A Career Detour at The Gist

In 1999, I was Editorial Coordinator at DC Comics, my seventh year in the role. I was approaching the millennium and my 42^nd birthday and was beginning to wonder if I was happy with the notion of staying at DC for the remainder of my career. The main reason for this feeling at the time was that the Editorial Administration department was incredibly stable, and there didn’t seem to be a path to advancement.

If I ever had a mid-life crisis, it was this. No trophy wife or expensive sports car, just a career crossroads.

That fall, I attended an alumni event and caught up with Jonathan Greenberg, a radical progressive who always seemed the smartest guy in the room. He was telling me about his internet startup, The Gist, and I described my work at DC. He said something about needing producers; my skill set may be a match.

I didn’t give it much thought until after the holidays, when I met with Jonathan, which resulted in an offer. It was good money, not as much as DC, but with a higher ceiling. Of course, this was in early 2000, and dotcom startups were all the rage.

In March, I arrived at Wooster Street in NYC’s SoHo and went to work for Gist, which had launched in 1996 as an online TV listings and news website. JG, as he was called, ran a growing operation that was in two large spaces on the same floor. I was in a bullpen, given a small workspace that faced the wall. I was left to my own devices to figure out HTML (which gave Deb fits and giggles) to understand better what was under the hood.

As the company battled TV Guide for eyeballs, the company was one of just 14 websites in the world to be named a winner of the First Annual Webby Awards in 1997. The fight was on for patents to fend off any lawsuits from TV Guide that suggested we used their algorithms or tech.

My role was initially ill-defined, but it became clear that JG wanted me to put together a section aggregating reviews and votes for streaming videos at the very cusp of high-speed internet, which was available in small portions of America. I was assigned to work with Tatyana, a very quiet, talented programmer, to figure out how to make this work.

I spent a lot of time watching videos, trying to understand what was out there. Some were funny, some were clumsy, and some attempted serialized storytelling around the time Netflix shipped its first DVD. We launched Screaming Streaming on June 16, 2000, and then I began watching viewer votes come in. Each week, I refreshed the charts, and after five weeks at #1, a video would be moved to our Hall of Fame. We had a jpeg with an embedded link announcing the tier award and sent it to the video’s hosting service, hoping they would display their badge of pride.

Along the way, I slowly began to understand the tech and saw the company was striving for patent after patent. We began signing up hotels and USA Today and NBC, each of which carried our TV listings. According to JG, Gist was the first website to:

• to allow Internet users to customize and save listing preferences by channel, genre, and cable system
• to deploy TV Listings for all 11,000+ cable systems in the U.S.
• to deliver personalizable listings over the Internet into a TV set-top box (via NetChannel and later Worldgate) and through a PDA (AvantGo)
• to deploy customized TV listings application in Europe (in France and Germany)
• to send e-mail subscriptions containing personalized listings
• to create interactive TV fan clubs online
• to create a web video show about TV
• to create an on-screen Interactive TV Magazine (for Echostar’s Dish network)

Down on the fourth floor was editorial, a small team of under 10 that produced news stories under editorial director Cheryl Everette. I tried to befriend them all, reconnecting with writer Frank Lovece, whom I knew from my Starlog days. He was a staff writer, and having a familiar face was good. I wrote all of one story for them, and they didn’t seem interested in my future contributions.

Once Screaming Streaming was up and running, I was asked to oversee the Fall TV Preview package. If I recall, Tatyana was assigned to this, and I set to work putting material together with input from Editorial. However, Cheryl and I were at loggerheads over which of us had the final say over content (ignited by a dispute over a quote from NYPD Blue). JG nodded sagely, admitting this was something that had to be decided, then got preoccupied.

We had grown to a staff of about 80, and every Friday, there would be Two Boots pizza and salad for lunch, a chance for us all to mix and mingle. Most grabbed a slice and went right back to work. I never made lasting friendships there, except for Editorial’s Mike Everleth, now at Sony.

I needed the next project by fall, but it wasn’t forthcoming, so I spun my wheels. Normally, when I had downtime, I watched videos or tried to help out. Andrea Sacker, a fellow SUNY-Binghamton alum, was seated next to me (although I didn’t know her at college). She was running the online Fan Clubs for various TV series and was overwhelmed. I was handed Party of Five, a Fox series, to manage. I was then watching episodes and synopsizing them, among other duties. But once the show ended in May, I needed more to do.

Around November, the company seemed to be struggling and I was at loose ends. That was when Joe Quesada called to begin conversations, leading to my tumultuous 13 months at Marvel.

As it turns out, had I stayed at Gist into February 2001, I would have been among the first round of layoffs as the dotcom bubble burst. Over time, the company winnowed and then faded, becoming a memory of an earlier era.

It was an interesting experience and detour, but I was back in comics, which had its own ups and downs. I remain grateful to JG for having faith in me and giving me a chance.

#Tags: Andrea Sacker, Cheryl Everette, DC Comics, Frank Lovece, Gist Communications, Joe Quesada, Jonathan Greenberg, Michael Everleth, Party of Five, Screaming Streaming, TV Guide