Careers.3
5.5.24
(This is the third in a series. Read Part One and Part Two.)
While I was licking my wounds from another unwanted job loss, this time from KQED, a group of reporters headed by a friend, David Talbot, quit the San Francisco Examiner to try and start a web-based magazine, to be called Salon Magazine.
David asked me to join them, mainly as a business consultant, so I did for three months that fall until we had managed to raise enough money and conclude a big marketing deal with Borders Books to be able to launch.
Then, I got a call from HotWired, the online offshoot of Wired magazine, founded by Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalf. Would I like to become a producer for a new daily political website called The Netizen?
You bet. I was getting a little tired of the business side, which, though fascinating in its own right, can't compete with the thrill of creating content. We launched The Netizen in a few weeks, and for the next six months I presided over a chaotic product that really was the brainchild of Louis Rossetto, though he spent his days editing his magazine, not producing content on the web.
Louis and I clashed over the politics of the site. He's a brilliant iconoclast, a libertarian, a former college Republican. As for me, when I was in college, I was a radical anti-war and civil rights activist, and arrested on occasion. But somehow we enjoyed the intellectual debate over the content my team produced, at least most of the time.
So I didn't know what to think when he called me to his office one day; maybe I'd crossed a line and was going to be fired. Nope. He asked me to become the V-P of content management for HotWired, which meant overseeing all of HotWired’s websites, and all the web producers on the front edge of what Louis called a digital revolution. This was not entirely hyperbole.
But his vision for his company was seriously inflated. We tried to go public twice and failed. Not long after that, the investors took over the company, and booted most of us, including Louis, out.
Once again, for the sixth time in eight years, I was in the market for a new job.
(Part Four tomorrow.)
HEADLINES:
Hopes of Gaza ceasefire rise as Hamas delegation arrives in Cairo (Guardian)
Evacuations ordered, homes damaged in Texas as rivers surge to Hurricane Harvey levels. And more rain is on the way (CNN)
Israeli Officials Weigh Sharing Power With Arab States in Postwar Gaza (NYT)
Decades after Kent State shooting, the tragic legacy shapes its activism (WP)
How US campus protests over Gaza differ from Vietnam war era (Reuters)
Why Biden finally decided to speak out on college protest violence (Politico)
Edgy calm on campuses follows arrests and deals to end student protests (WP)
Calls to Divest From Israel Put Students and Donors on Collision Course (NYT)
Trump vows to fight 'anti-white feeling' in US. His allies have a plan (Reuters)
U.S. Approved More Weapons for Ukraine. Now It’s a Race Against Time. (NYT)
Talks with Russia inevitable, Ukraine officials say (Reuters)
Why RAG won’t solve generative AI’s hallucination problem (TechCrunch)
OpenAI's Sora makes its first official music video (New Atlas)
We Can't Imagine the Future of AI (Reason)
Orangutan Stuns Researchers By Using Rogaine To Fix Bald Spot (The Onion)
Riveting!