Your gut is smarter than your brain, Quincy told me. Ignore it at your peril.
NOTE: Bob was right. I don’t know how, but your gut sees things, knows things, and it will try to warn you: “Not that way. This way.”
Coming Friday: A Man And A Half