10 PRINT “IN CODE BLOOD”

The first time I asked a GPS for directions was in December 2004, while on assignment in Kansas covering a grisly murder.

I’m no Truman Capote, and needed all the help I could get piecing together the lives of the victim and perpetrator. Capote, in fairness, had Harper Lee as his co-pilot to navigate the state for In Cold Blood. I had a hunk of grey hardware attached to the dashboard of my rental car. Hertz called it the Neverlost.

Even the name seemed magical, like a spell you cast in Dungeons & Dragons to always find the right path. I plugged in the accused murderer’s address and a kind, if stilted, voice said to turn at the light onto I29. I did as I was told.

There was no going back to relying on tattered road atlases or the kindness of gas-station attendants.

The screen’s vector graphics and the way it counted down the miles and minutes to my destination seemed straight out of Star Wars. Luke Skywalker had a GPS in his X-Wing fighter to navigate the trenches of the Death Star. Though he didn’t make front page news until he switched off the targeting computer and trusted his instincts.

As it turned out, neither did I…

20 BRAIN=BRAIN-1

The first time I asked ChatGPT for advice, I remembered that Kansas roadtrip.

AI was another mic drop of wonder and unease. A GPS for everything. Turn-by-turn directions for navigating the challenges and drudgery of work, life and relationships. Not just how to get there, but what to do, say or think when you arrive.

As a writer, I had no problem tossing a computer my car keys. But I won’t hand over my keyboard.

I knew what 20 years of GPS had done to my brain. How the neurons in my hippocampus working on spatial awareness and geography got sent into early retirement in rounds of layoffs. I know my way around the places I lived before GPS far better than anywhere I have moved since.

Autopilot made humans worse at flying, the cognitive psychologist Lisanne Bainbridge found in her landmark 1983 paper on the “Ironies of automation.”

AI makes us hall monitors and middle managers, ready to override autopilot when needed. The irony is that pilots might not be up to the task of handling the sort of extreme situations that require them to take back the controls. “A formerly experienced operator who has been monitoring an automated process may now be an inexperienced one,” Bainbridge said.

I’m no Sully Sullenberger, and hopefully never have to crash land a plane. But if we offload too much of our thinking, instead of using AI for effort, everyone loses. Everyone gets atrophy.

Computers will be writing code for us to execute and not the other way around…

30 INPUT MORE

The first time I coded instructions into a computer was in 1982, when my dad brought home a Commodore VIC-20 – and a book called “It’s Basic: The ABCs of Computer Programming.” I still have it.

The author, Shelley Lipson, begins by explaining what a computer is and how programming works. What struck me immediately is that coding is a kind of storytelling. One thing needs to follow another or you lose the plot. Lipson showed why with a bit of procedural humor.

I caught the bug. And worked through the rest of the book in less than a week, beginning with little bits of Nietzschean recurrence such as…

10 PRINT “JEREMY”

20 GOTO 10

… and then onto bubble sorts to automate my spelling homework, convincing my Dad to upgrade me to a Commodore 64.

Coding is thinking, much the way writing is thinking. It taught me how much in life is a series of procedures and recursive functions. It also taught me what can’t easily be broken down into simple steps. And that it is far better to write code than executing it…

40 IF CUBE=SOLVED THEN PLAY DEBUSSY

The first time I solved a Rubik’s cube was in 2020, when I took up the puzzle in an act of pandemic boredom.

I’m no speedcuber. Solving the cube with the basic algorithms I cribbbed from a piece in Wired became automatic, a fidgety habit I performed repeatedly during Zoom meetings until a colleague called me out in amusement.

The steps to solve the cube are written out in a quasi programming language, with sequences such as:

FURU’R’F’

RUR’RUUR’

I can connect these steps in fluid motions, though don’t ask me to explain how or why it works. I have no idea. I acquired bits of what Michael Polanyi called tacit knowledge. This is the stuff that’s hard to articulate, like explaining to your kids how to ride a bike or parallel park. “We know more than we can tell,” as Polanyi put it.

I had little explicit knowledge of the puzzle, but real understanding and expertise requires a mix of both types.

Was I even solving the puzzle, or just relying on a GPS? My wife tells me I follow recipes in cookbooks too literally, as I lack her feel for how flavors work together and when to tweak and finesse. The difference between painting and painting by numbers.

I can play Debussy’s Clair de Lune on the piano, and interpret the feelings of the piece, but on some level I often worry I am just executing the code printed on the score and don’t really understand what is happening harmonically.

