What Remains

It’s often the case that lyrics from songs I listened to the night before play over and over in my mind the following day. Today, it was that line from Trent Reznor’s haunting tune, Hurt:

Everyone I know
Goes away in the end

Near the very end of his life, Johnny Cash covered the song, but I’d latched onto the line when Nine Inch Nails recorded it in 1994.

As with any phrase of this sort, you can ascribe various meanings to it, which is true of art in general, but clearly in Cash’s interpretation, this was about death.

Death as a topic is one that I usually avoid, because it would seem that there’s no coming back from it. No sequels. Regardless of our differences, whether we like bacon or not, smoke weed, go to church, use a treadmill, are Republicans, Moslems, Jews, Communists or people battling Parkinson’s, all of our individual stories have the same ending — and as we age, it looms closer and larger.

Speaking with old friends recently, I enquired about some of our mutuals, only to receive one or another of that all-too-familiar refrain:

“He died last week.”

“She’s gone.”

“Oh, didn’t you hear? Dead.”

It gets to the point you don’t want to ask any longer. But then again, there is new life all around us, reminders that the spirit that animates us lives on well beyond our own time here on earth.

Living with my grandchildren. I get to see their beauty, feel their energy, hear their laughing, salve their hurts, indulge their dreams, encourage their hopes and — occasionally — tell them stories from long ago.

Stories about the people I’ve known who have gone or will be going away. But even as we disappear, our stories don’t have to end. Like good topsoil, our best stories can remain to help build the future.

That’s why I tell them. 

HEADLINES:

• Protesters Against National Guard Deployment Flood D.C. Streets (NYT)

• Thousands rally at Texas Capitol against Republican-backed congressional redistricting plan (KUT)

• Russia sees victory as Trump adopts Putin’s approach to ending Ukraine war (WP)

• Putin Returns to Moscow With Air of Triumph After Summit (WSJ)

• Trump fails to reach Ukraine deal with Putin (Reuters)

• Trump Has No Cards (Atlantic)

• Trump drops ceasefire demand for Ukraine war, tells allies Putin wants land (WP)

• Category 5 Hurricane Erin is one of the fastest rapidly intensifying storms in Atlantic history (CNN)

• Israel in talks to move Gazans to South Sudan (Reuters)

• Redistricting wars spark mad dash of unlikely 2026 candidates (Axios)

• Sam Altman Despises Elon Musk. Now He Is Going After His Companies (Forbes)

• Nobody’s Buying Homes, Nobody’s Switching Jobs—and America’s Mobility Is Stalling (WSJ)

• Canadian government orders arbitration over Air Canada strike. Here's what you need to know. (NBC)

• The Culture War Over Nothing (Atlantic)

• They’re Stuffed Animals. They’re Also A.I. Chatbots. (NYT)

• Podcast Episode: Separating AI Hope from AI Hype (EFF)

• AI helps manufacturers deal with tariffs (Reuters)

• Senator Begins Child Safety Investigation Into Meta’s A.I. Bot (NYT)

• Search For Self Called Off After 38 Years (The Onion)

 

Fellow Travelers

(I wrote this 19 years ago during a trip to New York.)

I think my traveling companion has had a good trip. We interviewed her stuffy, Hugs, who revealed this has indeed been good so far. 

Julia is seven and my sixth child. She is in line to become an aunt in three months, when I will become a Grandpa. When life is kind enough to span enough decades, you get to do what I've done, and that is to take all six of my children on at least one business trip with me. 

How much they’ll remember of the actual content of these trips is questionable. Julia yesterday listened as Tom Hayden -- the primary author of the Port Huron Statement that launched Students for a Democratic Society in the'60s, and who is now in his 60s -- discussed in our lunch meeting whether it is time for progressives to issue a new manifesto.

Others in the room, whose memories or at least whose studies reach back to the '30s and '40s, debated the meaning of the word "liberal." Hayden, as an elder statesman for my generation, the Baby Boomers, rejected liberals, as we all did. Instead, we considered ourselves "radicals."

