Monday, May 06, 2024

Careers.4

(This is the fourth in a series. Read Part One and Part Two and Part Three.)

All of this constant change in my career was exciting, but it was taking a toll on me and my family. More on that another time.

In the wake of being laid off from Wired Digital, I did a bit of consulting for the @Home network and did what I always did between jobs — meet with friends. Other people called it networking; I called it lunch. This transition turned out to be a bit more difficult. I ran down various leads, but nothing really seemed to fit well. Then, David Talbot called and asked me to come back to Salon, now a daily news website that was finding its voice covering the scandals engulfing the Clinton presidency. He asked me to do several jobs -- managing editor, investigative editor, senior VP for content. 

I said yes, though doing so meant I had to turn down two new, more lucrative consulting gigs that had taken months to land. Being at Salon the second time was a lot more fun, at least initially, because I got back to my investigative journalism roots, now as an editor, and was able to hire the best factchecker I knew, Daryl Lindsay, to join me there.

Our biggest hit was the Henry Hyde story, written by Talbot, edited by a bunch of us, and promoted by all. Before that story was published, I checked with the deans of prominent journalism programs about the ethics of our decision, and was assured we were on solid ground. This helped later when we were subjected to a barrage of media criticism, as well as death threats, bomb threats, etc.

Salon aimed to go public, too, and eventually did, thanks to its principal financial backers, John Warnock and William Hambrecht. But, as part of becoming a publicly-traded company (briefly, as it turns out, since the company would be delisted during the dot.bust), my own role there changed. Daryl and I ended up opening a Washington, D.C., office for Salon in summer 1999. 

(To be continued.)

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