A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
By Rich Trzupek
Lessons Learned
It�s been seven years since I started working as a reporter. Time to reflect on lessons learned...
�Small government is not necessarily good government, but it has the best chance of being so.
�It is impossible to underestimate a politician�s ego.
�Elected officials who understand their ego�and are wiling to admit it (or even laugh about it)�are the most effective.
�There is a perception that compromise leads to the best decisions, by blending the best parts of divergent points of view. That is wrong. Most often, compromise is simply a matter of getting things done. People know the right thing to do and they compromise in order to accomplish some portion of it. In other words, 80 percent of the right thing is better than the wrong thing.
�Those who work in the big media, in general, live in an insular, unreal world. Worse, they don�t know�and don�t care�about what they don�t know.
�Those folks are also not very smart. It�s appalling to me that I can get quotes right�spend no more than 15 hours per week covering the news�while full-time reporters can�t accurately report what someone actually said. Spinning a story is bad enough. The inability to transcribe what a person actually said is inexcusable, but it happens every day.
�Hyperbole has replaced rational discussion. This applies to politics and to �issues.� The �other candidate� isn�t merely wrong�he or she is positively evil. People don�t fight a decision on its merits, they claim that enacting the measure will kill their children and result in the end of life as we know it�just for starters. While the general public deplores this state of affairs, they are unwilling�or perhaps unable�to do anything about it. Worse, they seem unable to react to anything else.
�The public is best served not by elected officials, but by elected officials who empower (I hate that word) a professional staff. When they are given clear direction, provided with the authority to accomplish those goals and shielded from the whims of politics, even an average staffer will be an asset. Left to dangle in the wind, the best staffer will retreat into a shell of ineffective self-protection and mindless bureaucracy.
�At their worst, public officials see the world only through the eyes of their own experience and priorities, rather than understanding the needs of the electorate as a whole.
�A corollary to that rule is that there is safety in sweating the small stuff. Time and again, I�ve seen public officials vote for a budget without a murmur of opposition and then, months later, turn around and argue about a small line item that they could have argued against when the budget was originally passed.
�Fanatics believe what they want to believe. Facts are entirely immaterial�and never well-received.
�With some notable exceptions, firefighters tend to complain, cops are cautious and�whatever the department�the lower on the totem pole a person happens to be, the more protective they are of their territory.
�The number of people who understand the importance of manners is so incredibly low that it would make Emily Post belch.
�You can agree or you can cajole. You can�t do both.
�People who worry about over-development define it thus: over-development consists of anything that is built after I build my home.
�The number of people who watch �American Idol� vastly exceeds the the number of people w ho can describe the events important to the War of 1812. If you want to know why American foreign policy is in crisis, you need look no further.
�A distant good friend is worth infinitely more than a friendly acquaintance who is close at hand.
�The best, and the worst, of government occurs behind closed doors.
�You�re much better off with someone you trust than you are with someone who agrees with you.
�The general public isn�t stupid, they�re just busy. (Except when they are stupid.)
�Time heals most wounds, but some people aren�t satisfied until each and every wound hemorages.
�Everyone may protesteth too much, but a good ethic joke still amuses.
�Those people who can admit that they were wrong are worth their weight in gold.
�Nothing annoys readers more than misspelling their child�s name. Nothing.
�People are bored by the details� which is fine�but a disturbing number of them go on to complain that nothing makes any sense. You can�t have it both ways.
�Good reporters will do what the majority of the reading public wants: they will seek out and report the most personal, disturbing and heart-breaking details of a tragedy. By definition, I will never, ever be a good reporter. I�m OK with that.
�Fear is the most dominant, and most destructive, motivating force in today�s world. �Accomplishment� and �progress� have become dirty words, replaced by incapacitating worry about any change what-so-ever. When people are afraid of a car wash, something is very, very wrong. FDR said that �the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.� If he were alive today, FDR would be utterly disgusted.
�In spite of all of our faults, the quiet generosity and empathetic nature of the ordinary, every day individual is still amazing.
