I started writing this blog in Sept. 2006 at Fortune.com (a wholly owned subsidiary of CNNMoney.com). The very first post was about boards of directors. Law professor Stephen Bainbridge thought it was stupid. I said no it wasn’t, and my blogging career was off.
At the time it was still not all that common for staffers at mainstream news organizations to be given platforms where they could spout off without the interference of an editor. I had begged for such freedom, and for the blog format, after getting broadsided by NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen for an opinion piece I had written for Fortune.com in July 2006. I’m not going to get into the details here (I already have elsewhere). Rosen’s main complaint with me was kind of silly, but some aspects of my original opinion piece were kind of silly too. My argument was certainly less than fully formed, and would have been far better presented as a blog post, with links and room for comment. So I said I wouldn’t write any more opinion pieces for Fortune.com unless I got a blog, and a few weeks later I had my blog.
Now, a move to TIME and 2,038 posts later (I didn’t write all of those: Barbara wrote a bunch, and Mark Gimein wrote a few too), the Curious Capitalist is about to become the Curious Capitalists, and I’m headed off to the Harvard Business Review Group. I will have a day job there, editorial director. But I’m not going to stop blogging. My new blog, with the exciting and original name “Justin Fox,” will start filling up with posts on Monday.
I was hoping to wax poetic here about the rewards and hazards and occasional sheer drudgery of sharing my opinions on something like a daily basis—and about the pure, unadulterated joy of reading and learning from and responding to all your comments. Or maybe about why I’m taking this new job. Or at least about something. But I’m tired, am supposed to meet the family (whom I guess will no longer be called the Curious Capitalists) for dinner at 8, and I have one last box to pack.
So goodbye. I wish Barbara and the new Capitalists all the best. I’ll miss them and all of you. (Although of course there’s nothing stopping you all from visiting me at the new place.)
