The New York Times: Life After Dot-Death for a Pair of Content Providers

VALERIE REISS
02/28/2001

Writers are as plentiful in New York City as starlets are in Hollywood. Like a mass casting call, the dot-com boom offered writers unprecedented job opportunities, with the prospect of higher wages than print media, I.P.O. riches and endless demand for content.

That was then. Now, New York teems with unemployed "content providers" -- new media writers and editors. Here, we look at two whose ships sank but who have managed to stay afloat.

Aaron Stoker-Ring, 32, was a comedy writer at iCast.com, a now-defunct entertainment Web site. Hoag Levins, 54, was the executive editor for APBnews.com, an award-winning crime and justice site. Though casualties of the dot-com blowout, both men are surprisingly more enriched than bitter. And they are not alone.

According to Allison Hemming, the host and founder of Silicon Alley's Pink Slip parties, which are monthly gatherings of laid-off or about-to-be-laid-off dot-com workers, Internet workers "are still optimistic about the future because they've seen what the potential can be."

iCastaway For the first time, Aaron Stoker-Ring would be paid to write. That the job included a pay cut and was in a high-risk, already crumbling industry did not deter him. His day job as an information technology worker at an investment bank was less than satisfying; he wanted to write for a living. "I downplayed the risk," he said, "because I wanted the job so much."

Mr. Stoker-Ring's new job exceeded his expectations, even though the era of "hiring rock stars to play your launch party" was over. The office was "alive with creativity," and his confidence soared.

"The most satisfying thing about being at iCast was that I was the person that people were going to for advice -- comedy writers were saying 'Is this funny?' " he said. "I suppose I let myself not worry about being confident about the business because I was totally confident about the work."

The death knell sounded in mid-November, after Mr. Stoker-Ring had been at iCast for three months. He and about 39 other employees were dismissed via a conference call from the company's headquarters in Boston. Afterward, he said, they performed the ritual of the newly laid off: "We went out to drink on the company credit card."

At the time, Mr. Stoker-Ring was supporting himself and his new wife, who was unemployed. The writing that he and his colleagues had spent months generating never went on the site. For Mr. Stoker-Ring, things were rough. "But in a hip 90's crowd, everybody makes light of it," he said.

Two weeks later, at the Pink Slip party, where iCast was the crash dot-com of the month, Ms. Hemming asked Mr. Stoker-Ring to write a comedy skit for her holiday Pink Slip gala. His song, "The 10 Days of Severance" (sung to the tune of "The 12 Days of Christmas"), included these lyrics: "On the fourth day of severance my dot-com gave to me, I looked for work, I went out shopping, I cleaned my room and I stayed home and watched TV."

When Mr. Stoker-Ring sang the song at the party, he had a bittersweet taste of fame. "When I was doing the song with 300 people watching, I was a Silicon Alley somebody," he said. "But right now, it's akin to being a Holy Roman Empire somebody."

Old Dog, New Tricks
A lifelong newspaper and publishing man, Hoag Levins is not a typical dot-com worker. Yet since the 1970's, Mr. Levins has been a self-professed "computer geek." In the mid-1990's, he learned all he could about the Internet and built a Web site. This was partly a survival tactic, he said.

Page: 1 | 2 |
BACK TO WRITING CLIPS INDEX

TOP

WRITING CLIPS | BLOG | BIO | CONTACT