Give It Away.2

At ground zero of the digital revolution

Part Two

By the time I joined the HotWired team in late 1995, I'd already been working in media for almost 30 years, since I was a teenager. This was not necessarily a good thing in the eyes of my new colleagues, who were busily upending the analog media world I came from with a digital alternative they considered superior.

“Content wants to be free” was a standard rallying cry at HotWired, which was not yet two years old and was undergoing a massive growth spurt fueled by corporate advertising revenue.

Rather like a toddler in an American suburb.

But this toddler was hiring people almost as fast as it could; I joked to friends that its interviewing strategy was to lock the door behind candidates so they couldn't leave once they were inside. That didn't really matter because nobody wanted to leave -- if you were Gen-X and into creative media work in the mid-1990s, this is exactly where you wanted to be.

As for me, I was twice as old as them, and my career had been almost entirely in the alternative media, not the mainstream. From my days in the underground press to SunDance to Rolling Stone to the Center for Investigative Reporting and from New West to Mother Jones and public radio plus a dozen other stops along the way, I had pretty much remained outside of traditional journalism institutions.

But in those jobs I did adhere strictly to the values and standards of traditional journalists.

My new colleagues were early-stage writers and reporters and editors and designers and photographers and engineers and interface experts and audience research specialists and several other categories of workers, almost all of them in their mid-to-late 20s.

I was sort of like their uncool Dad.

They all used a techno lingo unfamiliar to me, with terms like web browser, domain name, interactivity, bandwidth, interface, pixels, TCP/IP, url, html, coding, style sheets, IP address, network domain and on and on -- so many strange words that I scribbled them down on a scrap of paper and kept it in my pocket exactly as I did with foreign language phrases when visiting non-English-speaking countries overseas.

After a few months, I finally got around to asking someone what all of these words actually meant. He smirked and quipped: "Don't worry what they mean; just sprinkle them liberally into your speech and your market value will triple."

As I pondered that, the daily political site my team produced called The Netizen began to flourish. We rapidly built a large audience during the early months of election cycle 1996, which attracted the interest of Wired's CEO, Louis Rossetto. 

He had a reputation as an articulate visionary but an extremely difficult boss; many employees seemed fearful of his ill-temper. He was a fierce advocate of libertarian political views, a lifelong Republican, pro-corporate and bluntly dismissive of leftist ideas, I was told.    

So when Rossetto first summoned me to a private meeting I really didn't know what to expect. Most of my previous work had appeared in left-leaning publications, and he probably assumed my politics were defined by that. Maybe he wanted to fire me.

From our very first meeting, however, the person I got to know was quite different from his image. He was smart and opinionated, true, but also quiet-spoken, thoughtful and happy to debate the issues of the day with me at great length. Most importantly, he was committed to remaining open-minded about how we covered those issues in The Netizen.

That kind of tolerance was essential if I was to remain part of the Wired organization, which I already knew I wanted to do. Louis and I quickly developed a mutual trust that allowed us to argue through the various sides of the issues we were covering and agree to disagree when we could not reach a consensus.

Meanwhile he never interfered in my actual editorial choices, though they repeatedly differed from what I know he would have preferred.

The ultimate test came when one of our cantankerous Netizen columnists decided to write a piece savagely critical of Wired itself. He decided to lambast the institution and everything it stood for in his daily column. 

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! This surely would be too much for Louis to handle, I thought.

As the hit piece was about to post, I was gathering up my family pictures from my desk to put in my briefcase since I'd soon be out of a job again. But first, as a courtesy to Louis I let him know what was coming. His response was shocking and refreshingly direct: 

"Let him rant!" 

We ran the piece unedited. My job was secure. 

For me, that moment confirmed that Louis Rossetto was truly committed to his principles, which started with free speech for everyone.

Looking back on that incident, I realize that by then dealing with bosses other people considered difficult was nothing new for me; after all, I'd studied under one the masters, Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone.  Others may have feared these men and their legendary outbursts, but I genuinely liked them and developed a deep fondness for both Jann and Louis that lasts to this day.

A few months after the “Let him rant” episode, Louis suddenly summoned me to his office again for an unscheduled meeting. Again, I assumed there must be bad news of some sort, but instead he surprised me by saying he wanted to move me to the top of the org chart as V.P. of Content Management for all of the websites in the HotWired network.

I was content producing The Netizen and hadn't sought this role at all but of course I agreed to it, especially because it came with a hefty raise. (And at home we had another baby on the way.) 

