Off the Radar

In the winter of 2002, I took an assignment for Talk magazine, a 1,200-word column about the Fang family of San Francisco and their bizarre and successful machinations to take over the San Francisco Examiner. It was a fun and colorful story, and the whole issue it was to appear in had been laid out and copy edited and fact-checked and was all ready to go when Maer Roshan, Talk's deputy editor, called to tell me how much he liked the piece and how sorry he was that Talk was folding and the issue was dead, never to hit stands.

It was a very small point of pride for me that my first and last byline in the misguided but daring media experiment that was Talk was in what eventually became a mythical "lost issue," and it was the beginning of a working relationship with Maer. He was cool enough to make sure I got paid anyway, and I eventually sold the story to the Chicago Tribune, probably the least appropriate venue for the story this side of Cat Fancy, for something like 13 cents a word. I kept in touch with Maer, and when he relaunched Radar earlier this year, he was kind enough to offer me a freelance contract as a contributing editor that allowed me to quit my job at the Tribune. It has been a gas.

Anyway, so I've been working on a really great story for the next issue of Radar, and it was all laid out and copy edited and fact-checked and ready to go and....

My only regret is that I lost my gig before Jeff Zucker lost his. UPDATE: Or got promoted. Whatever.