Chron Job

So I have some news.

I’m starting Monday as the business editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, directing the 151-year-old newspaper’s business and technology coverage.

A newspaper? Yes. Despite the occasional LinkedIn endorsement I get for my purported “newspapers” abilities, it’s been two decades and change since I worked on the Chicago Maroon. Audrey Cooper, the Chronicle’s editor-in-chief, assured me that didn’t matter.

What matters is my passion for telling the story of technological change in San Francisco—like the first wave of the Internet that brought me and so many others to this city in 1995.

It was my skills at Unix shell scripting and HTML that mattered back then, not my wordsmithing. But I fell into journalism with jobs at Wired, the Red Herring, and Time Inc. (Along the way, the Chronicle covered me and my website Ditherati a handful of times.) I’ve worked online, in print, and on TV, and I’ve come to realize that a good story is a good story, whatever the medium.

I don’t see print as a burden. It’s something unique that the Chronicle brings against a mass of undifferentiated websites. The daily ritual of publishing brings discipline and focus — like the cron jobs I used to schedule when I was webmaster, to make sure new stories went up on time. And the Sunday edition, in particular, can be a showcase for what’s fashionably called longform journalism. Fast Company editor Bob Safian once told me he thinks of the print edition of his magazine as a powerful “marketing event” for the publication’s journalism. I think that’s the right way to think about a newspaper’s print edition, too—a daily reminder of a newsroom’s commitment to cover the city.

The Chronicle, particularly under Cooper’s leadership, is a prime testbed for new ideas about running newsrooms and delivering the news. “A newspaper is a conversation,” Robert Thomson once wrote. For some readers, the familiar package of printed sections is the best way to have that conversation. For others, the open Web might be where they want to learn what’s new in the world. And for a new set of readers, it might be on social networks or—a particular area of interest for me—through messaging apps. Look for us to experiment with all of those.

The first order of business is the news. Good stories will always find a way to flow to readers. I’m blessed with a great team of seasoned journalists and I hope to add to and strengthen that team. (We’re hiring an assistant business editor, by the way.)

Having lived in San Francisco for two decades, I’m chuffed as hell to become part of the Voice of the West. Expect to hear more from us.