: TOMAS
I came to Speak when Jennifer and Denise were still there, and I subsequently heard that they had followed several other people. Then they were let go. Elisabeth had been there one issue and she had gone. And even when Dan hired me he said, "Maybe this should be temporary." Soon after I had a trip planned to Mexico and assumed I would be jobless when I returned. Dan just always seemed unhappy with everyone. It was an ambiguous time.

: DAN
I used to be very uncommunicative with employees as to whether they were doing a good job or a bad job. Nobody thought they were going to be fired until the moment they were fired. Because of this, Tomas felt unsteady. From the beginning, he did a great job, really helped improve the magazine. But I only realized that I hadn't told him this when he asked if he was going get fired like everyone else.

: JOHN
When I first worked for Speak, it seemed like Dan had a different person answering the phone every time I called. One of them said, "You're not the only John that calls so it would be helpful if you could tell me your last name, too." She was gone the next time I called.

: MARTIN
Dan isn't the same person now that he was at the beginning. At that time he was particularly shy and had a hard time dealing with people directly, they were very intimidating to him.

Left to right: Imipramine (psychotic), Buspar (nothing), Paxil (irritable), Zoloft (jittery), Doxepin (sleepy).

: DAN
I had anxiety attacks and was put on anti-depressants. They worked well, except that I felt sleepy all the time and was quite happy to turn responsibilities over to other people. I wasn't satisfied with the first few issues, but had a difficult time getting out of my own way to do anything about it. I finally decided to get off the pills and I instantly snapped back to normal. I fired almost everyone and took control over every aspect of the magazine, with the exception of ad sales, which I just couldn't do.

: JOHN
Dan told me that he thought he was such a poor seller, he figured someone as different from him as possible ought to be a good seller. That was the logic behind hiring Caitlin.

: CAITLIN
My dad warned, "You're new to New York, you're new to the publishing world, and you work for a new magazine. Too much news is bad news."

: DAN
I still have my first phone file from Caitlin. She had a home number, a work number, a voice mail number and a basement number.

: CAITLIN
I had a basement office in the building where I worked for my other job. I'd run down there at lunch. Before that I used to call agencies from payphones just outside the office, I always had a whole stack of quarters. The doorman took pity on me, he said "C'mon, this is crazy you standing out there trying to write things down. Let me set up an office for you."

: KATHERINE
Dan and Caitlin are about as opposite from each other as any two people can be. It's no surprise, in hindsight at least, that things didn't work out. Caitlin is incredibly enthusiastic in an optimistic, salesperson-y way and Dan is warily enthusiastic in a thoughtful, cynical, more anti-social way. By the end it seemed like they were working for two different magazines.

: DAN
Caitlin initially made me believe that anything was possible. She was enthusiastic and fearless. And nobody worked harder. She'd call the office at nine p.m.-- midnight her time-- to talk about an ad proposal or whatever she was working on. We both worked long hours, but we never commiserated or complained; we were doing exactly what we wanted to be doing.

: MARTIN
One time a group of journalists came in from Japan and imagined us as these swinging party boys who knew all the clubs and were the toast of the town. We were sitting around in a circle without much to say and they asked us about fun places to go. Dan and I couldn't think of a single one. We said, "Well, we just work on the magazine all day and night." If Speak reflected our lives, it would be a dull magazine. We live very isolated lives.

Speak hired, and fired, three different advertising directors, prior to the first issue. Maybe it was the logo.

: CAITLIN
I worked bloody hard on Speak. I always believed in Dan's editorial vision and I championed it very aggressively. But apart from a steady check, I never got the same support or morale building that I felt I was giving to him.

He did give me a compliment one time after my first visit to San Francisco. I loved the place and called when I got back and said, "If I could have turned the plane around, I would have." And Dan said, "If anyone could have, you could have." I made a lot of cold calls that day.

: DAN
Speak was moving into more non-commercial terrain, and Caitlin never fully accepted it. She always felt that I should do more for her editorially, whether it be fashion or music, to help her sell ads.

: CAITLIN
Dan and I had the same goals, but we were operating on different tangents. I knew I had the ear of record companies and a lot of them were excited to have me connect them with other advertisers that could create an event. I'd seen companies like Sony and others use music as a tool to promote who they were. I didn't want to be calling Dan the way promoters did, saying "I'm sending you some CDs, make sure you write this up." But I saw Speak, plus music, as a powerful way to leverage funds. Dan saw it as, "Oh, God, Cait wants us to be a music magazine."

: DAN
There were already too many music magazines, and they all covered the same bands. Caitlin was always very encouraging that we could do it better than the others, but I didn't have any idea how.

: ELISABETH
Dan would criticize every magazine in the world; there was no other magazine that was good. "Details, I hate that magazine!" "Paper, I hate that magazine!" He didn't hate Might, but then it went out of business.

: DAN
Once Caitlin was trying to do something with Island records and U2 were about to embark on a tour. She appealed to me to publish a story on the tour to get a little synergy going. But, jeez, how dull would that have been? Most ideas that were generated around selling ads were not only bad ideas for Speak, they were just bad ideas.

: CAITLIN
I think collaboration is a very important thing. There are compromises that you sometimes have to give in to, but if you're working with talented people it all gels rather beautifully in the end.

: DAN
My perception was that most magazines were filled with compromise and I liked the idea that Speak didn't have any of that. I thought Caitlin should have bought into what I was doing and not try to reshape it to make it easier to sell.

: JOHN
That Caitlin would work on Dan for added editorial to support her advertisers is totally in keeping with the personality he was looking for when he hired her. I don't think he thought this part through. He just knew that he didn't want to have to sell.

: MARTIN
I'm sure Caitlin couldn't understand why Dan would hire her and then resent the very thing she specialized in. And Dan couldn't understand why she wouldn't leave him alone and stop trying to change the magazine. In other words, why would she resent the very thing she was hired to promote?

: JOHN
If Dan were more amenable to the needs of marketers who don't share his sanctification of the separation of edit and advertising, he may have had more success. Not that Speak would have been a better read. Caitlin was right on in her strategy, but Speak was trying to be different. Advertisers don't like different.

: DAN
There was a point at which Caitlin accepted she would have no sway over the editorial, and she instead tried to get Speak involved in event marketing-- mainly club music stuff that had nothing to do with the actual magazine. The events would be for the advertisers and even if they didn't jibe with the magazine, they allowed us to bring something to these companies that we never could with our editorial. Caitlin was smart about this, but I was protective. Too protective probably.

: CAITLIN
Dan never said "Cait, I trust you. Do whatever it takes to make noise about this thing." I would never do anything without his approval, so I would call and check everything with him and nine times out of ten, it was a no. There was a sense that Speak was a young vehicle and we needed to present the right image.

(cont.) ...Speak was banned from all future events at the club >>

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