How Om Malik finally got his big break
(This is the opening anecdote from Chapter Six: The Blogger from my 2016 book, Follow the Geeks, co-authored with Lyndsey Gilpin. Om once told me that "For three years, it was every day a rejection" as he tried to break into tech journalism. This was how he finally broke through.)
David Churbuck checked his voicemail. There was a message from someone looking for a job.
Because of the guy’s thick Indian accent, David could barely make out what he was saying, except that he worked for a wire service down on Wall Street and was a big Forbes fan. The guy heard that Forbes was going to be one of the first media companies to launch its magazine on the web and he wanted to come help.
David ignored the message. He had a small team and hardly any budget.
Then he got a fax. It was from this guy, explaining why he was a perfect fit to join the team.
The next day, the guy left another message. If David would just give him a call, it would be great to talk with him. He wouldn't regret it.
Ignore.
The following day, he left another. Whatever time limit there was for voicemails, this guy always used up every minute.
Still, David ignored it.
And then the guy started getting creative.
Some days he would call and pitch story ideas. Other days he’d give David a list of things he could do right away for Forbes. Some days he would talk about tech stories David had written. One time he just explained how much he admired Jim Michaels, the editor of Forbes.
Jim was one of David's heroes. He'd been the editor of Forbes since 1961. As a reporter, he'd been best known for his scoop of the Mahatma Gandhi assassination in 1948 for United Press. He’d spent much of World War II as an ambulance driver in India and loved the country. He had a lot of friends in the Indian community in New York and they would regularly visit the Forbes building.
So that helped explain how this guy heard about Forbes launching a web site.
As months passed, the messages became a running joke in the small newsroom where the internet team huddled together. David started playing them on speakerphone for everyone to hear. They would laugh and shake their heads. One day, David said, "Can you believe this guy? He is just not going to give up."
One of the journalists, Michael Noer, said half jokingly, "Just call the guy in!" So, partly out of admiration, and partly out of pure morbid curiosity, David called him back.
One interview. Fifteen minutes. That was all it took for David to hire Om Malik.
