by Mike Mosedale
POSTED MARCH 18, 1998-- A beat reporter's job is often, well, kind of beat. He might toil for weeks on end, filing nothing but dull, competent, soul-deadening dispatches. Cruel editors rob his copy of all flair. More often than not, he is saddled with stories bereft of a single amusing moment or one telling quote. Indeed, the cautious interview subject has become the bane of the contemporary news industry. Everyone, it seems, possesses some measure of media savvy these days. Everybody is an expert. Everybody is an insider. Blame it on celebrity journalism. Or blame it one TV. Or blame it on a confessional culture in which everyone tells all and reveals nothing. It sure does make for tiresome reading.

But every now and then, a reporter will stumble upon an unexpected and magical moment, a glittering little gift from the Journalistic Gods to Their most underpaid, overworked servant. The gift? The perfect quote, of course. It doesn't happen often, but, when it does, it is beautiful. And well-deserved. The typical beat reporter, after all, is a sort of tragi-comic character: a guy, maybe, with thinning hair, a raft of foiled ambitions, perhaps some alarming facial tics and, finally, an unfinished, much-neglected novel in the desk drawer. On bad days, he rues the fact that he didn't go to business school like Dad wanted.

The occasional gift of the perfect quote, though, makes it all worthwhile. So what if he has to drive a used Honda and the kids wait a few years for their orthodontia? Now and then the Gods still smile upon him. They certainly were smiling upon Strib staffer Jon Tevlin this week. It came in the form of an above-the-fold business section story on March 14 in which Tevlin recounted an episode of labor strife at Minneapolis' most spectacularly trendy eatery, the Loring Cafe and Bar.

Surely, you know the place. It's the one where every customer and staffer in the joint - even the busboys - looks as if they are breathlessly waiting to be discovered for the new Gap ad. In any event, the Loring, it seems, has been subjected to some pro-union pickets, which provoked this quote - yes, the perfect quote - from the Loring owner Jason McLean: "They are an eyesore, and I'm a very aesthetic person. It is completely uncharacteristic of what people expect from the Loring."