It’s the eighties/nineties. A company making money from logistics wants to chat, and has invited specialised magazines to a press lunch. As editor of a logistics magazine I accept; I intend to ask questions and take photographs.
I don’t have to do this. Lazier hacks will listen with incomprehension
to the set speeches, eat the lunch and drink the wine (to excess), pick up the
company’s press releases with studio-perfect prints and publish them with nary
a correction.
My questions will be beyond the assistant press relations
manager and eventually I’ll be cloistered with the CEO. Probably he’ll find some
questions difficult to answer. Back at the office I’ll write a piece that
contains none of the bland, self-serving utterances of the press releases.
There’ll be splashes of humour too. I’ll have made an impression. The world
will open up and I’ll interview CEOs in Portland, Tokyo and Mjőllby (that’s
Sweden).
To further sicken you let me add I was moderately well paid
for this. After I retired the magazine faded and died. An easy life, then?
Compared with coal-mining, yes. But asking significant questions depends on
knowing the field. It helped that logistics (a vital tool in improving
industrial efficiency) interested me. Also I enjoyed finding out how they did
things elsewhere.
Asking questions is not at all like conversation. The
questioner chooses the direction, changes the gears and varies the speed. CEOs
get used to being interviewed and the trick is to ask them something new. That
makes them think. Say the subject is a new realtime stock control software package.
Just understanding what it does may test you. Being clever requires foxiness.
I couldn’t do it now. I can’t think on my feet any more.
More interesting than coal mining, though.