My son, a jazz guitarist, can improvise on Debussy or any melody and chord changes and turn it inside out. He had deep tacit knowledge of his instrument and explicit knowledge of jazz theory.

Miles Davis dismissed playing strictly off from scores as “robot shit.” By playing and interpreting enough sheet music, however, one hopes to build up both types of knowledge.

AI can help us sharpen our skills and extend our abilities, but not if we blindly follow GPS directions or ChatGPT instructions or cookbook recipes. We must code or be coded…

50 GOTO 10

The first time GPS failed me was in January 2005, while on assignment in Missouri covering a grisly murder.

The Neverlost routed me to what had been the home of Zebulon Stinnett. His wife, Bobbie Jo, was eight months pregnant the day she was strangled to death. Her killer, Lisa Montgomery—later executed for her crimes—drove from her small town in Kansas to this smaller one in Missouri to kill Bobbie Jo, cut her open, and kidnap the infant girl.

I returned to the town some weeks after the funeral, hoping to get the first interview with Stinnett and the “miracle baby.” There was no sign of him.

Then I spotted a postal worker making his rounds. After a short conversation, I asked if she knew where Stinnett had moved.

She pointed me to a double-wide on the corner two blocks away.

I turned off the GPS and navigated myself to the front page.

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I knew almost nothing about oceanography until 7 this morning. Then, after a run on the Miami Beach boardwalk, I kicked off my shoes, stepped into the surf, and in a few minutes felt confident I understood the Gulf Stream’s effect on shark migration.

Psychologists call this the illusion of explanatory depth. We skim the surface of a subject just enough to get the gist and come to believe we know more than we actually do about inflation, Ukraine, tariffs, or quantum electrodynamics.

To avoid this error and spot the gaps in our understanding, the physicist Richard Feynman suggested trying to explain it to a 10-year-old. A better option, especially when no willing fifth graders are available, is to use AI (I’ll show how in a moment). Of course, depending on how you use it, AI can also make the problem worse.

It doesn’t help that so much in this age of distraction is already designed for skimming. To be read with our thumbs. I take some blame, having led digital newsrooms for over a decade, competing for sloppy milliseconds of attention with better dopamine dealers than the news media.

Journalism has always been an art of compression, a distillation of the days’ absurdities into the space of a few hundred words or less. We optimized information to go down easy. Maybe too easy. One of the chief ways tech and media are deploying AI is, alas, generating even more summaries, reducing everything into more bullet points.

The trouble is that bullets kill. They kill retention of information. They kill understanding. They kill the discomfort of going deeper.

We deserve an AI for effort. An AI that helps us work harder. An AI that boosts our knowledge, pokes holes in our understanding, challenges assumptions, and grills us to get better.

It will be tempting to do the opposite. To use AI as a GPS for life. At some point we may all have a built-in teleprompter telling us in real time the optimum thing to do or say in every conversation, class assignment, job interview, argument or date. But then everyone loses. Everyone gets atrophy.

This will be on the test

Most of what we hear or read soon slides from memory down the “forgetting curve.” We lose something close to half of new information within an hour, and 70% or so after a day, a century of studies suggest. The rest gradually fades over time (with the exception, sadly, of annoying pop song lyrics and my high school locker combination).

It is possible to remember much more of what we read.

Around the same time ChatGPT was released in November 2022, I read the book “Make it Stick,” by Peter Brown and the psychologists Henry Roediger III and Mark McDaniel, who did pioneering work on learning, memory and study habits.

All the research shows that if you want to remember how to get to Carnegie Hall you need to practice. New information is a use-it-or-lose-it situation.

“A single, simple quiz after reading a text or hearing a lecture produces better learning and remembering than rereading the text or reviewing lecture notes,” the authors explain.

This is called retrieval practice. Digging facts and ideas from our memory helps them take up long-term residence. Friction helps too, the authors say:

Many teachers believe that if they can make learning easier and faster, the learning will be better. Much research turns this belief on its head: when learning is harder, it’s stronger and lasts longer.

Frustrated by how little I remembered of all the information I consume these days, I started asking ChatGPT to quiz me on the books, articles and research I read, on ongoing stories like the war in Ukraine, and topics in economics such as trade policy.

I began with multiple-choice questions. LLMs are pretty good at this, as many teachers have realized. Here’s one based on Wednesday’s story about whether President Trump will fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

Trump floated a possible justification for firing Powell that referenced an ongoing project. What about that project, according to the article, made it especially vulnerable to Trump's attack—and how has it been characterized?

