one year ago today i got a new job

since then i…


got to watch our oldest hardest-working blogger blow everyones mind – daily


got to see and meet some of my heroes at sxsw





got to interview some upncomers at sxsw


got to speak at usc’s annenberg’s school of journalism three times




got to cover coachella properly and with the best team in business


felt a pretty good earthquake while giving a training in the A1 room (not pictured)



got to review some sweet ass rock shows



used to have an office


lindsay studied theatre at ‘sc. this is her do we really have to move look
btw couldnta still been here without her, and im indebted


hauled ass to the main newsroom where they put up a tv for me us


i have a window and a view now. and a place for my plant.


got to celebrate my 102nd birthday at the traditional LAT bar, the redwood,


with old friends and new ones


have no idea what this was all about, but i smiled every time i saw it


got to interview a legend in his front yard


got to teach a legend how to blog, and for a short time man did he have a good blog


there are now six LAist alumni working in the times building, these two are the latest


got to see history while working in a major newspaper newsroom


within one week, got to watch people go from standing in front of our building to protest,


to lining around our building to buy handfuls of papers with glee


despite everything, we are so much further ahead now than many thought we’d be today


couldnta done it without mr. matt welch, whom im indebted


couldnta done it without my boss meredith, whom im totally indebted

how have the blogs fared in the last year? how about last november they accounted for more than a couple million page views and this november they accounted for almost exactly five times that.

how about last november none of em were even in the top 2000 in technorati and now one of em is at 54 and another one is in the 900s with several more on the way.

how about i work with a great team who are far more responsible for those amazing successes than me since they, you know, actually write hundreds and hundreds of blog posts a week, and edit them, and take the pics, and create the graphics, and bring the news, and moderate the comments, and do it while also putting out a first class newspaper, by the way.

how about this job is pretty much exactly how i never imagined it. and so much better.

almost every month something totally mindblowing happened. sometimes we were the news, somehow; sometimes the news we covered was just totally wild. zero days were boring. zero days were anything like the one before it.

my first day there the publisher knew my name, where i came from, and asked me blogging advice. and before that day i was interviewed by the guy who is now the editor of the whole paper. few weeks later SUVs were out front the building because obama was being interviewed by the ed board, and then later hillary was being interviewed.

not much later robert downey jr was filming a movie in our newsroom. few days later a Pulitzer prize winner was conducting a live online chat in my office on my computer and we talked about which n.w.a songs we liked best.

early into my job i was teaching the nbas all time leading scorer how to blog and a few weeks later i was taking a phone call from china to help our sports dept blog from the olympics. i ate lunch at a mansion. blogs that came out of my insane head became reality, one of which meant that we had a blogger in air force one.

and yet one of the biggest milestones was not only to beat LAist with one of our blogs one month (and then later with two), but to triple them; because before i left LAist, we had quadrupled the best LAT blog. we pulled it off and i liked that milestone the best because LAist hasn’t stopped growing or improving in this year, which also makes me happy since im their biggest fan and use them as an example almost every day.

yesterday on my 364th day at the times we launched a new blog, Idol Tracker, not at all my idea, but i voted yes to make it happen cuz its brilliant and will probably be another one of our million pageview a month blogs.

i know its not cool to gush or beam or, hell, even be happy when you write things down. which is why it must be such a burden for those who try so hard to be cool.

its so much easier to count yr blessings.

i think im at a gazillion and one today.

goal for next year? five times better than what we’re doing now.

thats all.