Throughout my so-called “career,” this sort of thing happened over and over. I started somewhere in the middle of an organization and the top person eventually tapped me to become one of the top bosses. It always came as a surprise to me; I never sought those positions.

But I almost always accepted them. In my new role at HotWired, dozens of people who used to be peers now reported to me, including my former bosses who were about half my age and now seemed traumatized by the change. I immediately set forth on a mission to implement their best ideas and forge collaboration between the somewhat fractious teams that made up the company's online network. 

If I was going to head up this brilliant, unruly band of revolutionaries, by acting as “the adult in the room” (as some of them called me), I was going to do it my way.

(To be continued)

TODAY’s LINKS (40):

1. Supreme Court limits EPA's authority to regulate power plants' greenhouse gas emissions (CBS)

2. Supreme Court decision may slow transition to cleaner energy (AP)

3. The Supreme Court’s EPA Ruling Is Going to Be Very, Very Expensive (Atlantic)

4. The Supreme Court’s EPA ruling just carpet-bombed the Constitution (SFC)

5. Ketanji Brown Jackson sworn in as SCOTUS issues major rulings on climate and immigration (CNN)

6. How the Supreme Court could radically reshape elections for president and Congress (NPR)

7. The conservative Supreme Court is just getting warmed up (Politico)

8. Biden Supports Exception to Filibuster to Codify Roe v. Wade Into Law (WSJ)

9. When Brazil Banned Abortion Pills, Women Turned to Drug Traffickers (NYT)

10. Judge to block Florida abortion ban; Kentucky ban on hold (AP)

11. Antiabortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines (WP)

12. GOP megadonors turn on Trump after Jan. 6 hearings, set sights on DeSantis, Pence and other 2024 hopefuls (CNBC)

13. The U.S. is facing a domestic threat from Trump, Liz Cheney says (NPR)

14. Jan. 6 committee subpoenas former White House counsel Pat Cipollone (WP)

15. Clarence Thomas suggests Covid vaccines are developed using cells of ‘aborted children’ (Politico)

16. How the court’s gun and abortion rulings revealed democracy’s limits (WP)

17. A More Muscular NATO Emerges as West Confronts Russia and China (NYT)

18. Putin: Russia will respond if NATO sets up infrastructure in Finland, Sweden (Reuters)

19. Mariupol theater bombing was a deliberate war crime, Amnesty report says (USA Today)

20. The war in Ukraine is pushing more than 18.4 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya into extreme food insecurity. (WP)

21. Russian forces announced they had abandoned the strategic Black Sea outpost of Snake Island, in a major victory for Ukraine that could loosen the grip of Russia's grain export blockade. (Reuters)

22. Snake Island: Why Russia couldn't hold on to strategic Black Sea outcrop (BBC)

23. Iran accused of making ‘maximalist demands’ in nuclear deal talks (Guardian)

24. Rise of Arab-Israel axis pushes Iran to redouble nuclear talks push (Reuters)

25. Disaster aid for Afghans should not have strings attached (Financial Times)

26. Markets Suffer Worst First Half of a Year in Decades (WSJ)

27. From stocks to crypto, a punishing six months for investors (AP)

28. The perils of blockchain analysis (Politico)

29. Israeli lawmakers voted to dissolve parliament following the collapse of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's ruling coalition, opening the way for a November 1 election that will be Israel's fifth in less than four years.(Reuters)

30. Over 360 newspapers have closed since just before the start of the pandemic. (NYT)

31. The FBI has reportedly opened a widening investigation into sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans going back decades. [AP]

32. Enormous Comet Has Entered Our Inner Solar System, Heading Towards Earth (Newsweek)

33. Earliest Pacific seafarers were matrilocal society, study suggests (Guardian)

34. A mummified baby mammoth was found in Canada with intact hair, skin and tusks (NPR)

35. Pandas evolved their most perplexing feature at least 6 million years ago (CNN)

36. Queer animals are everywhere. Science is finally catching on. (WP)

37. Missing homing pigeon Bob found 4,000 miles away in Alabama (BBC)

38. Big cats in urban jungle: LA mountain lions, Mumbai leopards (AP)

39. USC, UCLA planning move from Pac-12 to Big Ten as early as 2024, sources say (ESPN)

40. Supreme Court Casually Mentions Nation Now Divided Into Six Provinces Ruled By Conservative Justices (The Onion)