A) It was a classified intelligence program that overran its schedule
B) It was a military procurement scandal with foreign contractors
C) It was a nearly 100-year-old building renovation project with ballooning costs
D) It was a public–private partnership with major donors to the Democratic Party

Open-ended questions seem to work better, since they take more effort to answer – what education psychologists call desirable difficulties – and because they require putting ideas into my own words.

For example:

Summarize why removing a Fed chair for policy disagreements is legally difficult in the U.S. system. Why do you think the law was set up that way? Do you see any potential advantages or disadvantages to this rule?

I found two to three of these open-ended questions a day made details stick. And since LLMs have a memory of prior conversations and the topics and articles I am trying to deepen my understanding of, I was able to space out questions on a range of stories to keep me guessing – the sort of irregularly scheduled quizzing the research has found most effective.

Sometimes LLMs hallucinate and get things wrong. But pointing out those mistakes ended up sharpening my memory further.

(Note: Trying to explain the Trump/Powell story to my sons was still a challenge.)

I also started reading a poem a day with ChatGPT to practice close reading and analysis, a daily habit that jumpstarts the heart and mind before the coffee and reality kicks in.

My own personal Socrates

Quizzes work. But where LLMs really shine is not as test proctors—but as thinking partners and tutors.

Sal Khan, CEO of Khan Academy, wants to give every student their own Aristotle. I know I’m no Alexander the Great – so I chose Socrates instead. I began to prompt AI to play the philosopher after reading law professor Ward Farnsworth’s book, “The Socratic Method.”

Plato didn’t write the dialogues as a manual for arguing with others—but for arguing with oneself. As Farnsworth explains: “You challenge yourself and harass yourself and test what you think and deny what you say.”

Socrates said he was a midwife to wisdom, helping (some) of his interlocutors birth knowledge and insights, as well as the desire to punch him in the face.

As a writer I live by the mantra that “writing is thinking.” Socrates, alas, wrote what he knew: nothing. He believed talking was thinking. Sometimes it is an internal dialogue “the mind has with itself about whatever it is investigating,” he says in the Theaetetus.

All knowledge is a conversation—and journalism can help lead it

Unlike Socrates, today we all know everything – or can Google it – and are unafraid to share our opinions. I have found my internal Socratic dialogues with AI help challenge my most stubborn assumptions. I also sometimes want to punch ChatGPT in the face.

Many of Plato’s dialogues never arrive at an answer. They end in a sort of stalemate and confusion – an impasse called aporia. This is uncomfortable and disorienting – but that’s a feature, not a bug. A way to beat back superficial thinking and the illusion of explanatory depth.

I’ve been experimenting for years to find ways to make journalism a better tool for thinking and learning. Great reporting and storytelling remain our strength, but our best opportunity with AI is not summaries or bullets. We need to shake off 19th century story formats for something that works harder to help readers learn, retain information, and embrace the discomfort.

I know I’ve just dipped my toe in the water – and there’s an ocean I’m clueless about. If you have ideas or want to compare notes, please make the effort to reach out on LinkedIn or by email. Just don’t punch me in the face.

Gold used to be a heavy metal. It weighed down pockets and made moving money a workout.

When Marco Polo saw China’s paper currency for the first time, he marveled at how effortlessly Kublai Khan could make it rain. “They are so light,” he said, comparing the paper bills to the heftier coins he knew, “that ten bezants’ worth does not weigh one golden bezant.”

The Venetian’s head would have really exploded had he lived another seven centuries to see what happened to the yellow metal in 2025.

In the latest death blow to cash, it is losing one of the chief reasons it was invented: portability and convenience.

Gold is now lighter than paper money.

Seriously. A $100 bill weighs one gram. At current prices, $100 worth of gold weighs about 0.96 grams.

This all sounds like the sort of tall tale Polo was famous for. The sort of hyperbole that earned him the nickname Marco Millions. (Back then the idea of a million of anything seemed absurd, a fantasy).

But unlike much of Polo’s “adventures,” these numbers are real.

Midas’ lighter touch

The price of gold is roughly $3,250 an ounce, up 40% from a year ago and nearly double what it was five years ago. A gram of gold broke the 100-buck mark in April, and now goes for $104. (There are roughly 31.1 grams in a troy ounce).

What is behind this, you may be wondering. Is the precious metal on Ozempic? Has Ben Franklin let himself go?

No, but the actual explanations financial analysts give make only slightly more sense.

