Pegasus News - Dallas/Fort Worth

In August of 2004, I took a week's vacation from my then-job and sat home reading, talking, studying and writing about local media. The product was a document that we affectionately call "the manifesto," a proto-business plan for Pegasus News.

The popular mythology is that months later Gary and I decided to go after this full time. And in terms of front-of-mind resolution, that is true. But somewhere deeper, that very week, I committed to this.

And even then, I had a vision of launch day. It was about as realistic and about as heartwarming as the fantasy sequences my doppleganger, Ralphie, has in the film version of A Christmas Story.

27 months later, there is no brass band or big speeches. I'm sitting in a hotel in Philadelphia where I've been evangelizing about what we do at an interactive local media conference. It's nearly a week after our announced launch date and I'm just off the phone/IM debating the centerpoints of neighborhood maps.

I won't say it's anticlimactic, 'cos this ride has been one long rollercoaster series of peaks and valleys. But over the last week, I've had the creeping realization that this isn't the finish line, not by a long shot. It's more like the end of the first mountain stage of the Tour de France.

But that's OK, because I find it apropos that on the eve of launch, I'm sitting in a Sheraton in Philly eating Chinese take-out and entering lost dog announcements into our publishing system.

And then, I crack open the fortune cookie:

"It is not in your character to give up."

Except instead of quotes, it has smiley faces on either end.

Damn straight. It is not in our character to give up. If anything is built into the DNA of our company, it's that. We should be dead six times over by now. But we're not. And fewer than 20 people with scarce resources can't build something of the scale we have. But we did. They told us that quality local information can't scale. But we're starting to scale it.

And most of the time, we manage to do it with smiley faces.

What we've made is not perfect, by a long shot. We'll be learning, improving and changing every day. But the reason I believe in it is that this thing was built by a roomful of smiling people who don't give up.

:)

UPDATE Dec 2: I just got the nicest congratulatory call from Reid Slaughter. He said what I said above much more succinctly:

"You're like Keith Richards and cockroaches."