In the early 1990’s, when I was learning to acquire, load, and analyze government databases for The News & Observer, I needed a big Billy Goat Gruff on my side.
It didn’t take state computer nerds long to figure out how little I knew and when they did they abused me, pretending it was harder — in other words, more expensive — than it really was to copy government records my newspaper was entitled by state law to have.
I needed Dan Woods, a one-of-a-kind newspaperman I had met in Indianapolis at a newspaper conference.
Woods had earned a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He had written Nine Track Express, a software program used by newspapers all over the country, including The N&O, to unpack databases with packed fields.
I recommended him and The N&O decided to try to hire him away from The Record of Hackensack. He was covering banking stories, a waste, in my opinion, of a person with his expertise. Frank Daniels III, the executive editor of The N&O, went to New York and took him to dinner and, soon after, Woods came to Raleigh to visit the paper. It looked like everything was falling into place and I would have my Billy Goat Gruff. I could hardly wait.
While he was in Raleigh Woods and I took a walk around downtown to get to know one another better and to make sure this was going to work.
I asked Woods if he knew FoxPro, a database management system.
He said, “No.”
“That’s a problem,” I said. And we walk another half a block in silence.
In those days most newspapers used Paradox or FoxPro. FoxPro was more robust — it could handle bigger databases and it was faster but it was also more difficult to learn. I was committed to FoxPro and so was The N&O, committed to big and fast.
And then Woods said, “I know the language FoxPro was written in. I can learn FoxPro in a weekend.”
We hired Dan, and he made short work of those state trolls that hadn’t let me pass. How I enjoyed seeing the look on their faces when they realized that The N&O had hired someone who knew more than they did.
Postscript: Dan returned to New York in 1995. He now runs his own company, Evolved Media. He and his team have written more than 25 books about business and technology. We remain close friends. For more than 20 years he has come to see us in October, when the N.C. State Fair comes to town. He and his wife, Daniele Gerard, have already made plane reservations for this year.
Coming Monday: A Taste Of Poor