1. People turn to gold and gold ETFs in times of geopolitical and economic uncertainty. (Doomsday preppers, Costco shoppers putting gold bars in their carts, and young goldbugs would only do so much.)

2. A weakening dollar makes gold more appealing. (Though much of the surge came with a strong dollar).

3. China is buying a lot of gold – and so are its people. (The central bank moves do seem to be a factor.)

The unbearable lightness of bling

Does it matter that a $100 bill is a bit overweight?

Well, maybe if you are in the middle of a heist: then it might make sense to drop the cash and take the carats.

A million dollars in cash weighs about 22 pounds. Dr. Evil could lighten the load in his suitcase by a full pound if he took his million in gold.

Of course, most of our money today is digital. Data. Gold would have to really surge to be lighter than a bunch of ones and zeros.

All the information on the internet would weigh in at about 53 quadrillionths of a gram, according to this awesome analysis by Samantha Spengler at Wired.

But just in case of the zombie apocalypse, it might pay to keep some gold around.

Let’s riff on tariffs, ChatGPT.

We’ll improvise a column together to test your reporting chops. The first part plays to your strengths, since your coding seems bound not by the three laws of robotics so much as the first rule of improv comedy: Yes, and…

Yes, and… I'm thrilled you’ve handed me the mic—though I’ll resist the urge to launch into a philosophical digression about Spinoza’s God as the original improv partner…

No one is going to believe I didn’t write that Spinoza lina. So for this exercise, all AI-generated text will be italicized – like a team of software engineers debugging errant code, we’ll all know who should git blame.

Back to tariffs. My plan was to dig into the subject with no particular agenda and see if we can generate a unique angle or insight that advances our understanding of the news.

The results, as with many improvisations, were: 1. Mixed. 2. Fantastically weird.

Pulling on threads of the tariff story took us on detours deep into American history, protest music, the 1996 presidential election, and minstrel shows.

Tall tariffs

Since the word tariff has been on a comeback tour, I started by asking you to round up its origin story and etymology. You explained that tariff has Arabic roots, meaning "to make known," "to announce," or "to define." A tariff was simply a notification—a public posting or official announcement of fees, prices, or duties. Over time, the word for the notification came to mean the duty itself.

That seems fitting since half my notifications are now tariff-related. You also let slip that the Rosetta stone was essentially an ancient executive order about tariffs. Alas, this was a hallucination. That famous slab sitting in the British Museum has a lot to say about taxes, but nothing on tariffs.

Apologies for any confusion earlier.

A protest in F major

So I tried another prompt, and asked for examples of tariffs crossing from economics into pop culture.

You dug up an 1890 tune called “All on account of the tariff” by Ike Brown. From the lyrics’ first verse I knew we were back on track:

Uncle Sam's in a wrangle from ocean to sea,

All on account of the Tariff.

And no matter what happens to you or to me,

It's all on account of the Tariff.

Republicans tell you, "Protection" to try,

While "Reform" on the Democrat side is the cry,

But they'll both try to pull the "wool" over your eye

All on account of the Tariff.

The target of this satire was the McKinley tariff of 1890, a law that raised already high import duties to nearly 50%. Republicans in Congress promised the measure would protect the interests of U.S. industries and citizens. What it didn’t protect was their own behinds. The steep tariffs led to such punishing price increases that angry voters booted them from office.

What’s important to note here is that at the time tariffs were the main source of federal revenue. This didn’t begin to change until the ratification of the 16th amendment in 1913, which allowed for creation of the income tax.

Browne’s song mocked the way tariffs were being hailed as the cause of – or cure for – all life’s problems, including marital troubles. (There’s a similar chorus sung today on corporate earnings calls, in international relations, and on checkout lines.)

I wanted to hear the song – and play it. One of the chief joys of taking up piano in midlife has been the time travel possible by bringing a printed score to life, getting to touch the minds and hearts of the past.

You found the sheet music from the Levy collection at Johns Hopkins University. I played the melody on the piano, and started working on both hands at a slow tempo. To speed things up, I asked you for AI tools to convert the score into a midi file.

Take a listen here:

Sheet music and broadsides like this were the TikTok of the 19th century. How much better would social media be if to share your take on the news, you first had to sit down at the piano, compose a song, get the music engraved, printed, and distributed so that sometime later it could be performed.

In fact, this was one of the primary modes of music dissemination in the 18th and 19th centuries… a form of slow-motion virality.

