Bob Stock's Advice for Journalists

In light of all the deaths, memorials, funerals on this blog in recent months, it was decided to run this piece from the late reporter Bob Stock, a wry wit. The article is dated but still amusing to those of us who remember the good old days. But so many things are gone: copy paper, Perk, makeup men, office parties, the Press, new hotels. The yellowed clipping had no date but an ad on the back had a 1978 date. It ran on the op ed page which Stock edited. He died in 2003.

So here’s Bob Stock’s Advice for Journalists:

In his recent talk to Sigma Delta Chi, the professional journalism society, Mayor Perk was kind enough to quote from a column I wrote for the Sunday Magazine some years ago.

It seems only fair that I share the entire essay with persons, especially young journalists, who could not have read it the first time it was published.

It went as follows:

Young reporters rarely come to me for advice, perhaps because I dislike them intensely. I am sure they all smoke pot and are unkind to their parents.

Nevertheless, I am persuaded to offer them some journalistic pointers which will help them become as respected and well paid as I. These observations apply especially to The Plain Dealer, but they can be adapted to any publication.

1) Demand an adequate supply of paper and type on only one side of the sheet. Try not to think of the forests you are destroying.

2) Leave room between lines and in the margin so editors can express their own views.

3) Don’t park on the sidewalk.

4) Makeup men make a practice of throwing stories into page holes which are not quite big enough. Therefore always add a paragraph at the end which means nothing and can be thrown away with no loss. It is sometimes wise to put such a paragraph in the middle of the story too, so the editor will have something to kill. This improves his opinion of himself and makes him forget to kill the stuff you actually want printed.

5) If you are assigned to write plans for a new hotel in downtown Cleveland, make the report as colorful as possible, since many new hotels are announced daily.

6) Learn to play a musical instrument.

7) Don’t volunteer to tend bar at office parties because you will miss a lot of the fun.

8) If assigned to cover a fire, you will be expected to advise the firemen on their work. For example, I was the first reporter on the scene when the famed Hut bar at Superior and W. 3d caught fire. “Look out for broken bottles,” I warned.

9) Upon receiving an assignment, do not say, “Gee whiz, that is groovy.”

10) Read the paper every day so that when you get an assignment you don’t like, you can say, “We had that already.”

11) Read the Press every day so you can say, “They had that already.”

12) Avoid any story which lies within another reporter’s “beat,” or area of continuing responsibility, such as City Hall, the county courts, labor, medicine, education and bowling. With practice, any assignment whatsoever can be regretfully passed on to a beat reporter.

13) Do not refer to yourself as “a media” or “ one of the media.” You are not even a medium.

14) Try to think of the paper as your very own. And see what happens.