Tag: The News & Observer

Learn To Shut Your Mouth

I was in a meeting with Frank Daniels III, executive editor of The News & Observer, and I was in a lather: I didn’t “need” — I had to have — a dedicated server for a fledgling computer assisted reporting network I was building.

Frank Daniels III
Frank Daniels III

Lucky for me there was a good chance I’d get it.  Frank III was probably the most technological advanced newspaper editor in the United States.  Proof?  While some editors were still using typewriters, the computers in his house were networked.

So I made my pitch and he said OK.

But maybe he didn’t say it loud enough to suit to me, or slam his fist on the table say “OK!” So a few minutes later I start in on my pitch a second time.

Frank III interrupted me.

“When you get the answer you want you should learn to keep your mouth shut,” he said.

I stayed quiet, and I got my server. I also learned a valuable lesson, one I’ve used over and over since then to my great benefit: When I get the answer I want I don’t say another word.

Coming Monday: There’s No Law Against Dumb

A Stupid Mistake

The guy I was interviewing was telling one fib after another and I just got tired of it — that’s my excuse.

Getting lied to usually didn’t bother me, it just meant I was getting warm.  I was an investigative reporter for more than 35 years  and I heard people say plenty of things that were not true.   If you turn the heat up a lot of people will try to protect themselves any way they can — they’ll lie to your face.

Anyway, this guy had gone overboard.  He was taking me for a complete idiot and it finally got to me.   So when he told me he had never been an officer in a corporation I was asking about, and I was sitting there holding a document proving he had been an officer, I couldn’t take it anymore. I handed the paper across the desk to him and I said, “That was a lie you could have kept from telling.”

His lawyer immediately began jumping up and down, figuratively speaking, saying I had called his client a “liar,” which in a way I had.   The lawyer terminated the interview and there was nothing to do but get in my car and drive back to Raleigh.

What I had done was stupid, giving in to my temper. I had handed the lawyer an excuse to cut off series of extremely uncomfortable questions. So stupid.

Claude Sitton
Claude Sitton

It was a three-hour drive back to Raleigh, plenty enough time for him to get in touch with Claude Sitton, the executive editor of The News & Observer, and complain about me.

I parked my car, got on the elevator and rode up to the third floor, to the newsroom.  When the elevator door opened Sitton happened to be standing right there, as if he had been waiting on me, holding a mug of coffee.

I looked at him and he looked at me and then he asked me: “Well, was he lying?”  I said he was.

And that’s all that was said about that.

Coming Monday: The Secret