Late in 1995, after helping David Talbot & crew launch Salon, I was invited over to tour the headquarters of Wired magazine by one of the editors, John Battelle, who knew me from my years teaching at U-C Berkeley.
The magazine’s office had cubicles, computers, rock ‘n roll playing in the background and a few dogs lounging around.
But the real attraction lay on the other side of a common kitchen area where HotWired — the online side of Wired magazine was located.
It was a striking scene. Row after row of 20-somethings sat working on laptops perched on doors balanced over sawhorses, with the Chili Peppers blasting and a whiff of marijuana in the air. A couple of my former interns stood up to greet me and showed how they were designing content for a wide range of websites.
Right after I left the office, I called home to say, "I've just found the next place I want to work." I also put the word out on my network.
It took several weeks for the call to come from HotWired offering me a job as producer of what would be the web's first daily political news site, called The Netizen.
Although the starting salary was barely half what I'd previously been making, and I did have the needs of a new family at home to consider, I accepted the offer without hesitation and said I could start the next day.
On day one, I was introduced to a small staff of producers and designers with hardly any journalism experience. But they were smart, highly motivated and ready to invent something.
I quickly hired two of the brightest young journalists (and former students) I knew from Berkeley and set out to work with the developer team -- the head engineer was a former colleague from Mother Jones, and we set a crash course to build The Netizen.
We launched the website in something like 28 days.
It was a presidential election year, so we hired three experienced political writers as our correspondents and they fanned out across the campaign trail to cover the re-election effort of incumbent Bill Clinton and his Republican challengers, including the eventual nominee, Bob Dole.
I had been assured complete editorial independence for the operation, and it quickly attracted a very large audience among the early adopters then flocking to the web. Day after day we published smart, snarky takes from all sides of the political spectrum with a decidedly libertarian streak, in accordance with the dominant philosophy of Silicon Valley.
For me it was exciting -- new ideas sprouted daily, young staffers were quickly developing editorial skills, and we were able collectively to generate controversy almost without trying.
Email was still a new phenomenon, and the feedback from readers that poured in upon publication included some that were outright abusive, often misogynistic, which disturbed me and was a harbinger of things to come.
Thinking back with the benefit of hindsight, I had an early glimpse of how hate, lies and conspiracies might flourish in this new environment, but I didn’t know what to do about that at the time.
Free speech was free speech, I told myself somewhat naively. And outside of the negative stuff, I liked the chaotic two-way communication cacophony of the web. It was a free-for-all.
Our readers blasted off at our writers in ways traditional journalism never had experienced. Those of us from legacy media were used to being the last word on a topic. In this new media, as I told a Poynter symposium, we were only the first word. It was a conversation, not a broadcast.
Everyone on staff handled it in relatively good spirits as The Netizen quickly rocketed into position as one of the leading news sites on the web.
If I was the pilot, it felt like I was guiding a ship far out into space, destination unknown.
(To be continued.)
HEADLINES:
Newsom says president is stepping toward authoritarianism (WP)
Newsom asks court to block Trump's use of military to support LA immigration raids (AP)
Los Angeles Mayor Imposes Curfew in Downtown (NYT)
US Deploys Marines to LA as Protests Spread to More Cities (Bloomberg)
Troop deployment to cost $134 million; LAPD looks to assert calm; legal battle over Marines heats up (LAT)
Trump’s California troop deployment is impeachable, CBC chair says (Politico)
Donald Trump says Los Angeles ‘would be on fire’ if troops had not been deployed (Financial Times)
‘He’s waging a war on us’: As Trump escalates, Angelenos defend their city (WP)
Speaker Johnson, backing Trump's LA actions, says Newsom should be 'tarred and feathered' (ABC)
Trump's decision to send the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles has created substantial political risks for California Governor Gavin Newsom. (Reuters)
An exchange from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's confirmation hearing indicates that Trump has on his side a Pentagon chief apparently ready to carry out any order he gives him, possibly including a potentially illegal one to shoot American citizens. [HuffPost]
Kennedy Removes All C.D.C. Vaccine Panel Experts (NYT)
The Abrego Garcia Indictment Raises More Questions Than It Answers (National Review)
Republicans Have a Revenue Problem (Atlantic)
A Federal Program to Protect US Cities Against Extreme Heat Has Just Evaporated (Mother Jones)
Rural Republicans used to back NPR. Then MAGA changed everything. (WP)
Study finds little agreement between Republicans and Democrats on media sources they trust (AP)
When Donald Trump calls, one Big Law firm answers (Business Insider)
Israel deports activist Greta Thunberg after military seized Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship (CBS)
From Gaza prisoner to ‘the Israeli agent’: how rise of Abu Shabab could ignite new phase of war (Guardian)
Netanyahu’s government could collapse over Israel’s ultra-Orthodox military draft law (AP)
World fertility rates in 'unprecedented decline', UN says (BBC)
An ever riskier world economy (Financial Times)
Meta launching AI superintelligence lab with nine-figure pay push, reports say (Axios)
Apple’s New Software Focuses on Design Aesthetics Over A.I. (NYT)
Food Banks Begin Accepting Donations From Homosexuals (The Onion)
No comments:
Post a Comment