But, as American radicals in the '60s, we were not Communists. This is a distinction the establishment of the time couldn't handle: Unlike earlier generations of American progressives, we were not immigrant revolutionaries, but the homegrown kind. Even those among us who were "red diaper babies," i.e., the children of Communist Party members, identified with the New Left’s ideas, the kinds of things expressed in the Port Huron Statement, my copy of which I occasionally pull out to show younger people, few of whom have ever even heard of it.

When I first visited Mississippi, 38 years ago, those of us with long hair and northern license plates could only stop for gas or food at certain pre-arranged locations throughout the state. This was literally a mater of life or death at that time. Water fountains and bathrooms were still labeled "white" or "colored," and other reminders of racial segregation were everywhere.

My readings on those first few trips through the Deep South included W.E.B. Dubois' The Souls of Black Folk, where I learned the words to the old slave song, "Oh Freedom!", which I have sung to all of my kids to help them get to sleep at night these past 30 years.

Maybe, once he arrives, I'll sing it to my grandson too.

(This story was from 2006.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump and Putin leave Alaska after no deal reached in Ukraine talks (BBC)

• Trump and Putin End Alaska Summit Without Cease-Fire Deal on Ukraine (NYT)

• The U.S.-Russia Summit Is Already a Win for Putin (Atlantic)

• Judge: D.C. police chief remains in command, but Trump can likely demand help on immigration (WP)

• Why Russia Sold Alaska to the U.S. (NYT)

• Trump claims credit for fixing Social Security as it barrels to insolvency (WP)

• No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark calls Gaza war a "genocide" (Axios)

• US military deploying forces to southern Caribbean against drug groups (Reuters)

• Kristi Noem is living free of charge in Coast Guard commandant’s home (WP)

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott immediately calls second special session for redistricting (Politico)

• RFK Jr. is increasing your risk of dying from cancer (Utah News Dispatch)

• AI is having some relationship issues (FT)

• A darker side of the artificial intelligence revolution. (Reuters)

• What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This? (New Yorker)

• Man Who Drinks 5 Diet Cokes Per Day Hoping Doctors Working On Cure For Whatever He’s Getting (The Onion)

Hungry to Write

In conversations with several writer friends lately, I've been comparing notes about what kind of energy it takes out of them to sit down day after day and write their hearts out -- which for the best results is the right way to do it.

Every one of them spoke about how tired and hungry this get by the process. It's a little counter-intuitive at first. After all, it's not like we are engaged in heavy physical labor. We can all appreciate why a farmer or a house painter or a moving company worker must be bone tired by the end of the workday.

In contrast, writers sit, stare, think, and key in notes. Note by note, they work to compose. Here a certain word; there a phrase; over there, a sentence that squeaks as painfully as nails on a blackboard; back here, a word puddle as comforting as a bubble bath.

When it is going well, we take a break, make a lunch or another pot of coffee, then get back at it. When it is going badly, our shoulders and necks begin to hurt. We get all bunched up with pain. Either way, our hunger never slacks. The neurological processes involved must consume a lot of energy.

Food in, words out. That would be on a good day.

(This one is from 16 years ago tomorrow. I’m still getting hungry from daily writing.)

HEADLINES:

• D.C. Files Lawsuit Challenging Trump Administration’s Police Takeover (NYT)

• Putin to offer financial incentives to Trump at Ukraine summit (Guardian)

• Why Putin thinks Russia has the upper hand (NYT)

• Even before Alaska summit, Putin is redrawing global order to his liking (WP)

• Growth-loving authoritarians are failing on their own terms (Economist)

• Bondi Tightens Trump’s Grip on D.C. Police and Names ‘Emergency’ Commissioner (NYT)

• Border Patrol chief crashes Newsom’s rollout of California redistricting campaign (SFC)

• DC Mayor Bowser walks delicate line with Trump, reflecting the city’s precarious position (AP)

• D.C. police to increase cooperation with ICE as part of Trump's crackdown (NBC)

• Trump’s answer to numbers he doesn’t like: Change them or throw them away WP)

• The fight is on. How redistricting could unfold in 8 entangled states (NPR)

• Stocks retreat after hot US inflation data shakes Fed rate cut hopes (Reuters)

• Social Security has existed for 90 years. Why it may be more threatened than ever (AP)

• WhatsApp says Russia is trying to block its service. (Reuters)

