Most people dislike admitting they don't know something. To some questions, however, the only honest answer is, "I don't know."
Editors past a certain threshold of seniority can be especially sensitive about this. People expect them to know things. People expect them to have answers.
Yet, several times a week, this editor, having passed his share of seniority thresholds, must respond by telephone—usually to someone who sounds wonderfully young and eager—with a confession of ignorance to a question he has come to dread.
The e-mail context
Context is in order. On a normal work day, this editor receives 250-300 e-mails, plus 100 or so that go to the junk folder. The load probably is normal for anyone who works.
Like everyone's, the e-mail queue here bloats with messages in languages other than English, with offers to share fortunes with anyone willing to reveal a checking account number, with remedies for various physical ailments and deficiencies, with sales pitches, and with e-mails following up e-mails sent earlier.
Those messages die on sight.
Yet amid that dross hide items worth, even demanding, attention, such as questions from subscribers or colleagues, proposals for contributed articles, meeting requests from company vice-presidents, and news releases meriting development into stories for the web site and magazine.
Those e-mails receive readings, usually soon after they arrive. OGJ subscribers are paying customers and deserve service. Colleagues have deadlines. News doesn't wait. Vice-presidents think they shouldn't have to.
So this editor does pay attention to e-mails that flood his way. And because he's part of a news operation and connected with various corporate undertakings and affiliated vice-presidents, the attention is prompt.
Responses, though, are here now then gone forever. A leisurely circling back is not an option at OGJ. The e-mail queue is an assembly line on which this editor spends as little time as possible. Other responsibilities loom. They're usually more important.
It's into this contest for scarce time and fleeting attention that the dreaded question intrudes by phone: "Did you get the press release I e-mailed you 2 weeks ago?"
Two weeks ago? Does anybody remember an e-mail that arrived 2 weeks ago? One week ago? The day before yesterday?
In the e-mail record, 2 weeks ago is prehistoric. With a few, inevitably hard-to-find exceptions, a 2-week-old e-mail is the communicative equivalent of a stick figure on the wall of some long-lost cave.
Nearly always, the honest answer to the dreaded question is, "I don't know."
And, sometimes, that's the response callers receive. Usually, it disarms them. Usually, they mumble something about resending the message and hang up.
Expanded version
If both parties to these calls wanted to spend more time than either of them do, an expanded version of the honest answer might be useful. It would go something like this:
"I probably got your e-mail. If the subject line made clear the topic wasn't right for OGJ, I deleted the message without opening it.
"If the subject did look promising, I opened the message. I ignored your note about how fascinating OGJ readers would find the story and skipped directly to the press release to make my own judgment.
"If what I found there had news value I forwarded the e-mail to someone on the staff to check what OGJ might already have run on the topic, to anticipate questions our readers would ask, and to conduct whatever research might be needed to assure whatever story we wrote answered them.
"If that happened, you could have read the story online by now and had no need to call. If the release contained no news by OGJ's well-honed standards, which should be clear to anyone who has read a few stories on www.ogj.com, your e-mail is long gone and just as long forgotten.
"So I don't know if I received your e-mail. I probably did, though, so don't bother sending it again.
"Have a nice day."
