Sidebar: Adapt to Your Audience

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In college, I worked weekends as a copy boy for the New York Times. After a night of too many cold Budweisers and other stimulants, I’d sleep a few hours, then hop the subway to sleazy Times Square where I’d do menial chores for the guys who wrote the editorials that shaped world opinion. The Times, with its two distinct cultures, was an alien yet familiar place. I had never met people like the editors with their Manhattan world of education, wealth, and influence, whose offices were adorned with autographed photos of presidents and prime ministers, or with a framed letter from President Kennedy signed, simply, “Jack.” The union guys, however, who printed and delivered the paper, were my neighbors—ethnic working stiffs whose only connection to “the city” was their place of employment.