With the same cold eye that sank a million bad headlines, Jim Bellows scans the menu at a Silicon Valley restaurant and orders a way old newsman's iron-gut choice: Philly cheesesteak sandwich. And a glass of wine, thanks - at 73, you're entitled to a drink at lunch. Bellows, who's sat in more top editor's chairs than practically anyone alive, isn't here for his health. "It's like the newspaper wars 40 years ago," he says about his latest incarnation, stoking the editorial fires for the Internet navigation service Excite. "I'm here for the fight."
Bellows arrived at Excite in early 1995, already sporting what he delights in calling "the longest r�sum� in journalism": Navy Hellcats in the wartime Pacific. Eight newspapers, including legendary last stands at the doomed New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Star, and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Four national TV news shows, a pioneering online news service, and, at 70, a stint as West Coast bureau chief for TV Guide.
At Excite, for now at least, his brief is more focused: "My job," he says, "is to help people understand what's out there and show them where to find it." Bellows intends to do this with Web site reviews - 60,000 and counting since the company went public late last year. Half a dozen of Excite's competitors offer a similar service; what they don't have is Bellows's half-century of experience giving people what they want. He's even got a mantra: "Tight, true, and somewhat hip, with a little irreverence, but not too much. Be smart, be tart, and have a heart."
Bellows isn't fazed by trying to run his operation on an editorial budget that would barely provide lunch money for some top New York editors. Nor is he worried about Internet publishing's reputation for spewing red ink. "I've spent most of my career around Number Two newspapers that were losing money," he says. "What's new?"What's new is the Web, of course. But Bellows argues that the song remains the same. "Publishing - a newspaper, a TV show, a Web site - is about deciding what's important for your readers and creating a personality, a style, a voice. That's what differentiates us from a site like Yahoo!"
That said, Bellows doesn't claim to have a magic road map to the future. "We've taken some little steps," he says. "But it's still a long way to wherever it is we're going."
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Way Old News
