A business education is expensive, whether you pony up for an MBA at Wake Forest or you learn it on the street, like I have been doing, one deal at a time.
It’s hard out there for a CEO: You eat what you kill, the game keeps changing and there are predators everywhere.
But I was made for the grind, born to stack meetings and cut deals, built for skating along the threads of a network and bringing it all home. At least, that’s what I tell myself on better days. And still, I’ve never felt so alive as I do when I move this paper through another chapter.
We’ve had some tough losses this year at Triad City Beat, with some turnover in the sales department and at the design desk, were Jorge Maturino presided with a cool and steady hand from the very first issue.
I should add that his replacement, Rob Paquette, is fully up to speed.
Notably, we lost Eric Ginsburg, a founding partner of the paper, its managing editor and food writer. When he lit out for New York City last week in search of bigger game, it was the first time I hadn’t worked with him, barring a few weeks in 2013-14, since we took him on as an intern in… god god… 2010.
Thankfully, I’ve still got Jordan Green, who has been making newspapers with me since 2005, and a crew of staffers trained up and ready to fill the pages with everything that comes our way in 2018.
We’ve got new sales staff, new delivery drivers and new T-shirts, too.
Last week, Triad City Beat put out its 200th issue, an incredible milestone for me both professionally and personally — sometimes, in this seat, it’s hard to tell where the paper ends and I begin. To quote Ginsburg, in many ways I am it and it is me.
But that’s just because I’m the one responsible for fueling the fires of industry. All around me are the people who make it happen in sales, distribution and editorial. And beyond our small team, it’s the readers who make it real — sharing our stories, enlisting in our causes, creating the sort of work that needs to be written about.
That one I learned a long time ago, before I began my business education, when I first started to put words to paper.
Join the First Amendment Society, a membership that goes directly to funding TCB‘s newsroom.
We believe that reporting can save the world.
The TCB First Amendment Society recognizes the vital role of a free, unfettered press with a bundling of local experiences designed to build community, and unique engagements with our newsroom that will help you understand, and shape, local journalism’s critical role in uplifting the people in our cities.
All revenue goes directly into the newsroom as reporters’ salaries and freelance commissions.
Leave a Reply