Over the last decade or so, it must have seemed to Maggie Barnes that my main ambition was to make her professional life as miserable as possible.
Truth be known, it wasn't my main ambition.
Just kind of a nice fringe benefit.
For the last 16 years, among her myriad other duties, Barnes handled public relations for A.O. Fox Memorial Hospital in Oneonta.
That last sentence employed the past tense because Maggie Barnes is no longer employed by Fox Hospital.
The details of why Fox and Barnes recently parted company haven't been revealed, but it seems incomprehensible that Barnes isn't the spokeswoman for Fox Hospital anymore.
There are several local public relations people who do a fine job and are worthy of respect, but Maggie Barnes has been the gold standard for the 11 years I've been editor of The Daily Star.
When it came to her hospital, she was more loyal than a hound dog, and harder-working than whoever might be Madonna's current publicist.
In the years before Fox and the much-larger Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital started combining services, competition between the two was fierce, and Barnes was Fox's best weapon in the battle for press coverage.
On top of all her efforts for her employer, Maggie and her husband, Robert Barnes, Oneonta's fire chief, have been incredibly active in civic and charitable organizations and local emergency-preparedness efforts.
So, why did I make Maggie's professional life so miserable _ or more accurately from my standpoint _ why might she have thought that I made things difficult for her?
Well, for one thing, it was a lot of fun to see her get all worked up over something we wrote or didn't write. Moreover, it was a matter of priorities for the hospital and the newspaper.
When a hospital wants to keep some potential news item under wraps, and a newspaper wants to unwrap it, there is bound to be the occasional difference of opinion.
When I became editor of The Daily Star, Maggie had already dealt with a few of my predecessors, and asked for a luncheon meeting to size up how the new guy might treat her hospital.
Maggie says we had an argument that day, but I really don't remember. She's blessed with a photographic memory _ it's actually rather creepy how she can recite years-old conversations word-for-word _ so if she says we had an argument, I guess we had an argument.
It certainly wasn't the last one we ever had.
I do remember an incident from several years back in which a gentleman fell off the roof of one of the taller buildings around here and was admitted to Fox.
One of our reporters called Maggie and asked her to see if the man would consent to an interview.
When the reporter told me that Maggie said the man didn't want to talk to us, I instructed the reporter to bypass Maggie and call the man's room.
The gentleman told the reporter to come right on down, that he would be happy to be interviewed.
So, the front page of the next day's Daily Star had a story and a heartwarming photo of the smiling man with happy family members gathered at his hospital bedside.
As it turned out, that day Maggie and I had scheduled one of our twice-yearly informational lunches at a local restaurant.
Maggie did not pause for conversational pleasantries. Her first bitter words accused me of stabbing her in the back.
Then she got angry.
Like any other excellent public relations person, she didn't like surprises. It wasn't that the coverage cast Fox Hospital in a bad light _ quite the contrary. It was that she didn't know the story was coming.
Unfortunately for Maggie, her rancor was wasted on me. I smiled and told her it was a story that our readers deserved to see and I said something along the lines of "that's the way the game is played."
Maggie learned to play the game very, very well, winning out most of the time when there was a dispute between us about coverage of her beloved hospital.
Any top public relations professional will tell you that the hardest part of the job isn't dealing with the news media, it's persuading an employer that the media have a job to do.
And the best way to deal with a potentially damaging story is to get out in front of it, be informative and do what's possible to control how it comes to light.
Many organizations, companies and politicians never practice that policy, to their detriment. But Maggie Barnes did it courageously and effectively all during her tenure at Fox.
Maggie recently founded her own public relations company: MB Communications (reachable at www.mbcommunicationsonline.com and 607-287-5553).
I have no doubt it will be a rousing success.
After all, she's the best.
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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.
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