• Female vets in Congress slam Hegseth’s repost of Christian Nationalist (Military Times)

• The director of My Undesirable Friends, a documentary about Russia’s crackdown on journalists before the invasion of Ukraine, talks about making her epic five-hour film and why it’s a warning for the U.S. (Rolling Stone)

• Israel's Smotrich launches settlement plan to 'bury' idea of Palestinian state (Reuters)

• Character.AI Gave Up on AGI. Now It’s Selling Stories (Wired)

• Women with AI ‘boyfriends’ mourn lost love after ‘cold’ ChatGPT upgrade (Al Jazeera)

• Beijing's first World Humanoid Robot Games open with hip-hop and martial arts (AP)

• The art of persuasion: how top AI chatbots can change your mind (FT)

• Researchers built a social network made of AI bots. They quickly formed cliques, amplified extremes, and let a tiny elite dominate. (Business Insider)

• AI designs antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA superbugs (BBC)

• Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone (NYT)

• JD Vance Booed  By Own Reflection  In Mirror (The Onion)

 

America's Hitler

Trump’s takeover of the Washington, D.C., police is about two things — racism and solidifying authoritarian power.

It has nothing to do with crime or homelessness, which to be clear, are actual problems, both in the nation’s capital and every other city.

But the spectacle of federal troops rumbling through the streets will do nothing to address the root causes of crime or homelessness.

Ultimately, Trump’s policies will only intensify those very real social problems by magnifying the disparities in wealth and by reducing social supports including health care services, thereby further impoverishing our society.

A friend recently put it in blunt terms: “This is embarrassing.” As the richest, most powerful nation on earth, we are rapidly deflating into a failed state headed by a tinhorn dictator, America’s Hitler.

Surrounded by sycophants and fools like the foul-mouthed Pam Bondi, ostensibly the attorney general, Trump’s gangsters appear in clumps before the cameras, as if by repeating their lies in unison will make them into truths.

Meanwhile, the actual truth is that Trump’s rule is based on lies. He is a liar and a thief, personally abusing his office to suck billions out of an economy that his tariff policies are rapidly destroying for the rest of us.

And then there is the most shameful of all his actions — the wholesale removal of human beings he doesn’t like from these shores, deporting them to places that are little more than living hells. Deportation is a death sentence, pure and simple. He’s rounding up immigrants and sending them to concentration camps.

America’s Hitler.

This is a racist regime. This is an authoritarian regime. This is a corrupt regime. And I will continue to denounce it as such, if necessary, until my very last breath.

HEADLINES:

• Trump wants to extend federal control over Washington police (Reuters)

• Trump says he’ll seek ‘long-term’ control of DC police and signals he’ll target other cities next (Guardian)

• Yes, Stephen Miller Is Surrounded By Criminals (Atlantic)

• US national debt reaches a record $37 trillion, the Treasury Department reports (AP)

• Trump Agrees on Ukraine Red Lines With Europe Before Putin Summit (WSJ)

• Glacier lake outburst at Alaska's Mendenhall Glacier causes record-breaking flooding (ABC)

• The president's team is working overtime to pressure immigrants into giving up by abandoning their legal rights and leaving the United States on their own. [HuffPost]

• Israel is in talks to possibly resettle Palestinians from Gaza in South Sudan (AP)

• Trump Has a New Definition of Human Rights (Atlantic)

• Texas Democrats weigh their end game (NBC)

• Trump Administration Violated Order on U.C.L.A. Grant Terminations, Judge Says (NYT)

• Why can’t India produce a Nvidia or a DeepSeek? (FT)

• The road to artificial general intelligence (TR)

• AI is making reading books feel obsolete – and students have a lot to lose (The Conversation)

• The US embeds trackers in AI chip shipments to catch diversions to China (Reuters)

• Man Relaxing His Overwhelming Anxiety For Just A Moment Finally Gives Pack Of Coyotes The Opening They Need (The Onion)

 

Wednesday Mix

HEADLINES:

• Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force’ for civil unrest (WP)

• Trump team looking to create squad of 600 soldiers ready to deploy at a moments notice to quash civil unrest (Independent)

• National Guard arrives in Washington DC for Trump’s federal takeover of local police (AP)

