the editor talks with you

Hiring is a joyous occasion. It is full of hope, expectation and promise. The new hires feel good about landing a job and a bit apprehensive about what they must learn to do in the early weeks to assure everyone involved that they made a good decision. Those welcoming them on board realize they will invest time in teaching the new hires what to do and “how we do it here.” If they are open minded, they hope the new hires will bring their brains to work, challenge some of the ways “we do it here” and come up with a few better ways to get even better results.

One of my many stupid assumptions about new hires was about my future wife. My boss had a bad habit of hiring young journalism school graduates – not for their brains but for their looks. As an old bachelor, he was probably looking as much for a girl friend as a good reporter. When he introduced me to MacLeod, I dismissed her as just another shapely young woman he had fallen for. Was I ever wrong. She proved to be the best hire – since me – he ever made. She was bright, talented, had character, determination and a can-do attitude. I’m still amazed that she married me.

One of my worst hires was a young man with a pregnant wife. We quickly discovered that his reporting samples were the result of hard work on the part of his last editor. After several weeks of agony, we finally decided he had no future with us. Since I was the one who hired him, I had to give him the bad news. Firing is never fun. If you find you enjoy it, you should be ashamed. You must learn to suppress your sadist streak. Firing is supposed to be as bad for the firer as the firee. One of our best women reporters read me the riot act over letting him go. “Didn’t you know the poor guy’s wife is about to have a baby?” Sharon demanded. “What has that got to do with it?” I stormed back. “He couldn’t cut it here.” “At least you could have waited until after the baby was born,” she said. Somewhat chastened, I told her, “I gave him a head start on finding another job.”

Sharon went on to larger assignments including a stint covering Indira Gandhi’s troubled government in India. She wrote one day that she had forgiven me for firing an incompetent reporter and had come to realize that firing people isn’t much fun but sometimes must be done. Sharon had inherited an apartment the last reporter had rented with a housekeeper and her husband as driver and interpreter. Mrs. Gandhi, in her infinite wisdom, had ordered her predecessor out the country for a series of articles critical of her decisions. American reporters had some gall to come into her country and criticize her.

Sharon’s driver informed her that his wife was a member of the “vaishyas caste” and did not clean bathrooms. He did not do them either, he told her. “I fired them both on the spot,” she wrote. “Now I understand.”

Next: Reasons for thanks

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