Careers.5

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

In 1999-2000 as Salon’s bureau chief in Washington, D.C., I supervised a staff that included the young reporters Alicia Montgomery and Jake Tapper. I also edited a fascinating debate-style series of columns between David Horowitz on the right and Joe Conason on the left.

Earlier in 1999, we had run the controversial story aboutHenry Hyde, the Republican chair of the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. We disclosed that Hyde had had his own affair with a younger woman just like Clinton. That expose effectively undermined the case against Clinton and doomed it to failure.

The year I spent in D.C. was the only one of my 50+ year career based outside of California, and it opened my eyes to the radical differences between media outlets on the west coast and the east coast. In California we were acutely aware of ourselves as outsiders, while in Washington and New York, journalists aspired to be insiders.

As for me, office politics back at Salon headquarters made my position untenable, so by a year later, I was back in the Bay Area, at Excite@Home, where I was managing a large staff of producers, writers, designers, and editors.

That company had been created by venture capitalists mushing together two very different companies with different cultures and different business plans. Thus, it was doomed from the start, though I of course didn’t know that when I took the job.

Talk about dot.bust! Excite@Home collapsed dramatically, and ended up as a cautionary tale on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

So by early in 2001 I was unemployed once again.

HEADLINES:

• Israel begins military operation in Rafah, hours after Hamas agrees to a cease-fire (AP)

• Cheers, Fears and ‘Le Wokisme’: How the World Sees U.S. Campus Protests (NYT)

• I’ve read student protesters’ manifestos. This is ugly stuff. Clueless, too (WP)

• Dozens Are Arrested in Pro-Palestinian Protest at Art Institute of Chicago (NYT)

• U.S. put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel (Axios)

• This obscure N.Y. election law is at the heart of Trump’s hush money trial (WP)

• Judge threatens jail if Donald Trump violates ‘hush money’ gag order (Financial Times)

• Comptroller says Trump didn't direct him to set up hush money repayments (ABC)

• Social Security and Medicare finances look grim as overall debt piles up (WP)

• As China and Iran hunt for dissidents in the US, the FBI is racing to counter the threat (AP)

• How Putin is forging a harsh Russian society that threatens the global order (WP)

• With a vest and a voice, helpers escort kids through San Francisco’s broken Tenderloin streets (AP)

• When Prison and Mental Illness Amount to a Death Sentence (NYT)

• Fish are shrinking around the world. Here’s why scientists are worried. (WP)

• Is AI about to kill what’s left of journalism? (Financial Times)

• Musk is raising $6B for AI startup. (TechCrunch)

• Alembic Launches Its New Causality Engine Supercomputer Based on NVIDIA Platform (BusinessWire)

• Poll Finds Most Americans Want Immigration Reform That Includes Making Up New Last Names For People Again (The Onion)