Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Dear Jeff [Bezos],While it might seem an awful cliche, the fact of the matter is — if you go back to a time long before the commercial Internet existed, and well before you became so rich that you have $250 million in spare change to purchase a major metropolitan newspaper — I started my real journalism career in the mailroom at the Washington Post.

On the storied fifth floor of the Post’s longtime building at 15th and L Streets, NW — which is now also prepping to be sold for about half of what you forked over for the Post itself (oh, the irony!) — I delivered piles of letters and packages to reporters and editors, starting when I was still a student at Georgetown University.

I had come there as both a mailroom lackey and also as a stringer, after I called and chewed out then-Metro editor Larry Kramer (now the editor publisher of USA Today) about how badly the newspaper was covering the area’s colleges, including mine. He told me to come down to the Post and say it to his face, which I did with all the obnoxiousness a 19-year-old could muster.

As it turned out, I ended up staying at the Post — with a few short departures for things like graduate school — for almost 15 years, in more jobs than I can remember, including the lowest rung in the then-backwater business section. .PS Don't forget to breathe.