• How D.C. crime became a symbol — and a target — for MAGA and beyond (WP)

• Trump’s Use of National Guard in L.A. Remains Contentious (NYT)

• Russia tries to make sudden advance in Ukraine before Trump-Putin summit (Reuters)

• Vladimir Putin Could Be Laying a Trap (Atlantic)

• Trump says his administration looking at reclassifying marijuana (ABC)

• Texas Gov. Will Push For Controversial Redistricting Map ‘Beyond’ Election Deadline As Democrats Remain Out Of State (Forbes)

• Mexico may have to accept US cartel operations (Politico)

• RFK Jr.’s cancellation of mRNA vaccine research is even worse than it first seemed (LAT)

• State Department slashes its annual reports on human rights (NPR)

• Human connection to nature has declined 60% in 200 years, study finds (Guardian)

• A new ranking methodology places Barry Bonds over Babe Ruth as the game’s best player ever. Statisticians, at least, are cheering. (NYT)

• Meta AI takes first step to superintelligence — and Zuckerberg will no longer release the most powerful systems to the public (LiveScience)

• Sam Altman and the whale (TR)

• Teachers Have Become AI Super-Users (Atlantic)

• 21 Ways People Are Using A.I. at Work (NYT)

• RFK Jr. Mandates All Americans Drink Mysterious Glowing Liquid (The Onion)

The End of Summer

August 2011.

The day after tomorrow, my seventh-grader sees the end of her summer as school starts up again. 

Today, in anticipation of all that, we decided to harvest the onions we've been growing in the flower boxes out front. She pulled them out of the soil, clipped the roots, cleaned off the dirt and washed them.

Then we sliced them and sauteed them in olive oil with canola spray, dusted them with salt and garlic powder, and served them over white rice with seaweed, butter and soy sauce.

Such small domestic tasks, for her and me, cement the rare days when we are alone together. 

This afternoon, we walked the dogs around Bernal Hill. We passed a mail truck on the way down. I explained to her the difference between UPS, USPS and FedEx.

She told me that until recently, she had never noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo. That gave me an excuse to go into one of my talks about her future.

She wants to study art and to become an artist. Her portfolio of drawings is growing; I often proudly share bits of her work with friends.

But, of course I worry about what choices she may make. Being an artist does not strike me as a sustainable future in an ever-more difficult economy.

And I don't think 12 is too young an age to discuss practicalities, particularly since she shows signs of having a practical streak. Evidence of that includes her bank account, which due to her many small jobs like dog-walking is more robust than anyone else’s in the family.

So what I chose today to talk about when she mentioned the FedEx arrow was the role artists play in branding for companies. I explained how designers come up with concepts like colors and symbols and branding icons, such as arrows or the Nike swoosh.

"Maybe that's how you can pay your bills while you pursue your passion for art," I suggested, hopefully.

That might sink in, who knows. Each of our conversations of this type is loaded by my awareness of our age differential (51 years). My ability to exert influence over her choices has to be expedited just in case I am not around to still be her consultant when she really needs one.

I just hope she remembers we talked.

(2025 Note: The girl in this story is now a 26-year-old artist who has sold several paintings and other pieces. She is also working on her Master’s Degree in industrial design.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump deploys National Guard to Washington DC and pledges crime crackdown (BBC)

• Trump to take over D.C. police, deploy National Guard (WP)

• The President’s Police State (Atlantic)

• Kash Patel Accidentally Tells the Truth to Trump About D.C. ‘Crime Wave’ (Daily Beast)

• Anas Al-Sharif became the face of the war in Gaza for millions. Then Israel killed him (CNN)

• Israel steps up Gaza City bombing (Reuters)

• Trump’s Cartel Order Revives ‘Bitter’ Memories in Latin America (NYT)

• Trump’s new congressional map in Texas still stymied as Gavin Newsom urges president to give up (AP)

• AOL set to pull the plug on iconic dial-up internet service (ABC)

• Canadian Road Trips to US Plunge for Seventh Month (Bloomberg)

• Goldman Says Consumers Will Soon Feel More Tariff Pain (PYMNTS)

• Supreme Court formally asked to overturn landmark same-sex marriage ruling (ABC)

• Could the U.S. Have Saved Navalny? (WSJ)

• Canada Is Killing Itself (Atlantic)

• Berkeley’s radical rag celebrates its 60th anniversary (Berkeleyside)

• Trump Deploys National Guard To Press Conference For Standing Ovation (The Onion)

• The GPT-5 rollout has been a big mess (ArsTechnica)

Watching and Seeing

When I go for a relatively long period not commenting on the horror show that is Donald Trump’s reign of terror, it doesn’t mean that I’m not paying attention. Im just focusing on the little things closer to home for a while.