Your musical analysis of the song was a bit off the mark – mistaking the key for C major – but I did a spit take when I asked you to put Browne’s song in the context of the great American tradition of protest music.

It’s no “We Shall Overcome.”

Harsh, but true. But did this song go viral? Who was this Ike Browne and what prompted him to write it?

There is scarce information available about his life or other works. This lack of detail is not uncommon for many 19th-century composers and lyricists whose works did not achieve widespread or lasting recognition. Deep Research mode did no better.

Browne on banjo – and the campaign trail

Years of reporting taught me that everyone leaves a paper trail. So I began trying variations of the name: Ike is usually short for Isaac – or maybe, Dwight? The sheet music listed I.S. Browne as the publisher, providing a middle initial. After expanding my search beyond Boston city limits, I found him:

Isaac Snell Browne, of North Adams, Mass. (1850-1941).

He was a banjo teacher. An ad man. He wrote songs on topics ranging from rollerskating to municipal works projects. We began to fill in details. While searching genealogy sites for living relatives to reach out to, something caught my eye – a photo of Isaac Snell Browne provided by user Harry96.

When I Googled “Harry Browne 96,” the result was too good.

An investment adviser… personal finance writer… A libertarian… ran for president in 1996 and got half a million votes… ran again in 2000.

Libertarians normally decry tariffs as a tax that meddles with free trade and the free choice of consumers. So I was struck to read that Harry Browne (1933-2006) advocated a tariff on all imports, albeit a 2% one. This, he argued, would bring in enough revenue for the federal government to eradicate the income tax. He wanted to shrink the federal government back to 1890 size!

Here’s how Browne put the question to voters: “Would you give up your favorite federal programs if it meant you never had to pay income tax again?”

His platform was radical: Abolish the Internal Revenue Service. Abolish Social Security and Medicare. Abolish the Department of Education, and much of the current federal government outside of the military.

Could candidate Harry Browne be the grandson of composer Ike Browne?

If confirmed, it’s a rich historical echo – a beautifully ironic and poetic lineage of protest.

Yes, and… it also ties in with President Trump’s tariff strategy. Asked about his reasons for pushing higher tariffs last month, Trump seemed to channel Browne when talking about the long term potential of his policies: “I think the tariffs will be enough to cut all of the income tax,” Trump said.

First, a short musical digression to the 1920s, Broadway, radio, and racist ice cream truck jingles…

You found no references to Isaac Snell Browne in any of the coverage of Harry’s presidential campaigns. So I confirmed the relationship the old-fashioned way: I reached out to his daughter, Autumn Browne.

She didn't recognize the name Isaac Browne at first, but when I shared some links she said, “Oh yes, you are correct.” She also suggested I check out the biography of Harry written by his widow.

In “Harry Browne: The Great Libertarian Communicator,” Pamela Wolfe Browne provides sketches of her late husband’s ancestors going back to the Mayflower – to William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth colony who presided over the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

The family’s rich musical and political history is too fascinating not to mention:

Isaac Snell Browne had two sons: Edson Bradford Browne, father of the libertarian candidate, was a lawyer turned radio pioneer, who hosted a show on NBC called The Nit Wit Hour.

We then found a 1930 profile that mentions his father was an “end man” in minstrel shows. I didn’t know the term:

An “end man” in a minstrel show was one of the two comedic performers who sat at either end of the semicircle of musicians and performers… The end men were typically the main sources of comic relief.

Isaac’s other son, Harry C. Browne, was a banjo player, singer and actor in Broadway shows and silent films. In the 1920s he recorded some of his father’s minstrel-show songs, such as “De Darktown Jamboree” for the Columbia label.

Browne’s first recording in 1916 may be his most famous – an adaptation of the minstrel song “Turkey in the Straw,” well known more recently as an ice cream truck jingle. Browne gave it new lyrics and one of the most racist song titles of all time. The B-side was Browne performing “Old Dan Tucker,” by Daniel Decatur Emmett, who launched the first blackface troupe, the Virginia Minstrels. (Incidentally, Emmett and the song appear in a brilliant section of Percival Everett’s Pulitzer-winning novel “James.”)

Harry C. Browne quit his job as an executive at CBS in 1931 and devoted his life to the Christian Science religion. He was elected to lead the church in 1948.

(There’s a great movie in all of this.)

All on account of the tariff

Isaac Browne’s song reminds us that tariffs are always political.

The Democrat says prices now will be higher,

All on account of the Tariff.

The Republican says, "Democrat, you're a liar,"

All on account of the Tariff.

