There is an I in his writing team

I, I, I, I, I, I, I … etc.

Yeah, sometimes I get obsessed with me.

Back in the 1980s, a wave of innovation swept U.S. workplaces. We were all supposed to stop thinking so individually and instead concentrate on contributing to teams.

The theory was that in business, we were screwing up badly if every person went off in different directions; but if we all pulled together, we could produce … um … you know, production or something.

Well, I had been on teams when I was a kid. I had played youth baseball, I had been on swimming teams, and I had been a wily (but not very fast) wide receiver in the daily touch-football games on the street in front of the Stasiowski home, so I knew what teams were. They were groups in which, if you screwed up, everybody noticed and made fun of you.

Understand, I like teams. I like playing together, I like working together, I love seeing what smart, enthusiastic people accomplish when they combine the best of their skills.

But I will not be shaken from my philosophy that writing is an individual pursuit that requires a person to push for his or her own vision of how best to make something – a news story, a novel, an e-mail message – come alive.

My vision of the power of the individual is so extreme that I urge writers not even to consider their readers. A writer’s individual curiosity should lead to his or her individual way of pursuing information, and that should culminate in an individual way of telling a story.

In a recent edition of The New York Times, I read an interview that infuriated me. A CEO was explaining her philosophy of hiring people, and she mentioned “team” so often, I thought maybe I had inadvertently turned to the sports page instead of the business section.

This quotation finally pushed me over the edge: “Early on, I was wowed by talent, and I was willing to set aside the idea that this person might not be a team player. Now, somebody needs to be able to work with people – that’s No. 1 on the list.”

In her office, in her industry, maybe. But boy, in a newsroom, I’ll put talent No. 1, even if the writer is ornery, arrogant and anti-social. Some remarkably gifted writers have personality defects that make me fear they’re going to enter the newsroom tomorrow morning with chainsaws blazing in both hands. (Hey, misfits: If you’re out there, send me your resumes.)

In the biography “Citizen Hearst,” author W.A. Swanberg describes a discussion William Randolph Hearst had in his office with three of his top editors who were complaining about the quirks of James Creelman, a prominent reporter. Hearst told them to take advantage of Creelman’s oversized ego:

“The beauty about Creelman,” (Hearst told the three), “is the fact that whatever you give him to do instantly becomes in his mind the most important assignment ever given any writer. Of course, it’s a form of egotism. He thinks that the very fact of the job being given him means that it’s a task of surpassing importance, else it would not have been given to so great a man as he.”

Hearst pointed out the window to City Hall Park across the way.

“Now if I asked one of you fellows to go out there and write a story about that fountain in the park, you’d either refuse or do it grudgingly, with the idea in the back of your head that I was crazy … but Creelman finds any assignment is dignified by being given to him. That’s why he’s so useful.”

I’ll take a roomful of Creelmans (Creelmen?), reporters who sometimes overwrite, sometimes fume, but never lose the thrill of and passion for squeezing their names between the headline and the first paragraph.

Yes, reporters and editors should have a shared purpose, to create exciting and meaningful newspapers. And yes, in extraordinary circumstances – hurricanes or tornadoes, plane crashes, epidemics – everyone must pull together, must, for the common good, temporarily suppress the ego.

But I welcome the prickly reporter’s friction that abrades both facile consensus and conventional wisdom. At the same time it makes editors angry, that friction also makes them think.

In theory, the newsroom team is a tempting fantasy, but its reality can become an atmosphere of enforced conformity that is the opposite of what we really want: a noisy marketplace of ideas and opinions that mirrors the world we cover.

Here’s the lineup for my writing team: I, I, I, I, I, I, I ... etc.

THE FINAL WORD: I grimace when I read the popular phrase “polar opposites,” an example of the cheapening of the language.

“Opposite” means “symmetrically opposed in position, direction, etc.” Adding “polar” creates a particularly bad redundancy because it leads a reader to think that “opposite” is less than absolute.

Jim Stasiowski, writing coach for Dolan Media Co., welcomes your questions and comments. Call him at (775) 354-2872, or write to 2499 Ivory Ann Drive, Sparks, Nev. 89436.

POSTED 11/5/09