By special request of Green co-founder and publisher John Packel, please find below the large feature about young people and finance—including Green, of course—that ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune on Sunday, Oct. 15, 1995. This has special resonance for John because, as he recounts the story, “It was my first score on PR effort, the interview conducted on a payphone at the Museum of Natural History on my lunch break from temping there.”
In fact, the story describes Packel as “a 1991 UCLA graduate who works as a temporary in New York City, but volunteers his time in the field he really likes — working with at-risk teen-agers.” Gotta love that AP style with the hyphenated teen-agers.” So John!
Going through these old clips is a bittersweet experience. There used to be so many vibrant, conscientious newspapers with real reporters and real space to cover things of importance to their communities. The idea that the Internet was supposed to free us from the tyranny of “big publishers” is laughable now that two gigantic corporations, Google and Facebook, control about 80% of all ad dollars.
Note Kurson’s particularly idiotic quote that the paper used as a pullquote: “You’d better think of yourself as a corporation. You’ve got to be as lean and profitable as possible.” For fuck’s sake.