Tales From the Newsroom: Ironic Interviewing Intrigue II

After landing at ESPN.com in Seattle through a weird series of events, things seemed to stabilize for us. In 1998, we bought a house and had a kid, and quite possibly we thought that this could be life as we were going to know it.
 
But when life looks like easy street, there is danger at the door!
 
The Internet had started to become an actual something, Disney bought ESPN, and early in 1999, ESPN announced that it was going to move the bulk of its Web operations from quaint but distant Seattle to the main compound in Bristol, Connecticut. As much as I liked working for ESPN, we couldn't see ourselves moving to Bristol. It was at this moment of turmoil that I got a call from Mike Kahn, a well-respected sports writer formerly of the Tacoma News Tribune. He had made the move online to CBS Sportsline and was building a little West Coast bureau in Tacoma. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in running the copy desk at night to give the site a 24-hour staffing presence. 

 
Sportsline was making huge investments and seemed intent on becoming a serious player in online sports journalism. Just having Mike on board was a good sign, because he was really highly respected as a writer and as a person. He told me that I’d have to fly down to Fort Lauderdale to meet with people at Sportsline’s headquarters before he could hire me.
 
Fort Lauderdale in April, out of the Seattle drizzle for a day or two? Sure, I said, I could swing that. 
 
My host in Florida was a fellow New Yorker named Steve Miller, who introduced me around and told me about all the big plans being formed: columnists, fantasy, streaming video. But the biggest topic of conversation around the newsroom was the employee stock options. Guys on the desk would check the ticker every couple of minutes and announce every half-cent uptick. Passing in the halls, coworkers would greet each other not with “Hello,” but with “$15.75, up 2 cents!” (At ESPN, we had been given armloads of Disney stock, too, so I totally understood. In fact, there’s a “Simpsons” episode in which Bart is hired by an Internet start-up that dispenses stock shares from a roll of toilet paper. That’s exactly how it was in those days.)
 
So these guys are gabbing about their options and taking me out for shrimp cocktails on the beach and to a Marlins game, and I began to think that, even though I’d be working in the Tacoma office, that this was a pretty cool environment. After several interviews with people at different levels, I finally met the boss, Ross Levinsohn. We chatted in his office about sports on the Web and the potential that existed and yadda yadda yadda. Then he asked me my opinion of the future of the Internet. I gave a long answer that included lofty possibilities and technological advances, etc., and I concluded with a little joke: “But who knows?" I said. "Maybe it’s just a fad, like the pet rock. Maybe people will get tired of looking at their computer screens all day and decide they’d rather be outside in the sunshine.”
 
I flew back to Seattle that evening and expected to hear from Mike Kahn within a day or two. 
 
After a week or so, I called Mike and asked him what the hitch was. There was a long, awkward silence, and finally Mike said, “I don’t think it’s going to work out, Dave.”
 
“Well, that’s fine, Mike, but I mean, were you ever going to tell me or were you hoping I'd just forget about it and go away? What’s the problem?”
 
There was another long, awkward silence. I mean, like, long and way awkward. Finally Mike said, with a tone somewhere between embarrassment and disgust, “Did you tell Ross Levinsohn that you thought the Internet was a pet rock?”

Oops. 

“I said it could be a pet rock. I didn't say it was a pet rock. It was just in conversation, like a possibility. I also said a lot of nice things about the Internet.”
 
“O.K., well, that’s just part of it. He also seemed to think that you were only in this thing for yourself, like you didn’t really care about the site.”
 
“Well,” I said, “at this point I am in it for myself. I have a house, a wife, a new baby. I’m sure you guys would understand why I won’t tattoo the company name on my ass until I get a job offer.”
 
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But he and some of the other guys thought you might just be in it for the perks.”
 
By the other guys, who were concerned about my work ethic, was he was referring to the guys who were high-fiving each other all day every time the stock price went up a few pennies? Or the guys who were piling into the car to go out to lunch with me at a really nice restaurant on the company dime? Or the guys who used the company tickets to take me to a Marlins game. I was applying for a job as a night-desk copy editor  — in Tacoma, no less, about 5,000 miles away from beaches of Fort Lauderdale. While they were going to free Marlins games, I was going to be driving home from Tacoma at 3 a.m. every night. I told Mike that I thought this was a disingenuous critique.
 
“Well, in any event, Ross just didn’t think you were dedicated enough, so I guess that’s about the end of it.”
 
And that was fine. Mike Kahn was a really nice guy; I didn’t want to fight with him, and I was sorry if I embarrassed him with his superiors — he's the one who vouched for me. The whole thing was just absurd, but I had another job offer from SI.com waiting for me in Atlanta, so I was able to shrug it off. 
 
But the real irony didn’t kick in until I heard that shortly after he rejected me for my lack of company fervor, Ross Levinsohn left Sportsline for another venture. 

Footnotes:

Mike Kahn indeed helped Sportsline redefine online sports journalism, building the site with ingenuity and intelligence. I did regret missing the chance to work with him. For his dedication, he was laid off in 2004 when the site was sold. He was not out of work long, however, and was soon writing for the Seattle Seahawks. He died, much too soon, in December 2008 at age 54.

Ross Levinsohn is used as a punch line in this little story, but he is no joke. He, too, is an innovator and an incredibly Web-savvy businessman. If he was turned off by my lighthearted view of the Internet in 1999, then he was right to not hire me — his vision of the future was obviously much clearer. He is now with Yahoo, very near the top, in fact, where he holds some kind of title usually reserved for Freemasons — Grand Imperial Master Chronologer or something. 

Steve Miller, my generous host for two days at Sportsline, is now a big-wig at FoxSports.com. If he ever wants to take me to another ballgame, I'd gladly go. Unless it's the Marlins again.