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Everything I needed to know about the internet I learned from the radio
A few lessons from a long career in new & old media
I worked for a radio station once. In New York City. I never wanted to work for a radio station, but one day — poof! — I found myself employed by a radio station. This was twenty years ago, the dawn of the digital age, when everyone thought the internet would unite the world.
The job was an education. For instance, I learned that I did not like working at a radio station. I also learned that the internet and its hell spawn social media are just mics and phone banks full of strangers ready to scream “you suck.” And the more successful you are, the more they will scream that, by the thousands.
I never planned to work in radio, and had my dad still been alive, I would have embraced the opportunity. He would have been tickled. My old man was a radio DJ in the Army, and he loved it — the radio was always singing, crackling, and droning on and on in the car.
The radio gig came along right after I was laid off from a men’s magazine, where I had spent my days writing about things men care about, like beer, motorcycles, and swords. I made sure to use monosyllabic words in these efforts and made a meager living, as they say. Working in print, then and now, is like playing a game of musical chairs in hell — one day the music stops, and you’re unemployed.
Before I could have a proper emotional breakdown about the layoff, however, I was immediately hired by a radio station programming director looking for someone with my specific bona fides, and that’s how I ended up hosting a national nighttime call-in talk show for men — a dream job to someone, just not me. For almost two years, I sat in front of a microphone for four hours a night, five days a week, and talked to men with no one else to talk to.
I was a quick solution to the programming director’s problem: he wanted a host who could talk about topics of interest to early 2000s dudes. His best radio personalities were men who spoke trash and bitched about their lives, crude outrage queens who loved drama. He wanted less drama, and I was perfect because I could talk about The Matrix…