Things like pickling cucumbers, harvesting this year’s crop of undersized cherry tomatoes, or telling stories to my grandchildren. Although not all is idyllic for me these days.

All the time I can see Trump is hard at work with his usual obsession — how to steal the next election. The situation in Texas is in the same vein as Trump’s notorious call to Georgia in 2020, instructing Republican election officials to “find” him votes.

In Texas he wants them to steal seats for next year’s midterms.

In D.C. he’s planning a military takeover, using another of his fake emergency declarations. There is no actual violent crime wave in D.C. or any other city with Democratic mayors, but Trump is never one to let inconvenient facts stand in the way of his never-ending grab for complete power.

Meanwhile, the ongoing nationwide roundup of immigrants to feed his deportation machine is reaching industrial proportions. This is the most shameful of all his acts, though Trump of course is incapable of shame.

I see what is happening and it sickens me. And with that, alas, I must end this post, as my tremors are making it too difficult to continue. They are my all-too frequent companion these difficult days.

(Thank you to my subscribers for sticking with me. You mean the world to me.)

HEADLINES:

• Israel’s military targeted an Al Jazeera correspondent with an airstrike Sunday, killing him, another network journalist and at least six other people, all of whom were sheltering outside a Gaza City hospital complex. Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths, which press advocates described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. (AP)

• Trump orders homeless he passed en route to golf course to leave Washington DC (Guardian)

• The nation’s capital waits for Trump’s next move as a federal takeover threat looms (AP)

• FBI moves to dispatch agents to D.C. streets as Trump vows crackdown on crime (WP)

• Texas redistricting feud escalates as Democrats face bomb and FBI threats (BBC)

• European leaders rally behind Ukraine ahead of Trump-Putin meeting (AP)

• Trump Rattles Latin America by Weighing Using Military Force (Bloomberg)

• ICE’s Spectacle of Intimidation (New Yorker)

• Newsom calls Trump's $1 billion UCLA settlement offer extortion, says California won't bow (Reuters)

• This Federal Judge Is the ‘Tip of the Spear’ of Trump-Era Conservatism (NYT)

• The world’s longest marine heat wave upended ocean life across the Pacific (The Conversation)

• RFK Jr.'s vaccine pullback stokes fears of lost medical breakthroughs (Axios)

• CDC union says vaccine misinformation put staff at risk after Atlanta shooting (Guardian)

• Can we just have one day when no one mentions AI? (FT)

• New chatbot on Trump’s Truth Social platform keeps contradicting him (WP)

• What It’s Like to Brainstorm with a Bot (New Yorker)

• Alexa Got an A.I. Brain Transplant. How Smart Is It Now? (NYT)

• Report: It's Not Okay To Just Start Talking To People You Don’t Know (The Onion)

Wired, A Love Story (6)

(This is the final part of a six-part series.)

Sometime later in the fall of 1997, along with the arrival of cooler weather and light seasonal rains came the final plans for a palace coup at Wired Inc. This would result in the removal of scores of people, including the founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe.

In their stead, the company was going to be dismantled and sold off in pieces. The founders would be rewarded with a fair amount of compensation for their efforts, so they would be “fine“ financially. Not so much everyone else.

Near the top of the corporate hit list was my name. The very fact that made me indispensable in the old order — my relationship with Louis — made me all too disposable in the new one. 

So, on a late afternoon when the sun was going down to the west, suddenly and strangely there were no further meetings on my online calendar. It was wide open. Then I was summoned to Louis’s office. 

I walked in to see three people waiting, none of smiling. Just three senior execs stiff and grim in manner. I was thanked for my service, given a small severance check, and dismissed. 

