“Garbage in, garbage out.”
A printing press operator I worked with at one time used to say that anytime we questioned the quality of photo reproduction in the paper. He was a little too quick to dismiss questions about the quality of his work on the press with that phrase, but in a broader sense it holds true. And it can hold true for stories, too.
It didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to set it up to print as well as possible. He was good at his job. But he did like to use that phrase as a way to quietly shift blame if something didn’t look good. Still, he was right that output could only be as good as the input.
All of the editors at COLE Publishing are constantly pushing content, daily to the sites, monthly for print. In the scramble to feed the machine, it’s easy to be happy just to have a story, any story, and to hit the deadline. It serves our immediate need to fill pages, but it doesn’t always serve the reader.
The work you do is quite different from mine, but there’s a parallel: If you’re not putting your best plans together, devoting your greatest resources, it’ll be reflected in the results.
Municipal utilities have plenty stacked against them. Money and other resources are often tight. Population growth can be overwhelming. Aging infrastructure isn’t always willing to accommodate a rehab and replacement schedule. But that doesn’t prevent success.
It’s difficult, I know, but doing the best possible work you can do every day will have long-lasting effects. I can get behind on a deadline and push a story through that I might otherwise spend more time on. I never feel good about it, but a deadline is a deadline, and as soon as one issue is done I’m onto the next with a blank set of pages to fill. Readers may or may not notice a story that could have been stronger, but either way they’ll quickly shift attention back to their own busy schedules.
For you, the difference between doing a job completely and correctly and just hitting a deadline can have long-term consequences. A poor job could result in lost efficiency or premature failure or repair needs, all of which is very costly. And it can have a real impact on your customers — service interruptions, road closures, higher rates, poorer water quality and the list goes on. You don’t start with a fresh set of pages every month. The work you do has a real, tangible and cumulative effect on the communities you serve.
That’s a lot of weight, often without adequate financial support, but it has an impact on the lives of everyone you serve.
Thanks for doing what you do.
Enjoy this month’s issue.
