The worst job led me to one of the best jobs I ever had.
I was a reporter for United Press International and left during of the flashiest news company bankruptcies ever. Another UPI reporter and I conspired to picket The Washington Post when it started using a non-union news service. Being good downholders, the picket line was staffed on days off at the Post and Leland Schwartz' State News Service.
UPI was a disruptive innovator in oh so many ways. You're supposed see that sentence as dripping in irony.
Ever the innovator and always a disrupter, Schwartz now peddles a news sheet of broadcast-style headline. The flashes are printed on the back of diners' receipts at The Old Ebbit Grill, just around the corner from the White House.
In business for 157 years, the Old Ebbitt Grill is the highest grossing restaurant in the U.S. Schwartz' potential readers number among the most powerful disruptive innovators inside Washington's Beltway.
I became one of the disrupters when I built the first online newspaper in Florida -- almost before the Internet was cool. Bezos was just getting started. Nobody was willing to bet on his success. I think the News-Journal was afraid not to bet on NJC.
The News-Journal Center site grew to one million page views a month, an unheard of amount of web traffic in the day.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal landed in bankruptcy court due to a stockholders dispute. Experts at the bankruptcy trial estimated the News-Journal's worth at $110-120 million. It later sold for $20 million.
Can I use that estimate to guess that the Washington Post was then worth $1.2 billion?
Bezos got a bargain when he bought one of the most respected newspapers in the world.
He is described as a very patient innovator.
Even the revered Warren Buffett said Bezos made a good buy. In the past several years Buffett has purchased nearly 30 newspapers.
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