Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Careers.6

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

As I met with various contacts and former colleagues seeking a new job in 2001, one of my more enigmatic friends, Ken Kelley, introduced me to a young couple, Tom and Heather Hartle, who had moved here from Michigan, where they had created a successful city magazine called Hour Detroit.

The Hartles asked me to help them launch 7X7, a new city magazine for San Francisco. We did launch to a lot of fanfare a week before the 9/11 attacks. New York's economy was injured in the attack; San Francisco's tourist-based economy essentially collapsed. 

Despite that unfortunate timing, we were able to produce some great issues of 7X7. Local businesses as well as national accounts flocked to advertise in with us, including many of the best downtown restaurants, but because they were largely empty at the time they “paid” us with trade.

Thus, we the staff embers of the magazine, could eat and drink almost at will in great restaurants night after night. So we did. The magazine couldn’t afford to pay us, so we deferred our salaries and partied like we were back in the era of the Barbary Coast.

All of it was fun — probably too much fun — but I couldn’t afford to work for free indefinitely. I’d taken out a $100,000 equity loan on my house — a rash move I’d never done before.

That would prove to be a disaster financially and personally.

In the spring of 2002, I accepted a three-year visiting professor position at Stanford, where I could keep a close eye on how the collision between traditional journalism and digital technology was unfolding. 

(To be continued.)

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