One for Susan Stamberg, and One Just for the Road

Let's see. What might a "personality" columnist do, approaching deadline and lacking the mental energy to accept a writing challenge, either in storytelling or in exposition?

He might choose to write about something that: a) reveals a little something about himself -- but not too much, really, because this is a long road we are on and we are dull with little to self-disclose; b) soothes the values of his readers -- or of those whom he would like to make his readers; c) allows him to use the word "whom" with great finesse and accuracy, enabling him to "pimp slap" those who would degrade our fine language; d) allows him to use the word "pimp slap," because he's all at once sick of this mental image of himself at the keyboard typing with his wittle pinkies extended, as if he's drinking tea; e) gives him motivation for looking up "pimp slap" on the Net, at which point he is sickened by its connotation -- but this is column writing cum blogging, and on deadline there's no going back!

For doesn't everything even remotely connected with newspapering come back to S.J. Perlman's boast about writing faster than anyone who writes better and better than anyone who writes faster?

Cue the simple but revelatory story:

As a big NPR fan, I am naturally fond of Bob Edwards, who was Morning Edition host for so many years. What did I like? The voice and the unhurried delivery and what I think were personal vignettes, though who really paid attention? I liked him. I was balancing my interest in what he was saying with my amazement at the audacity of the Audi passing me on the right. I wasn't cramming for an exam. I was multi-tasking.

Then NPR bounced him because they wanted to skew younger and hard-newsier, as if you couldn't already get enough on-scene, breaking-news reporting on other stations. I understand their fear that during big important national or international disasters you would jump to some AM news station and then forget to switch back to NPR for the insights and good judgment. But if NPR just turns into another "Here's our reporter at the scene duplicating all the other reporters at the scene" fact factory, why would I be listening to it in the first place? NPR is an oasis of moderate, middle-of-the-road news commentary in which the mouths talk slower and smarter.

This has all been chewed over already in the last two months. No breaking news in this space today. We’re doing commentary. But during those two months my wife pledged $60 to KQED, one of our local NPR stations. The vaguely indignant but mostly imploring letter saying Where Is It? fell into my hands.

So: I wrote a check for $30 to KQED and I wrote a second check for $30 to Bob Edwards and sent it to him at Morning Edition's D.C. address with a KQED envelope and a note suggesting he could either sign the back of the check and send it to KQED or cash it and buy himself a couple boutique Scotches at a D.C. newspaper bar.

I don't know which I'd prefer, his forwarding the check -- which I bet he will do since he doesn't strike me as a man who favors the bitter gesture -- or cashing it for his own pleasure.

I like to think of him as a newsman with a taste for feature-style journalism. And I tell you this from my own experience. There was never a newsman with a taste for feature-style journalism who did not enjoy a couple of free drinks, since doesn’t their "freeness" peel away at least one layer from that onion of guilt with which afternoon drinkers (and that was once an alternative definition of journalist) I am told are not altogether unfamiliar?

(Convoluted but elegant conclusion. Hint of personal problem to be disclosed over time. Good job! – Eds.)