No excuse not to have a notebook with you

We have been exhorting reporters to ALWAYS carry a notebook and pen. You cannot be a journalist we tell them if you are not writing. It seems pretty basic.

Our fabulous local consultant is the biggest proponent of this push. He himself is never without a tiny notebook he carries in a shirt pocket. It's filled with notes of importance in his perfect tiny writing. Del sent him into ecstasies when he brought him back a bunch of little notebooks from a trip to London. He gave one of these precious notebooks to a top editor when that editor came to a meeting -- unforgivably -- without paper and writing instrument.

Still, when we began a recent meeting reporters came straggling into the conference room without notebooks, a signal they don't foresee anything interesting or important happening.

This time, instead of nagging, our consultant stood up in front of them, folded a single sheet of paper lengthwise, ripped it in thirds, and piles up the sections. With a clip on top, he had an instant baby-notebook. There is no excuse to be without a notebook, he told them again.

We laughed that next he was going to turn a page of newspaper into a printer's hat for them.