Editor’s Notebook: A labor of love

It’s Labor Day here in the Triad City Beat offices, and I’m spending it the way I have done just about every Labor Day for the last decade or so: I’m working.

The paper wants to come out on Wednesday; that’s the deal, and everyone here knows it. And everything that gets done on Monday doesn’t have to get done on Tuesday, when the garage door closes for good.

With me as always is Jordan Green, pecking away at stories of his own as I work my way through my list. As far as I can tell, we are the only ones in the building.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. As I see it, I’m doing the work I was born to do — living the dream, as they say — and I’m grateful for every minute of it.[pullquote]One of the first things I learned when I became president of a company was that there really is no such thing as a boss.[/pullquote]

I once had a boss of the attitude that Labor Day was an opportunity for working people to be thankful they had jobs at all, somewhat undermining the spirit of the holiday.

Now that I am, I suppose, a boss myself, I still don’t get that.

One of the first things I learned when I became president of a company was that there really is no such thing as a boss. As the top guy, I learned, I basically work for every single person under my employ: Make sure they get paid, that they have what they need to do their jobs, that we all reach personal goals as we come together to build this company.

A publisher’s job defies easy description — sometimes I say that I’m the connective tissue of the whole enterprise — but what it amounts to is that I do whatever it is that needs doing, from dropping off new newspaper boxes to covering an election. I’m the HR department, the tech department, the bookkeeper, the mail sorter and the head delivery driver as well as the custodian of the big picture.

I do these things gladly for my team, who have enough faith in my vision to help me see it through, and shore it up with an enormous amount of work that is often thankless. I do them because nobody can accomplish great things by himself, and because I’m so appreciative to have the support I need to do my job.

I do these things because it is an honor to do them.

So it’s a happy Labor Day for me. I’ve got a couple more items on my list, as does Green, and I think we can knock them out and get home soon to see if there’s any barbecue left for us.