Goodbye Industry Standard, and Industry, Too.
The standard has been officially lowered for print and online journalism
by Chris Crowley

A year ago at our groovy Seattle loft office, we fought over inch-thick copies of "The Standard," scanned 4-page ad spreads and devoured stories. We read with rapt focus of the dizzying riches, amazing innovations and raw pluck of people ‘just like us,’ toiling in the Internet gold fields. We knew people in there. We might be in there, this issue, or next. And if we were, our fortunes were assured.

Now, we might still appear in phantom editions in some cyber ghost town. We could point to our quotes and photo captions with pride, but we’d have to realize we’d slipped into some Sartrian realm where hell is others, and ourselves.

In the New York Times, there was less gloating over the demise of The Standard than one might expect. The Times and Wall Street Journal and other venerable institutions that gleefully trumpeted the dot coms’ downfall six months ago are now feeling the pinch of lost advertising revenues themselves. Journalistic piling on to the easy story of "young upstarts getting theirs," has given way to budget cutbacks and shrinking news holes. The Times has seen these cycles before, and weathered them. But they can’t harp about dot com-ers’ champagne budgets and caviar receptions when their own social circles have gone from Brie and Chablis to beer and cheddar.

The now-familiar tale of corporate excess that spelled out The Standard’s fate was thick with irony. Like Pets.com or HomeGrocer.com, the wise men and women who backed The Standard fell into well-worn traps: huge staffs, ten year office leases and the grow, grow, grow mentality. Sell more of the pie for cash to grow faster, faster, faster. Keep ahead of debt and cash flow. Grow, grow, grow. How did even those smart folks fall into that same trap?

Was no one sober during the dot com craze? The answer is probably no. I certainly wasn’t. I remember a cell phone conversation with a friend as our business plan was circulating among giddy investment bankers and venture firms. "There’s so much money blowing around, I could spread my arms and catch a million dollars," I said from a Seattle Thriftway parking lot. It was almost true.

Of course, the bubble didn’t just burst, it disappeared. Like it was never here.

Well, almost. Every boom and bust cycle leaves vestiges. The Yukon Gold Rush filled San Francisco harbor with hundreds of ships, rotting on their moorings, their crews deserted to pan for gold. Nevada’s mute deserts are dotted with empty silver boomtowns. Most families have a hula-hoop around somewhere.

Dot coms did not spawn a universal embrace of broadband, as a lot of smart money once bet, but 51 million American households are dialing up the web. They’re doing something out there in the ether. Like me, maybe they read of The Standard’s demise in The New York Times… on line. Where I live, in the sticks of southwest Washington, I can’t get The Times delivered, but I get the on-line version daily and read it religiously. The quality, range and volume of music and technology-related journalism and information delivered to my computer daily is staggering. I try to keep up.

Lots of people shop for anything but groceries on line, especially when price is a factor. Email has brought families and friends together across generations, around the world.

And those of us who trekked off to the dot com gold fields are now hunting for jobs, on line.

My gold pan is dented and I had to eat my mule, but I learned a lot of valuable skills I will happily apply to the next adventure, whatever it turns out to be. I am sorry I won’t get to read about it in The Standard.