Louis was one of the three and he looked immensely sad. But he had nothing to say. This was not of his doing. So that is how my Wired chapter came to its end. All told, it had been only about two years, start to finish, though they were action-packed years and their impacts would last much, much longer.

AFTERWARD

Early August 2025 (28 years later)

One morning about a week ago, I opened my inbox to find a surprise, It was a message from an old friend, one I’d not heard from in many years. He sent me a photograph he’d taken of me back in 1997 in his office at Wired. (below) That photo unleashed many of the memories contained in this week’s series.

(Photo by Louis Rossetto.)

HEADLINES:

• White House mulling Zelensky invite to Trump-Putin Alaska summit (The Hill)

• Zelenskiy rejects ceding Ukrainian land to Russia for peace (Reuters)

• IRS, White House clashed over immigrants’ data before tax chief was ousted (WP)

• UK police arrest at least 466 people at Palestine Action protest in London (Al Jazeera)

• Israel faces backlash over Gaza City plan (Reuters)

• Texas attorney general sues to try to remove 13 absent Democrats from office (WP)

• Mexico’s President Says U.S. Forces Are Unwelcome in Her Country (NYT)

• Trump Takes a Destructive Turn Against India (WSJ)

• Tariffs: An all-purpose policy weapon (Reuters)

• A wildfire continues to burn through the mountains north of LA, with thousands under evacuation orders (CNN)

• Faced with rising seas and falling aid, Fijian villages move uphill (WP)

• U.S. restricts sports visas for transgender women (Reuters)

• Bob Dylan is back in the studio (NME)

• Volunteers fight to keep ‘AI slop’ off Wikipedia (WP)

• Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens. (NYT)

• Mental Health Experts Advise Struggling Americans To Try Crying About It Like Little Baby (The Onion)

 

Wired, A Love Story (5)

(This is the fifth in a series.)

At HotWired, the traditional production schedule of a daily or a weekly print outlet simply didn’t work for us since we could publish pretty much anytime we wished, which is what we did. This was the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, which had just been ushered in by the O.J. Simpson murder trial and the maturing of cable TV, but there were no set news industry standards yet for how to manage organizations on the web facing that kind of “always-on” reality.

That meant that some of us at the top had to be always-on as well.

Looking for advice, I started to meet with a handful of other Bay Area executives pondering similar workflow problems at CNET, Knight-Ridder, Yahoo, @Home and others.

The specific website issues were basic ones: How to position banner ads, display color-coded links, indicate sponsored content and the like. (Some of the folks in our ad-hoc group went on to help form the nonprofit Online News Association in 1999.)

Meanwhile, throughout 1996 and the first half of 1997, Wired was aggressively entering into new partnerships and business deals. The global news service Reuters embedded a personable editor named Dick Satran in our newsroom as we negotiated a deal to distribute our digital news globally.

This was a major development. Now the Wired brand could circle the globe like the Associated Press with a strong technology focus. We felt we could quickly take over ownership of this new content space. That was an ambitious goal we set for ourselves.

Internally, in order to rationalize the chaotic jumble of sub-brands into a cohesive whole, we decided to rebrand the entire enterprise Wired Digital, with one umbrella product called Wired News. Our prior identity as HotWired would have to hit the dust. This was a logical but difficult decision that required all of my skill managing up to convince Louis that it was the right thing to do.

In the aftermath of the failed IPOs, Louis had become somewhat isolated from the senior execs on the digital side, so they asked me to convince him of the branding change, since he and I continued to have our spirited weekly discussions as always.

Plus I fully supported the change myself; HotWired already seemed dated on the ever-changing web.

Louis didn’t like the idea, but I worked with him and eventually he came around to it.

As part of this transition, we had to sell off some of our popular but less relevant properties, notably the successful alt-health channel "Ask Dr. Weil," edited by Steven Petrow. We sold it to Time Inc., which led to a personal reunion for me with Time senior executive Dan Okrent, an old colleague from The Michigan Daily days (1966-9).

As I showed Okrent around our shop, we compared notes on our separate journeys since college through competing media worlds -- him at the pinnacle of the traditional media world in New York; me at the bleeding edge of new media world in San Francisco.

