Every good professional writer plays a long game (because pretty much 100% of everything is bullsh*t)

Joan Kron knows all about that…

There’s a back story behind every story. For instance, “Dueling Facelifts”—a shootout over techniques between four surgeons who were operating on two sets of twins. While covering the competition, I was accused of unethical behavior. One of the doctors could not imagine how I had located two of the twins. I must have read a medical chart upside down on his desk, he complained.

Linda defended me. Actually, I had found the twins quite easily. Another one of the surgeons had told me, on the record, where these twins worked. How many sets of twins do you think were employed then by Southwest Airlines as flight attendants? Six. But only one pair in that age group. It took me about an hour to get a message to them and a call back.

I was eventually exonerated, but not before being barred by one plastic-surgery society from its annual scientific sessions.

The society soon learned that when you ban one member of the press, you have to ban every member of the press. That year the society got no press coverage of its meeting.

The following year they gave me a journalism award.