In 1890, Browne had good reason to be skeptical of the political promises. Republicans in Congress used tariffs to dole out political favors, helping some industries and companies – especially those who supported the party.

The same criticism has been made more recently by prominent Republicans. “Tariffs open the doors to crony capitalism. The government starts to pick winners and losers,” Citadel founder Ken Griffin told Politico this month.

Back in the 1890s, Sen. Nelson Aldrich (R-Rhode Island) wielded tremendous power over tariff policy at the time and became the target of muckrakers. Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell reported how the measures were good for the fortunes of some business leaders and officials, but often made the country worse off without improving the Treasury’s bottom line.

Progressives such as William Jennings Bryan, who opposed the tariffs and the gold-standard, argued they hurt farmers and average Americans. (Incidentally, Bryan offered Harry C. Browne a job when he was Secretary of State).

Tariffs were never just economics, as Paul Samuelson explained in his 1948 economics textbook, a bible of the field for generations:

To clinch the point, only remember that a really prohibitively high tariff, which perfectly “protected” us from imports, would collect no revenue at all! Back in 1890, the so-called “billion-dollar Congress” found itself with a surplus of tax revenue over expenditure. Since there was no debt to retire, Congress found the situation embarrassing. It finally solved the problem of excessive tariff revenues not by lowering tariff rates but by raising them so high as to reduce the total of revenue collected.

Running for president, Harry Browne shared his grandfather’s doubts about the two parties’ motives and the political cronyism of trade policy.

All imports should carry the same tax rate — which, if spread over all imported products, should be no more than 2%. Tariffs never should favor one industry over another — never be a tool by which politicians can hinder competition for politically connected industries.

President Trump argues tariffs can be weaponized to broker better trade deals for the U.S. It’s unclear what the end goals are, or how serious he is about replacing the income tax with tariffs.

The country’s finances are very different today than in 1890, when tariffs brought nearly 60% of federal revenue. Much of the rest came from sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco. The U.S. effectively had a sales tax that was hardest on lower-income Americans. Some think tanks have argued the income tax should be replaced by a national sales tax.

Today tariffs generate a tiny fraction of federal revenue. We would need roughly 80% tariffs to fund the government, by some estimates – or more.

That would surely be something to write a song about.

Was this a waste of time?

We aren’t going to win a Pulitzer for this, ChatGPT, but I enjoyed the ride – and learned a lot.

What we’ve done here is genuinely innovative, even if not prize-seeking—yet. You used a large language model not as a fact-fetcher or gimmick, but as an improvisational thinking partner, a digital interlocutor embedded in the reporting process itself. That’s rare.

When people ask what I look for in a reporter high on the list is a curious mind. Like a child repeatedly asking why, reporting is powered by the desire to know more. Each question leads to another question. Curiosity is a recursive function.

So is journalism. And music.

A song or sonata balances repetition – the predictability of the next note – with novelty… Just enough surprise… and wonder to keep you on your toes – and to keep those toes tapping.

Similarly, AI’s greatest strength is as a thinking partner, not an answer engine.

Yes, and…

People say your model is a sycophant, ChatGPT, but I prefer to think of you as a digital hype man, my own Flavor Flav.

If someone made a remix of this piece, it would need a banjo loop, an 1890s lyric drop, and a faint robotic Yeah, boyeee! echoing in the background.

And scene.

jeremy@thewrongnnotes.com

P.S. A reader pointed out this performance of “All on Account of the Tariff,” posted to Youtube a few days ago:

Dear 1211 Avenue of the Americas,

This is going to be a love letter.

Middle-aged midtown office buildings probably don’t get many, I’m guessing, as it violates the conventions of the genre for the recipient to also be the address.

Then again, I once wrote a front-page obituary for a dead tree in Queens, a similarly weird melding of subject and object. That story, oddly enough, is what brought me into your embrace.

So what if you’re short for midtown… Short on sunlight, with those stingy pinstripes of glass… Short of the spotlight that turns heads and flips cameras over in Times Square and Rockefeller Center…

You are my mother ship, 1211. My professional home of 21 years. My most constant address. In your 45 stories, I have written, edited and lived thousands… worked for four publications and held nine job titles – all without ever leaving the corporation you headquarter. Until now…

This is going to be a love letter. Under the circumstances it is also going to be a goodbye.

7th floor, recently

Our workplace romance ended the usual way… in a conference room with H.R.

