Wish You Were Here

I've been traveling. Not far – Norwalk, Westport, Wilton, Fairfield, New Canaan, Darien, Easton, Weston, Stamford, Greenwich, Manhattan, and Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties in New York. In this era of amazing ambits, of criss-crossing continents for brief fetes, thousands of miles on the Merritt and I-95 and I-684 and the Saw Mill River Parkway hardly seem adventuresome. We forget that the vividness of a voyage is measured by mind, not milometer. How much have I discovered? What has this exploit taught me? How am I changed? America's foremost explorer never traveled farther than a hundred miles. "I have traveled a great deal in Concord," wrote Henry David Thoreau, in 1846. Mission gives a voyage zest. We are traveling not just to meander, but to arrive somewhere, at a new awareness or a goal achieved. Mission hones perception. We test what we thought against contradictory discoveries. What are my coordinate points? Where I might I fix myself on the map of time?

I've been traveling in Manhattan and its northern suburbs this past year in pursuit of a dream. That's sort of what my whole life has been, nutty adventures in pursuit of a dream. I set out to be a great composer, then a great writer (what's nuttier than that). Knowing nothing about publishing, I decided, age 25, I could save a venerable national magazine, which had developed terminal illness (we came close, but no cigar). Then I thought we could start a great community newspaper company, and that time we got it right, finally selling what we'd built in 1999. Then I traveled across America in a van for a year, visiting the graves of all our Presidents and Vice-Presidents, trying to figure out my forebears. You can read about that adventure in my book The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Then I decided Jane was the woman of my dreams and I did my darnedest to make myself the man of her dreams (I am still trying).

A year ago, just a year, I woke up on a Syrian desert with a new idea. Why weren't communities around the country being served by really good community news sites, as good as the great community newspapers of yore? Everybody knew newspapers were going to die off as their readers died. They were falling all around us every day, like insects dowsed with a repellent. Yet curiously, during a decade when fantastic vast Internet companies had sprung into being, community news online was tedious, amateurish, unreliable, ugly and ignored.

My idea was so simple everybody thought it was stupid. I thought there was something wrong with it too. If there were a market for this sort of high-quality profitable community medium, I kept being told, somebody would have thought of it. Would the great newspaper and communications companies in America, which are populated by real smart folks, simply have overlooked their future?

When I started this company, I really didn't believe in it. I pretended to, because that's what you've got to do to sell an idea, but truth be told, whenever a smart person told me I was all wet, that I should save my money and my breath, I silently agreed. Lucky for me, I didn't need to be victorious to feed my family; I could enjoy the luxury of being crazy for awhile.

Then a funny thing happened. I was having lunch with a pal, bending his kind ear about my idea, and at the end of lunch he turned to me and said, "Or course this is going to happen, Carll. It has to. The only question is whether it's going to be you or someone else who does it."

I ran home to Jane. "You'll never believe what Byron said. He said it was going to happen, it had to, it was just a question who was going to do it!" The grizzled prospector must have felt that way when after decades of forlorn panning there in his dented colander gleamed a lump of gold.

I have traveled far in the past dozen months in a little ship gusted by a big idea. As of today, our company publishes nine community news sites, including this one. Local businesses are discovering ways they can use this new medium to strengthen their enterprises. We have 40 teammates, maybe more, too many, too soon, alas, for me to remember all their names. We expect to have dozens more sites around the country by year end, and thousands, yes, thousands, in two years. Jane and I are lucky to have a partner, in our president, John Falcone, who could actually pull off such a feat, and a board that is generous, sage, and supportive. I blink when I look at all that's happened. It wasn't me who did this, I keep thinking. I was just the kid who lit a match by mistake and now there's this forest fire.

When you travel you meet strangers. Nobody is more strange and wonderful to me than folks 30 years my junior. They come from the same country, perhaps, but a different universe. I like everyone on our team a lot, but the folks under 30 are the ones who teach me most. They see things differently. The notion that I could teach them something, transfer some of the insights of 40 years, is my biggest thrill. It makes me think, hey, maybe I won't be dead in a few years; maybe a small piece of my mind will be carried on.

A familiar traveler's complaint is that there isn't time to record all the exciting discoveries. Those postcards with scribbled notes don't do justice to the experience. That's my frustration, in spades. I could write a book about every day, but by day's end I barely have the strength to compose an email, much less a book. Oh well. In the old action vs. reflection debate, I opt for action every time. I have enjoyed a lot of wild rides during my earthly stay, but this tops them all.

Wish you were here.

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