STEVE BAILEY

Boston Globe business columnist

By PAUL MCMORROW

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Like all great journalists, Steve Bailey fell backwards into the job. He's got his crippling fear of females to thank.

In high school, Bailey, a South Carolina native, worked as a copyboy at the paper his mother payroll clerked at. "All the other copyboys would call me up and ask me to take their shifts because they wanted the weekends off to go date girls," he says, lounging in a downtown hotel bar. "I was totally afraid of girls, so I worked their weekends." After toppling the world record for copyboy longevity -- five years, spanning high school and college -- a persistent editor made him stick with the profession.

"If he hadn't, I probably would've been a garbage man," Bailey says. Instead, he's the most compelling columnist in Boston. "Life is full of accidents; this one worked out OK."

After some time reporting and editing in South Carolina, Bailey and his wife drove north, looking for work. He's now at the Globe because, after a night of drinking and making calls on a Connecticut barroom's pay phone, the Globe's then-executive editor Bob Phelps actually answered his own phone and agreed to meet a deathly hungover Bailey the next day. Bailey wound wound up taking a job at the New Haven Register instead, but four hours into his first shift, Phelps somehow tracked him down and offered him a job. Bailey gave his notice at once. "The guy was bullshit." Understandably.

Bailey landed on Morrissey Boulevard 29 years ago, and after stints as assistant business editor and business editor, he settled into his Downtown column, which he's been writing for nearly nine years. He is, he says, no longer afraid of girls.

"I like editing, but typing is more fun than editing," he says. "I like the discipline of writing 700 words. The Globe has been fantastic for me. In Boston, there's enough going on, but it's small enough that you still have an impact."

Bailey brings a dogged reporter's approach to his column. He has the largest Rolodex in his newsroom, places several dozen calls a day and has worn a sizable hole in the sole of his shoe from pacing around downtown. When his coworkers spy him in the Globe cafeteria, it's an event.

When writing, he explains, "the goal is to tell you something you don't know, and have something to say about it." Oftentimes, having something to say involves tackling subjects that fall outside the traditional, narrow definition of what a business column should cover -- like gun violence.

"The Globe gives me a soapbox, and if I don't use it, I should get out of the way," he says, unapologetically. "I'm personally offended by the shootings in the city. I think the Globe needs to keep the issue front and center. We need to say that this is unacceptable. If we lose our sense of outrage, we've lost everything."

[boston.com/business/columnists/bailey]