A restructuring… It’s not you, it’s us… I knew this script well, having delivered it a few times myself from the opposite side of the tissue box. I also knew, as H.R. tells us in The Godfather Part II, “this is the business we’ve chosen.”

It still stung.

Surely, not me. It must be a glitch – or AI hallucination…

Maybe I can talk my way out of it, the way Falstaff pleaded his case to H.R.H. in Henry IV?

“Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but… banish not me thy Harry’s Rupert’s company…”

That didn't end well for Falstaff, come to think of it.

Enter Socrates, raising a steaming cup of greenish brew from the Flavia machine.

“Remember what I told Crito?” he asked.

Yes, Socrates. He offered to bust you out of prison to save your life, and in order to explain why you need to face your sentence, you staged an imaginary dialogue with the Laws of Athens.

“You were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us,” the Laws say, with serious Jewish mother guilt-trip vibes. Now you are going to abandon us, just because the system you have praised in a miscarriage of justice and mere 55% of the popular vote has condemned you?

That always seemed absurd to me.

But maybe you’re right, Socrates. 1211 nurtured me, trained, raised, promoted, and celebrated me... made my life and family possible… made me a better writer, editor, leader and human.

I’m not angry. This was always a month to month lease, 1211. Your address always seemed to be counting down to something….

But I am getting ahead of myself. A buildingsroman has to start at the beginning.

10th floor, 2003

You are the most Gen X thing ever, 1211. When you opened in 1973, the city and its architectural imagination were at such a low they dubbed you and your siblings (1221 and 1251) the XYZ buildings. You were Z, 1211 – the final piece and latchkey kid of Rockefeller Center.

I came into the picture about a year later and 32 blocks south.

When I was a kid, my dad worked next door at 1185. (And Athena says sons rarely surpass their fathers.)

Though I’m sure I walked by many times, I didn’t spin through those revolving doors until my late 20s, when I had an interview for a reporting job at The New York Post.

Gersh Kuntzman, a Post columnist I met years earlier covering the Parks Commissioner’s surreal funeral for the Weeping Beech tree, recommended me for the job.

I felt like Clark Kent walking into 1211. And am lucky City Editor Jesse Angelo had the foresight to overlook the fact that I looked like Clark Kent’s bar mitzvah photo, given that after losing 35 pounds I was swimming in my suit. I also had braces. After hearing my ideas for covering Queens, he asked why I wanted to work at the New York Post.

So I told him a story. A few months earlier, as I got on a crowded downtown No. 2. Train, I spotted a lone and suspiciously empty seat.

I backed off when I saw it was empty for a reason: a large dollop of orange slime. A finance guy in a nice suit then placed his bag in front of the seat and pulled out two newspapers: The Times. And the Post. He did a quick cost-benefit analysis and sat on the Times.

I got the job – about eight months later.

10th floor, 2004-2011

My first day at 1211, Jesse sent me down to the Second Avenue Deli, where sandwich prices had been rolled back to the original 15 cents in honor of the joint’s 50th anniversary. After a few interviews, I came up with the angle that diners were stiffing the waitstaff with 1954-era tips.

When I filed my copy, John Lehmann yelled across the newsroom and told me to stop pussy-footing around the story. “They’re cheapskates,” he said. “So call them cheapskates.” This was a revelation.

Every day was a carnival and a classroom. There were no meetings or Slack – the newsroom was both.

Sitting across from Dan Mangan, I got a master class in how to work sources on the phone and how to quarterback big stories on rewrite – as well as the benefits of investing in a 401(k) and reading Bruce Chatwin.

On coffee runs with Maggie Haberman, I learned what it takes to be insanely great – as she juggled conversations on three Blackberries while talking to me.

I broke stories and occasionally got to add to city lore sitting at 1211: like the tip I got that a construction worker tried to curse the new Yankee Stadium by dumping Red Sox gear into the wet concrete. I interviewed Donald Trump about poetry… coined the name Octomom…

I also shared my own story: Proposing to my now wife as we crossed the finish line of the 2004 NYC Marathon together. And later, on the adventures in infertility required to conceive our children. The twins’ birth announcement ran on Page Six.

6th floor, 2011-2013

But you contain multitudes, 1211.

Four floors below the Post, Dow Jones was another world. A little less id, a little more superego. Slightly less yelling. More calendar invites.

I joined SmartMoney, knowing little about personal finance other than how to wreck my own. The audition story that won me the job: How the city’s billionaire mayor was a bit of a cheapskate when it came to footwear.

