About that time I lost an argument with an article I’d written the previous week

Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Three, Issue 5

If you want to know about the mad punk rockers

If you want to know how to play guitar

If you want to know about any other suckers

You can read it in the Sunday papers, read it in the Sunday papers

Sunday papers don't ask no questions

Sunday papers don't get no lies

Sunday papers don't raise objections

Sunday papers ain't got no eyes

Brother's heading that way now I guess

He just read something made his face turn blue

Well I got nothing against the press

They wouldn't print it if it wasn't true

The Sunday Reader, May 5, 2024

He was speaking to me slowly, the way you would speak to a child.

I. Read. It. In. The. NEWSPAPER.

I was bewildered and befuddled. I’d only been a reporter for about a year. I’d taken easily to the photography, and the reporting was pretty straightforward: see what happens and write it down, inverted pyramid style.? I had dropped out of college and was happily wandering around Long Island’s North Fork working for a chain of small weekly newspapers in my little red four-on-the-floor Chevy Monza, the passenger seat piled up with lenses, film and burger wrappers.

I was completely clueless when it came to the part about dealing with people, and would be for quite some time. Still am, in many ways.

I was very patient – for me, anyway.

I know it was in the newspaper. I wrote that article. I’ll be writing a new one tomorrow that will say the Town Council has changed their minds.

We were standing in the Town Hall of Riverhead, New York, after a Town Council meeting. The Council had made some sort of a land use decision the previous week – I have zero recollection of the exact issue – I had written about it for the Suffolk Life Riverhead edition, Riverhead residents had read my article, were not amused by the decision and had registered their resentment with their elected representatives, and said representatives had exhibited the better part of valor and reversed themselves.

I’d filled up my notebook and was heading for my car when I made the mistake of stopping to talk with a Riverhead resident angry over the previous week’s decision. I thought I’d be helpful and explain the council’s reversal, and had instead ended up being shouted down.

By words I had written the previous week.

Yes, I said. I know what the article said.

I wrote it!

I’m telling you what will be in my next article, which will be in the next edition of the newspaper.

He thought about this for a moment, and then went back to his trump card:

That’s not what the NEWSPAPER said!

?Well, I thought, at least this has to be a first.

I’m losing an argument to an article I wrote last week.

So, I said to him casually, how do you think stories get in the newspaper?

His answer was to stare me straight in the eye and play his trump card once more:

I. Read. It. In. The. NEWSPAPER.

Now this story isn’t actually about him. It’s about me being a giant nerd, before being a nerd was cool and profitable.

In many, many ways being a cub reporter on a weekly newspaper covering eastern Long Island was a perfect fit for the creature I was in those days.

Long Island looks like an arm extending out from the New York coast 120 miles east into the Atlantic Ocean, ending in two forks that look like extended fingers. The South Fork is the famous one, home to the Hamptons, writers and artists and stars. The North Fork lacks the South’s fame and sandy ocean beaches, instead sharing a rocky shoreline with Long Island Sound. Both forks were more New England than New York because before the Long Island Railroad the East End was several days ride from New York, but a short boat trip away from Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Suffolk Life put out an edition for each of the little towns that dotted the East End. There were a half-dozen of us in the newsroom, each covering three to five little towns, and cranking out three to five stories per town each week.

So we were only in the newsroom a day or two a week. The rest of the week we spent in our cars, driving from town council meeting to land use hearing to court, before ending the week back in the newsroom pounding out story after story on scrap newsprint fed into Royal upright manual typewriters.

So there was little casual conversation in the newsroom, and none in my car. So 99 percent of my “conversations” were me asking pointed questions to town officials, writing stories and maybe getting a letter to the editor a few weeks later.

So I had little practice and no natural talent for impromptu discussions. I did, however, seem to have a natural talent for inexplicably infuriating a goodly percentage of people.

It wasn’t until two decades later that I finally understood. I was being offered a job by Belo and had gone to Dallas for several days of meetings. I got off the plane and was handed a packed schedule, plus a folder jammed with pages of questions for something called Myers Briggs.

1,000 questions, to be precise.

I found this really, really annoying, for two reasons. First, Belo wanted me to come to Dallas to build a technical infrastructure for the emerging world of new media. I needed every possible moment of the trip to look at their current tech stack and talk to their IT people and figure out if this was doable before moving my family across the country. A thousand questions like “Do you make friends easily?” were, at best, a waste of the little time I had in Dallas to make this decision.

Second, I’m a New Yorker. Woody Allen, who for a long time was the quintessential New Yorker, ?had famously and publicly been in therapy for decades. And then married his step-daughter. What exactly would he have done without the therapy? Would he have been sacrificing virgins in Time Square?

I arrived at Dr. Bob Rose’s office on the last day of the trip in the quietly annoyed but perfectly polite mode drill sergeants had taught me in the Army. Rose was friendly and began reading through my 1,000 answers while I contemplated the computer chaos I’d found at Belo. Fixing it seemed impossible; I was intrigued.

Suddenly Rose said “People either love you or hate you, and the ones that hate you cannot explain why.”

I sat straight up. He was offering to explain the situation that had puzzled me for decades.

Rose explained that most people think that introverts are shy, and extroverts are outgoing, where the real division is between those who are energized by interacting with others, and those who are drained by it.

The problem, he told me, is that you are professionally social. People see you get up and give a speech in front of hundreds, so they know you’re not shy.

Then they come by the next day and ask if you want to go to lunch with the gang, and you politely decline. You’re tired and would rather rest and recharge eating at your desk while reading by yourself.

But what they heard is rejection. And they react to that rejection.

Or you stop by their desk and ask if they have a client file. They say no, and you leave.

As far as you’re concerned, that was a perfectly successful conversation.

As far as they’re concerned, you didn’t ask about their child, or their dog, or their spouse. And they react to that. So they complain that you’re cold, or rude, or arrogant. So you ask for examples, and they don’t have any, because they are reacting to what you didn’t do.

Since they can’t name any actual examples, you decide their views are spurious at best and useless at worst, and start ignoring them. Which only goes to reinforce their complaints.

I did end up joining Belo, and when I arrived I followed the prescription Dr. Rose had laid out for me. I stopped eating quietly at my desk, instead taking a subordinate or two out to lunch. And to my surprise I found that when I was doing the inviting and kept the groups small, these lunches were enjoyable, rather than exhausting.

I also followed the rest of Dr. Rose’s prescriptions, and made sure to engage in small talk, though I never got any good at it.

But have no fear: I still managed to enjoy lots and lots and lots of people, but I annoyed them by pushing the transition from newspapers and terrestrial television to new media. So at least I was annoying for the right reasons!

Next on Perfecting Equilibrium

Tuesday May 7th?- The PE Digest:?The Week in Review and Easter Egg roundup

Thursday May 9th?- The PE Vlog:?A look at the Udio AI music generator

Friday May 10th?- Foto.Feola.Friday

Sunday May 12th — The new Golden Age of Black & White - We have entered a new Golden Age of Black and White Photography. The extraordinary image quality of monochrome digital sensors can be combined with the enormous dynamic range of newer display technologies such as Organic Light Emitting Diodes; OLED screens offer true blacks and greater dynamic range than was possible with film. The combination delivers image quality that rivals the large format 8x10 cameras and custom wet darkrooms available only to giants such as Ansel Adams.