Steve Leone, editor of the Concord Monitor—the second largest newspaper in New Hampshire—makes me long for the good old days of old-fashioned communications. He actually, personally, answers his own phone.
I know this because when I called him I actually got right through, despite the media’s frenetic immersion in the week before the state’s presidential primary.
“You answer your own phone?” I asked him incredulously, saying to myself, no voicemail, no screening secretary? “Yes,” he said calmly, “I pick up my phone right away.” The result: from our conversation, he suggested that I write an op-ed. In 24 hours it was in the newspaper and online.
My larger point is that with the most advanced, communications systems in history at our disposal, it keeps getting harder to get through to people for a contemporaneous two-way exchange. I know people in the media, in the civic/academic communities and even many among my own circle of friends, who do not answer their phones, irregularly check their voice mail, and barricade their emails with filters and spam-detection software. Some now advise text-messaging, which hardly can compare with the two-way telephone conversations of past decades.
Over fifteen years ago, the Wall Street Journal noted a survey that concluded it took an average of six calls for people at work to reach their party. I’ve experienced calling reporters and going through three tiers of press one, press two, press three. One wonders how they get fast scoops these days.
And don’t talk about the airlines, the banks and almost any major business these days. Even Southwest Airlines has gone to voicemail, which for so long sustained the old ‘three rings and a human answers’ practice.
Sure, everybody is overloaded with messages, but is the volume slowing the process of getting things moving or done? Also, so cheap is high-velocity, massive communication these days (no fretting about long-distance calls), that people are wont to make far more calls for far less purpose—i.e., lots of low-level trivia and gossip.
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