The Cost of Losing the People Who Know Things
What happens when institutions stop valuing the people who know what they're doing
Institutions die long before they collapse.
This may be happening to journalism right now.
The first symptom is the departure of the people who know things. The veteran reporter who can spot a fabricated source in five minutes. The military officer who understands logistics because he’s spent twenty years moving troops and supplies. The career civil servant who remembers why a rule exists because she was there when the last disaster happened.
These people rarely become famous. They’re often expensive, sometimes stubborn, and frequently irritating to management. They ask difficult questions. They challenge assumptions. They remember mistakes everyone else would rather forget.
They are also the reason institutions work.
When organizations begin valuing loyalty more than expertise, these are usually the first people to go.
History is littered with examples.
In the late 1930s, Stalin purged the Soviet military because he feared they could be a threat to his power. Thousands of officers were arrested, imprisoned, or executed. Experienced commanders disappeared. Political reliability became more important than military competence.
Then Hitler invaded.
The German army crossed the Soviet border in June 1941 and delivered one of the most devastating military defeats in history. Entire Soviet armies were surrounded and destroyed. Millions of soldiers were killed or captured.
The laws of war proved indifferent to political loyalty.
Stalin eventually learned that lesson the hard way. The Soviet Union survived because experienced military leaders were promoted, restored, or empowered. Talent became difficult to ignore when survival depended on it.
The same principle applies far beyond the battlefield.
Every profession develops expertise through accumulated experience.
A good reporter learns how people lie. They learn it after thousands of interviews.
They learn which sources consistently exaggerate. Which politicians evade questions. Which public records offices hide information. Which statistics deserve another look.
They learn what doesn’t smell right.
When a veteran reporter says something feels wrong, the explanation is often invisible. They may not immediately know why. The only answer may sound like something from an old movie: “I’ve got a gut feeling.” Years of experience are processing information beneath the surface. Call it intuition. Call it instinct. It’s really experience.
The same is true in government.
A career employee at a public agency may know where previous administrations failed. They may remember which policies produced unintended consequences. They may recognize a problem that appears new only because everyone who encountered it before has retired.
Their value becomes obvious after they’re gone.
The modern economy has spent decades treating expertise as a cost center. Lay off senior employees. Replace them with cheaper workers. Offer buyouts.
And the spreadsheets do improve. For a while.
But then a crisis arrives. A pandemic. A war. A natural disaster. A financial meltdown.
Suddenly everyone starts looking for the people who used to know how to handle those situations.
News organizations are experiencing this problem in real time.
Across television, radio, newspapers, and digital media, veteran journalists have been shown the door. Some were pushed out by shrinking budgets. Others by corporate mergers. Others because executives decided experience costs too much.
Some were fired because they stood up for their principles.
The danger for journalism is that audiences often can’t see the difference until it’s too late.
The invisible assets are often the difference between journalism and content.
Every institution eventually encounters reality. And reality doesn’t care about political loyalty. It doesn’t care about corporate talking points. It doesn’t care about management theories.
It cares whether the people making decisions know what they are doing.
The kind of knowledge that comes from experience. Cut off experience, cut off knowledge, and you're left with a newsroom that can't find the truth, a government that can't manage a crisis, and an army that can't win a war.