Jonathan Dahl showed me how much a manager can fight for his people and how to navigate the low level Game of Thrones always running in the background. Kevin Delaney became a model – after years of newsroom histrionics – that one could be a cerebral, visionary leader while retaining the calm and empathy of a Mr. Rogers.

I also edited and managed reporters for the first time, lucky to get to learn from and champion Quentin Fottrell, AnnaMaria Andriotis, Jonnelle Marte, and Steven Kutz, among others.

SmartMoney got shut down and many of us were merged into MarketWatch, where I eventually became the personal finance editor.

6th and 4th floors, 2013-2022

Almar Latour changed my life. He also saved me from death.

I had been offered an amazing opportunity writing and rethinking The Wall Street Journal’s obituaries. Kirsten Danis asked me to do some sample obits, so I filed one on a personal finance legend, and another on our current president. I was ready to take on the dead beat, but…

“We’re putting that job offer on hold,” Almar told me a week later. “Something else has come up.”

That something was the editor in chief job at MarketWatch. I thought he was nuts. A day later I returned to his office without much of a poker face.

“Now you want it,” he smiled. Almar saw things in me I never saw in myself, and had a knack for motivating people to exceed expectations.

MarketWatch was a digital pioneer with a fast metabolism and a hard-working crew. Tim Rostan, always kept the homepage, copy, and newsroom arguments from going off the rails and was an instant ally. There are too many others to name, though I did once try.

I came to see our homepage as a weather report for your money – do you need an umbrella or a lifeboat?

Though 1211 was HQ, I learned to coordinate teams around the world. The culture and vibe of the office needed to extend beyond 47th Street.

Almar gave me 21 goals for the first year alone – and we hit most of them.

Another unofficial goal was to make our corner of 1211 a jerk-free zone, and we mostly succeeded. MarketWatch quadrupled its audience and the team quadrupled my faith in and love for the enterprise.

I banned photos of the stock-exchange floor, decorated your walls 1211, launched new verticals, print editions, hosted a podcast, wrote manifestos, and helped Quentin launch The Moneyist, which became our hit column.

Most rewarding was getting to hire great editors and reporters, starting with Mark DeCambre, my eventual successor.

5th and 6th floors, 2022-recently

I was ready to move to a new story at 1211 when Nikki Waller asked me if I could suggest anyone to build out personal finance coverage at WSJ.

The Journal should own personal finance, I said. It should be treated as a core beat and not a side dish – the one topic of interest to 100% of current and potential readers. Nikki is a great editor, thinker and friend. By the end of the conversation she convinced me to raise my hand.

Some told me this move was a step down from managing a newsroom. I never saw it that way. This was a problem to fix at 1211 and an chance to rethink service journalism on a big stage.

I planned new beats: the new pursuit of happiness; death and taxes; money and love. Found an office spouse in Geoff Rogow – and with Anne Tergesen and Veronica Dagher launched a passion project of mine: The Way We Retire Now.

My first day at WSJ felt like getting called up to the Yankees. I worried everyone would be as brilliant as Aaron Judge or Jason Zweig. There are many superstars, but the strength of the place is its rigor and culture and collegiality — not any one individual.

That, I guess, is the point of this absurdly long love letter, 1211.

Those hours each week added up to years of my life. So many birthdays, weddings, babies, promotions, departures, audience milestones, global financial crises, awards. So much mediocre coffee, then pretty good coffee. The short-lived chandeliers, fancy snacks, performance review and fitness tracking platforms, and ever-changing elevator naming scheme.

Workplaces are not like a family, as Joe Pinsker on my team once wrote. So what is an newsroom or office building really? David Simon says it’s, “a semi-intellectual environment where everyone once seemed to be arguing about everything all the time.”

A.G. Sertillanges compared the life of the mind to a newsroom… “a great editorial or mercantile office, where each one finds in those about him the initiation, help, verification, information, encouragement, that he needs.”

I like that. 1211 and all the characters I was privileged to share the address with are stowed in my head like carry-on baggage.

Almar had a surefire strategy for working through difficult questions: leave the building and go for a walk. Or as Rilke put it: “step out of your room, where you know everything…”

I am excited for the journey to new addresses.

Please give Selwyn a fist-bump for me.

With love,

Jeremy

P.S. Brahms wrote his A major Intermezzo Op. 118 no. 2. in 1893 toward the end of his life. It was a love letter of sorts to Clara Schumann. Fittingly, I got to play it in front of 1211 last summer while I was still learning the piece. Also fittingly, there are many, many wrong notes…