Late in 1995, I was invited over to 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.”
Several weeks later, HotWired offered 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 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 -- my 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:
U.S. and Iran sign deal ahead of schedule (Axios)
The Text of the Deal (NYT)
Trump says the US will resume bombing if Iran doesn’t comply with agreement (CNN)
Questions linger over U.S.-Iran deal as details remain murky (PBS)
Trump Does Not Understand the War He Lost (Atlantic)
Trump is in a sea of trouble over Iran (Spectator)
Moscow hit by largest Ukrainian attack since start of Russia’s full-scale war (BBC)
Fed Holds Rates and Leans Toward Fighting Inflation With Future Increases (NYT)
Trump says intelligence chief pick’s hearing is off and Pulte will remain for now (WP)
Senate delays Jay Clayton’s nomination for intel director after Trump post (NBC)
The death rate in ICE immigrant detention centers more than doubles under Trump (Reuters)
Georgia Republicans Shelve Redistricting as Anger Grows (NYT)
El Niño is here, so what does it mean? (NPR)
News sites are the new newspapers: People are abandoning them for social media (Nieman)
How Ukraine Uses A.I. to Knock Deadly Russian Drones Out of the Skies (NYT)
The private school choice boom leaves behind many kids in public school (AP)
The White House’s capricious controls on Anthropic (FT)
China isn’t trying to beat the U.S. at AI — it’s playing a completely different game (Fortune)
The Cloud Has Sound: The Unrelenting and Unseen Cost of A.I. Data Centers (NYT)
E.T. Admits Shock At Not Even Being Called For Cameo In ‘Disclosure Day’ (Onion)
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