The Goldman State
Ed Goldman is a longtime newspaper and magazine columnist, the author of five books and creator of The Goldman State, a three-times-a-week online column with subscribers in 40 states, Canada and Europe. A professional playwright, composer and painter, Ed has also taught journalism at five California Universities and community colleges. His bucket list includes becoming the victim of a corporate takeover. This podcast is an extension of his unique take on the world around us and his interpretation, with all the creativity imaginable, of what that would literally sound like if he were to speak it.
The Goldman State
Episode 73: Headline Miss Your Deadline. See You On the Breadline.
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Join me as I explore the concept of deadlines and their pervasive presence in our lives, from the world of journalism to the ultimate deadline of... well, life itself. Any idea where the word "deadline" even came from? And how about those self-imposed deadlines? Feeling a little guilt already?
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00:01 - Ed Goldman (Host)
Journalists like to make deadlines sound sacrosanct. When we ask a potential interviewee to call us back ASAP because you don't understand, I'm on deadline we're implying a life-and-death urgency to something that usually isn't. The thing is, all of us live on some version of deadlines. This would even include the ultimate deadline, as in cessation of breath, heartbeat and Netflix contract. Unless you believe, as many religions do, that death is only the beginning. As I've mentioned here before, I'd love to find out that reincarnation is real. It's the only way I'll ever be able to pay off some of my credit card bills. Now, every business and personal life has a series of deadlines that must be met. For business, it's pretty obvious you have to deliver the product or service to customers in a timely fashion if you want to A encourage their return business and, b minimize your chances of receiving letters written on embossed law firm letterhead. In our personal lives, we live on deadlines practically from the moment we leave that extended stay hotel called the Womb. We're made to feel we need to walk and talk by a certain age, while also learning that our onesies are not our bathrooms. In our early years, we're expected to figure out right from wrong, harmful from safe and edible food from topsoil. If we don't achieve these goals on schedule and our parents happen to have a coffee table filled with child development books, trouble can ensue. Now the word deadline used to mean just that. If you were an American Civil War prisoner circa 1860s and there were no available buildings or cells to contain you, a line a literal line was drawn in the ground to indicate your boundaries. That sounds a bit like an honor system Don't try to flee you fine Yankee boys, or we'll shoot you down like mad dogs, embarrasses me to say. See, even prison guards in the South had been taught courtliness. Then there's the fabled line in the sand that all the enemies of Israel in the Middle East, which is to say all the Middle East, defy Israel and even each other to cross. I've also heard the term deadline referred to in my beloved cowboy movies, sometimes as the demarcation of where sheep aren't allowed to wander onto cattle grazing turf, sometimes as the actual name of a town. I guess calling a town hard stop and end of story didn't sound menacing enough, even though they both imply the same thing. Hard stop, as you know, is pretty common these days for meaning when execs need a meeting to end so they can get to their waiting Learjet and niece from Baltimore in time to spend a week in the Poconos. Don't envy me. It'll be a working vacation. They'll likely announce in a staff-wide email. Proving execs can be hilarious.
02:43
Now I've written on or under deadlines all of my career. The ones I've dreaded the most are usually self-imposed, like for this podcast and for getting somewhere on time. When I have an interview scheduled for, say, a Tuesday and I'm unfamiliar with its precise location, I'll drive there on, say, monday to scope it out. There's no pressure on me to find it on that reconnaissance day, since I'm not expected there as yet. As a result, on D-Day I pretty much know how long it will take to get to my destination and, even better, exactly where that destination is. You'd think that GPS would have solved that problem some time back.
03:20
But when you interview people whose offices are tucked into vast corporate campuses or retail centers, whose building numbers and many streets seem to have been designed by Beelzebub while on a bender, you try to get as much data as you can in advance. This transit rehearsal has failed me only once. I drove to the destination the day before and then the day of my scheduled interview. But when I walked into the offices of my interviewee, his secretary informed me he'd, quote died unexpectedly, unquote, the night before adding quote I'm so sorry I didn't call you unquote, as she saw I was upset. Of course I was A man had died a husband, a father, a boss, and to my credit, I'd like to report. I didn't say you don't understand, I'm on a deadline.