We both knew our worlds were colliding head-on in real time; neither of us knew which one, if either, would prevail.

In order to fill out the staff for Wired News, we hired a few experienced editors to provide guidance to the younger staff members, since few of the latter had actually attended journalism school or spent time at newspapers, magazines or broadcast media companies. What I hoped was that we would create a blend of the old and the new that preserved journalistic standards while breaking new ground.

And we did break some stories, for example by revealing clues in the html coding behind the website of the Heaven’s Gate cult about why 40 of them committed mass suicide in San Diego in 1997.

But during the spring and summer of 1997, despite our best efforts on the digital side, dark storm clouds were beginning to appear on corporate Wired Inc.'s horizon. The failed IPOs had undermined confidence in Louis's leadership and an ambitious set of younger execs had been moved into positions of influence inside the company by outside investors.

They began plotting a takeover.

Aware of the rumblings for management change, I chose to double down on my loyalty to Louis and his vision; especially because my dozens of young staff members were literally pouring their hearts out building a new media company according to that vision -- one where their own dreams might also have a fighting chance to come true.

This was all probably going to be ending badly for me, I began to realize, but it wouldn’t be the first (or the last) time for that to happen. Besides, loyalty to the person who had believed in me and given me the freedom to build a successful product called Wired News was the right thing to do — for me, for him and for my staff.

But it also proved to be fatal. For us, the hourglass was running out.

(To be concluded tomorrow.)

HEADLINES:

• World leaders criticize Israel’s plan to take over Gaza City (CNN)

• Germany, long opposed to E.U. pressure on Israel, suspends arms shipments (WP)

• Justice Department launches grand jury probe of N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James (NPR)

• Trump Orders Military to Target Foreign Drug Cartels (NYT)

• Canyon Fire Exceeds 4,800 Acres—With Evacuation Orders In Southern California (Forbes)

• America is Living in a Climate-Denial Fantasy (Atlantic)

• America’s CEOs come to the White House bearing gifts and flattery. The administration has rolled out industry-friendly policies. (WP)

• Trump administration demands $1B from University of California-Los Angeles (Politico)

• Trump Is Removing Billy Long as I.R.S. Commissioner (NYT)

• Several senior FBI leaders ousted without explanation, sources say (ABC)

• My Father, Guitar Guru to the Rock Gods (Atlantic)

• A special report on American Nazis riding high in the Trump era. (Reuters)

• Life-like robots for sale to the public as China opens new store (BBC)

• Mark Zuckerberg’s unbelievably bleak AI vision (Vox)

• AI Is Here, and a Quiet Havoc Has Begun (WSJ)

• The New ChatGPT Resets the AI Race (Atlantic)

• The 20-Somethings Are Swarming San Francisco’s A.I. Boom (NYT)

• Man Who Thought He'd Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had (The Onion)

 

Wired, A Love Story (4)

(Fourth in a series.)

Whether we were aware of it or not, our creative teams at HotWired/Wired Digital in 1996-7 were helping design the future of the media industry. There was no roadmap but there was a sense of urgency. And as one of those in charge, I figured the kind of manager the staff really needed was one who knew when to stay out of their way and when to provide guidance.

We were inventing at hyper-speed.

And at the online side of the company, our staffers desperately needed someone with a direct channel to Wired co-founder and CEO Louis Rossetto. Without Louis’s blessing, many of their promising new ideas would die on the vine.

I was that person.

Politics of the left-right variety had very little to do with how the events I am chronicling here unfolded. Politics of the inter-personal variety would have much more to do with the outcome, however.

Before I could lobby Louis on my staff’s behalf, I had to understand in detail the ideas they were proposing, which ranged from simple to complex, original, flaky, redundant, cynical, silly or promising. So I established an open-door style of management, which wasn't terribly difficult because there were no doors on my office. We all sat together in one big open space spread over two floors connected by a spiral staircase in the middle.

There were a few airless conference rooms so we gathered there when we could, although as the sleep-deprived father of a new baby boy, I occasionally had trouble staying alert in them. But my assistant booked consecutive 15-30 minute sessions from early morning until evening for me every workday and repeated cups of coffee took care of the rest.

