Yesterday I got a call from someone looking for an article from the Orange County Register. Now, I have to admit I get a little annoyed with that, but, hey, many readers don’t really understand the competitive nature of our relationship with the Register. All they know is they’re trying to track down some article and they call a “newspaperman” to help them. I’m pretty much a sap when it comes to helping people anyway so I put aside my ultra-competitive nature when they call. For some odd reason, though, I’ve noticed that more people are calling us for the sort of information folks used to call a library’s reference desk for.

In this case, though, Jack told me his aged brother, who was blind, had sent him an article from the Register about six weeks or so. The article listed multiple social services for the elderly and Jack wanted the article so he could get his brother James in touch with the right agencies in Orange County.

I’m pretty handy with a search engine so I started rooting around for it. Problem is the OC Register has one of the worst search engines. It’s a real junk pile and doesn’t seem to list matches in any sort of logical way. First I tried googling the article, but Jack couldn’t offer much in the way of specific key words. He got James on the phone and he couldn’t help much either. Their plight seemed even more urgent when Jack and James mentioned that James’ wife was suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer’s. They really needed help and I needed to put my investigative skills to work to help them the best way I could.

Seems I’ve met more than my share of reporters over the years who would have said, “Sorry, can’t help you. I’m on deadline,” and hung up on them. And I have to admit there’s nothing worse than getting a call while you’re in the middle of something that you just know is going to suck precious time. You see, that clock ticks like a bomb all day for those of us under constant deadlines. The boss won’t care later in the day when you’ve blown deadline because Mrs. Crabapple called to see if you could help her find the answers to the crossword puzzle from two weeks ago.

Still, as I’ve told many of my coworkers over the years, readers are customers. That’s more critical than ever these days with our industry experiencing such a dramatic paradigm shift that we’re losing circulation and ad revenue for the printed product (readership is growing for the Web, but we haven’t figured out how to make as much profit from it).

But in this case Jack and James weren’t customers. So why waste the time? Because you should always help your neighbors.

I eventually came up with some phone numbers to the social services agencies in the county (no easy feat, mind you. The county’s webmaster ought to make that site a bit more user friendly. It’s even hard to find just a general phone number for the county). I haven’t heard back from Jack so I’m hoping he tracked down what he needed. Both of them seemed surprised that I would spend so much time on their problem, but I told them it wasn’t a big deal. After all, that’s what neighbors are for and aren’t we all neighbors in some form or another?

P.S. For those of you who would like to get in touch with me to remind me of an event in town, to vent or just to chat, let me offer some advice. I’m most accessible through e-mail at paul.anderson@latimes.com. If you want to call me that’s fine, but I don’t always have time to answer it and sometimes I’m away from the desk. Sometimes I’m on such a tight deadline that I just have to let the call go to voicemail. If you choose to leave a message on the voicemail, tell me specifically what you’re calling about. Leaving just a name and a number will likely get you knocked down to the bottom of the list of priorities. I get a lot of calls from PR representatives trying to get us to write an article about something or an event that isn’t local at all. It’s a real waste of their time — and mine as well, so I don’t understand why they do this. But if you’re a local reader who wants to talk about something specific you’re more likely to get that call back if tell me what you’re calling about. Otherwise, I might suspect you’re a tricky flack trying to get me to call back about some event in Los Angeles that we can’t cover.

And if you’re trying to get in touch with us via fax, all I can say is, “Good luck!” Good grief, get an e-mail account already. Do you still listen to eight-track tapes, too?

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