Life Lessons, Newsroom Style

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010

The best lesson I ever learned in the news business was never to get caught off guard when someone hangs up on you.

Those of you not in the news business most likely have not had the pleasure of being hung up on by strangers repeatedly, unless you have somehow found yourself in the telephone solicitation dodge, in which case you have both my deepest sympathy and my never-ending antipathy.

The best lesson I learned as a reporter is that when someone hangs up on you, perhaps after you have asked them a rather personal question surrounding the whereabouts of their missing husband, your surest bet is to jump right back on that horse and ring them back. “Hello, it’s Michael P. Rellahan calling again from the Daily Local News,” you say with a tone that suggests that sugar would not melt in your mouth. “We must have gotten disconnected. You were going to mention something about your missing husband.”

That lesson came from the heroic Miami crime reporter Edna Buchanan, who used it to her benefit on any number of occasions. (As a corollary that lesson, one former Daily Local News reporter who, when people tired to shut her off by saying, “I can’t comment on that” when she would ask a simple question about the whereabouts of their missing husband, liked to ask, “Well, if you could comment, what would you say?”)

But perhaps the second best lesson that I learned in the news business came from a photographer. And if you know anything about newspaper photographers, as I do, you will of course be surprised that they have anything useful in the way of lessons to impart, with the exception of, “If the food is free, don’t knock it.”

My photographer buddy from the old Suburban and Wayne Times, Dave Hickey, would usually find himself driving me to an assignment. He did not mind doing it, first because his car was bigger than my old Volkswagen and he could sprawl out over the front seat, and second his car was equipped with a cassette tape deck on which we could listen to any number of bootleg Bruce Springsteen recordings.

His lesson was, “Always have more than one route to get to your destination.” Dave hated to be stuck in traffic, as I do, and loved to find new ways to get from Point A to Point B. When you drove with Dave, you were never forced to sit in a long line of cars behind a spilled lumber truck, because he always knew a second, or third, way to get where you were going.

I tell you this in hopes that all you people who are driving into West Chester from points west of Marshallton have found suitable alternatives to the stretch of Strasburg Road over the Copes Bridge, which closed last week for repairs that may take until the early years of the presidential administration of Miley Cyrus. You may have simply chosen the old Route 322 substitution to get you to and from work, but for my money that route lads to traffic and, thus, to madness.

The topic came up among a few of us courtroom denizens on Wednesday as we again played a round in the never-ending game of fun and glee, “Waiting For The Judge To Take The Bench.” One deputy wondered what the best way around the closed bridge was, and so we all pitched in and gave out various options. I found myself riddled with alternatives, since the Hickey Rules have stuck with me lo these many years. I had already found my ways around the Creeks and Allertons and Lucky Hills and Harmony Hills roads many times before, and could pass out suggestions like so many business cards.

I would not want to say that the state Department of Transportation is in the business of closing bridges along various roads in the county on a semi-regular basis simply to improve the geographical knowledge of daily commuters to West Chester, so I won’t. But in the end, forcing detours on drivers does give people a new view of the countryside around them, and the scenery they have been afforded. Without having to make the detour, how many people would never have seen the Jeffers Ford Bridge over the Brandywine, or the remarkable examples of changing architecture along Hillsdale Road?

Take my word; it is always best to have more than one road to take on your way to wherever it is you are going. And don’t try to win at the old judge-waiting game: they hold all the cards.