I've been a daily newspaper editor along the Front Range for 31 years now, 26 at the Rocky and 11 as its business editor. I've picked up a few things along the way that might be worth passing along:

* If you are covering an issue, and people on both sides of it are angry with you, you're probably on the right track.

* After working as city editor, state editor, national editor and business editor here, I would tell you that people who meet a payroll are far more impressive individuals than politicians, athletes or bureaucrats.

* Some companies have corporate communications departments that facilitate the flow of information to the public. Others clearly have marching orders to build a virtual brick wall around the company and its executives. Beware of the latter.

* When you get a press release on a company's quarterly earnings, and it doesn't mention net income in the first sentence, it means they've lost money and you will have to get into the fine print to find that out.

* Denver has a very open business community with low barriers to entry. I've seen people blow into town and make a mark in nine months. That can cut both ways, of course, but in Midwestern or Eastern cities, I'm told, people won't deal with you until you've been in town two or three generations.

* Sometimes a company will call and complain about things a reporter has had the nerve to ask. I repeat editor John Temple's dictum: Report aggressively, write conservatively.

* Talk to readers every chance you get, and listen to them. No matter how mean or moronic they may sound, God bless them for being readers.

* Once when I was city editor, I got on the phone with a woman who wanted us to come out to her house because she had a dog that could talk. Then put him on the phone, I said. She hung up.

* When I was city editor at the Longmont Daily Times-Call, we were beaten badly on a story one day by the (Boulder) Daily Camera. The managing editor told me, "Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you." I felt better.

* My old friend Dave Danforth, founder of the Aspen Daily News, had one of my favorite sayings displayed on his masthead: "If you don't want to see it in print, don't let it happen." I've used it often.

* For years, I've wanted to print out a Jackson Browne lyric, frame it and hang it in my workspace. From the song Lives in the Balance: "I want to know who the men in the shadows are/I want to hear somebody asking them why." But I never got around to it.

* I sometimes use another of Browne's lyrics, from his song The Road and the Sky: "Don't think it won't happen/Just because it hasn't happened yet."

* I first became aware of how sophisticated Denver voters are in May 1991, when Wellington Webb and Norm Early emerged from a crowded field of mayoral candidates to face each other in a runoff. Denver's black population at the time was about 8 percent.

* Managing upward is every bit as important as managing downward, probably more so.

* When mistakes or errors in judgment are made by someone at the paper, I harken back to the words of Ben Blackburn, the managing editor who hired me here: "As long as I find that a deliberate decision was made to do something a certain way, even if I don't agree with it I'm not going to get too mad. If I detect an absence of decisionmaking, I will become very angry."

* When I first started working at the Rocky, some gigantic news event occurred. I can't recall what it was. Editor Ralph Looney shook his finger at me and said, "This is the only story today. The only story! There are no other stories but this." I never forgot that.

* Once in a great while, when I really have to lock horns with a reporter, I'll say, "Look, I don't walk in here every morning thinking about what a big (jerk) I can be. But if the situation calls for me to be a (jerk), I'll be the biggest (jerk) you ever saw. You don't want that."

Business editor Rob Reuteman can be reached at 303-954-5177. To comment on this column, go to RockyMountain News.com/business.