There were endless subjects to talk over because initially we were in essence a multimedia company covering everything. The staffers usually wanted to meet me in groups — there were several people on each team. 

It didn't take long for me to fall in love with the Gen X cohort as a group. They were a tad older than my oldest child, who was born when I was at Rolling Stone. They were a bunch of smart, cranky iconoclasts stretching the limits of Internet technology to tell stories in new ways. They were cynically idealistic with a creative spirit that was infectious. They also were rebellious.

They reminded me of the Rolling Stone crowd, actually, from 20 years earlier. They had their own interpretation of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, which was displayed usually — but not always —after closing time, sometimes on the roof. A few of them partied hard. Alas, I didn’t join my staff members in these activities. While they partied, I was singing babies to sleep.

But I did know that the neighborhood around our office still contained some of the same bars and clubs we'd hung out at back in my RS days, although probably under new management. Over the years, tiny South Park had gotten completely gentrified from a quaint tree-lined loop where black families lived in a tight community into what was now a disjointed hipster lunch hangout/epicenter of the digital revolution.

You might say the music was different but the venue the same. Meanwhile, at the corporate level of Wired Inc., big plans were afoot. Louis and the leadership wanted to take the company public and cash in like the dot.com entrepreneurs the magazine celebrated, and they put together an all-star cast of VC’s to do it. But when they first tried to do that in the summer of 1996, a temporary hiccup in the stock market for red-hot tech stocks caused them to withdraw the offer.

Later in the year a second try at an IPO failed as well, which was a much more serious signal that trouble lay ahead. But by then I was too busy managing our scores of workers and our emergence as a viable web-based media company to give it more than a passing thought. 

On the industrial level, we were becoming extremely proficient not only at launching new websites, but building production systems to push out our voluminous flows of content. Publishing stories on the web required a series of editorial and technical steps by staff members with different skills and this all had to be done by hand. (Automated platforms like Wordpress appeared years later.) 

So we had to devise our own process that ushered each piece through the various stages of production quickly and efficiently until it was ready to go live.

One of those steps was fact-checking. Among our numerous correspondents was a young fellow named Matt Drudge in L.A., who seemed to have his finger on the pulse of rumors circulating around Hollywood and Washington D.C. But we discovered many of his reports required serious fact-checking before we could publish them.

A few years later, one of Drudge’s rumors would turn out to be true and it would almost destroy Bill Clinton’s presidency. But by then, the events I’m describing here would feel like ancient history. 

(To be continued.)

HEADLINES:

• Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Full Military Takeover of Gaza (NYT)

• Led by Trump, Republicans push to redraw election maps in multiple states (WP)

• FBI granted request to 'locate' fleeing Texas House Democrats, Sen. Cornyn says (ABC)

• Texas redistricting feud escalates as Democrats face bomb and FBI threats (BBC)

• Trump Just Did What Not Even Nixon Dared (Atlantic)

• Donald Trump’s attack on statistics agency echoes strongmen leaders, economists say (FT)

• Trump is nominating Stephen Miran to temporarily fill vacancy at the Fed (CNN)

• More than 60 countries scramble to respond to Trump’s latest tariffs (Guardian)

• Trump seeks to change how census collects data and wants to exclude immigrants in US illegally (AP)

• Trump could meet Putin over Ukraine as soon as next week (Reuters)

• What Happens to Public Media Now? (New Yorker)

• Environmental Protection Agency in Name Only (American Prospect)

• France battles biggest wildfire since 1949. (Reuters)

• Trump sent a chilling warning from the White House to late night TV hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, as well as radio icon Howard Stern, claiming "they are next." [HuffPost]

• On Vaccines, Kennedy Has Broken Sharply With the Mainstream (NYT)

• Blue whales have gone silent. Why that has scientists worried about Earth’s biggest animals ... and the ocean (Independent)

• OpenAI releases GPT-5, a potential barometer for whether artificial intelligence hype is justified (AP)

• China Turns to A.I. in Information Warfare (NYT)

• Claude Fans Threw a Funeral for Anthropic’s Retired AI Model (Wired)

• The Insider’s Guide to San Francisco’s A.I. Boom (NYT)

• DOJ Removes All Mentions Of Justice From Website (The Onion)