David Weir: Alt-Retirement

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Alt-Retirement

My career in journalism coincided almost perfectly with the rise and fall of the profession during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Thus any narrative of those years could serve as a personal version of the historical record. The first half had lots of highlights, Rolling Stone, the Patty Hearst stories, the Center for Investigative Reporting, “Circle of Poison,” Salon, Wired News, book deals, Hollywood, and awards.

The second half was a constant dance from job to job as media institutions lost out to Internet-based companies including social media.

During the dozen years before my first retirement, I held jobs at startups MyWire, Predictify and GreatNonProfits; consulted for clients including Wikimedia Foundation, which publishes Wikipedia, and the California Academy of Sciences; worked with a wonderful French software company called Smub, and took on part-time gigs as a media analyst/blogger for BNET and 7X7.

In the last two positions, I met and interviewed founders of Twitter, Lyft, Airbnb, Uber, Nextdoor, Getaround and dozens of other companies as the age of social media came into being.

Occasionally, I put my investigator hat back on; for example, I wrote a report that of the 44 board members of the largest social media companies early on, none were women.

As I reached the age of 65, further employment opportunities seemed to be limited, so I decided to retire. This was early in 2013.

But retirement bored me and within months I had rejoined a former employer, KQED, as a part-time blogger. The public media company had a large radio and TV footprint, but only a minor web presence.

Next, as senior editor for digital news at KQED, I assembled a team of writers and producers that built a large digital audience to complement the legacy broadcast services.

We also started an ad hoc investigative team at KQED that produced award-winning reports on police violence, sexual abuse, and official corruption.

Finally, in late 2019, health issues forced me to retire again, 53 years after I had started at the age of 18.

Once again “retire” was probably not the right term because that was six years ago now and marked the start of whatever this is…

HEADLINES:

Mark Carney Wins New Term as Canada’s Prime Minister on Anti-Trump Platform (NYT)
Is the U.S. Becoming an Autocracy? (New Yorker)
Former Social Security Chief Martin O’Malley Warns of “Collapse of the Entire System” Under Trump (Democracy Now)
‘I Run the Country and the World’ (Atlantic)
New estimates indicate that Elon Musk's DOGE might not achieve any savings (MSNBC)
Public sours on Musk’s role, is skeptical that government is cutting waste (WP)
RFK is causing irreparable damage to our public health system (The Hill)
‘Exceptional’ power outage in Spain and Portugal affects millions of people (AP)
Trump suggests Canadians should elect him, making the country the 51st state (ABC)
The US and China are on a collision course, and nations are being forced to choose sides (AP)
The White House threatens sanctuary cities in another EO, but courts are skeptical (NPR)
Karoline Leavitt Refuses to Rule Out Arrest of Supreme Court Judges (TNR)
Disability-rights arguments grow heated at Supreme Court, though sweeping ruling appears unlikely (AP)
Demand slump fuelled by Trump tariffs hits US ports and air freight (Financial Times)
Emerging From a Collective Silence, Universities Organize to Fight Trump (NYT)
Nonprofits, Hobbled by Funding Cuts, Now Worry About Losing Tax-Exempt Status (Barron’s)
Sixty-eight bodies were recovered in Yemen and 47 others were wounded after a US strike on Saada hit a detention center hosting African migrants, Yemen's Houthi-run Al Masirah TV reported. (Reuters)
Rubio Says Trump Will Decide This Week on Continuing Ukraine War Talks (NYT)
Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence? (New Yorker)
An AI startup founded by Yale students wants to compete with LinkedIn. Read the pitch deck it used to raise $3M. (Business Insider)
Catty Cardinal Can’t Wait To See Who Got Fat Since Last Conclave (The Onion)