Everyone needs to hit and maintain a zone at work
– mind sharp and alert despite pressures. And then there’s Jim
Goldman’s zone, responsible for providing technology news that can
move global financial markets in a heartbeat.
Everyone needs to hit and maintain a zone at work – mind sharp and alert despite pressures. And then there’s Jim Goldman’s zone, responsible for providing technology news that can move global financial markets in a heartbeat.
The pace is maddening, with Goldman covering three or four stories a day for CNBC, and as many as 10 daily live shots that can run on all NBC properties, including CNBC, CNBC Asia, CNBC Europe, MSNBC and NBC’s the Today Show.
The long-time Gilroy resident’s day often begins at 4 a.m. He likes to add “PDT” behind the time, mostly to keep himself located after interviewing people in a dozen different time zones during the course of a day. But he also gets calls at 3 a.m. from his assignment desk rushing him into the San Jose studio to anchor breaking news. Since the networks operate on East Coast time, if Goldman is scheduled for one of the early shows, such as “Today” or CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” the alarm goes off at 1:15 a.m. so he can be on the air at 3 a.m.
“At CNBC, time is money – literally – so the earlier we can get the news to our viewers, the better it is for their investment portfolios,” Goldman said. “So the pressure to be first is enormous, and the pressure to be accurate is huge, since you’re talking about people’s money and mistakes can be costly.”
Very costly. Major locally based tech companies such as Apple, Google, eBay, Intel and Hewlett-Packard have market capitalizations (the total price of all stock owned by public investors) in the billions of dollars. A negative story can shave billions from the company’s market cap in a few hours. The information had better be right.
Which is what impresses Annie Pong about Goldman. Pong, Goldman’s producer and a former producer for ABC’s “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings,” says the success of the show has most to do with Goldman’s knowledge of technology.
“He can be on the phone with an executive at their headquarters talking about the company’s earnings, and within seconds he can turn around, be on the air, and tell you exactly what it means,” Pong said. “He knows his stuff.”
And just to make sure Goldman has zero seconds of down time during the day, he also writes a blog at techcheck.cnbc.com, a task he says is “probably the most fun I have on a given day because it’s mine and I don’t have legions of editors telling me what to write, what not to write or how to write.”
Blogs are critical for broadcast journalists. A long piece on television or streamed video runs three or four minutes – not a lot of time to explain issues or delve down into the nuances that can shade issues.
“The blog is a great place to expand on the story, include all the stuff I couldn’t get to on the air, throw in some analysis and some personal perceptions of what I’m covering, and then ask for feedback from readers, which I can then answer on later posts,” Goldman said.
It seems to be catching on. TechCheck was just shy of 1 million page views one recent month, and is averaging a half-million page views a month, numbers any network executive or publisher would drool over.
Yet those successes create demands that will take a toll on a person. And that’s when Goldman hits the road – literally. He will log up to 150 miles a week on his bicycle, his great escape.
“It’s one of the reasons we love Gilroy,” Michelle Goldman said. With an abundance of country roads winding through hills to the east and west, Goldman has about seven different courses he enjoys – including Anderson Reservoir, Calero Reservoir and Indian Springs.
“It’s a time when he can shut off the Blackberry and just be in the present,” Michelle Goldman said. “It’s the only time he can.”
He recently shot a story in Redwood City about Brent Steelman, who “builds Silicon Valley’s gotta-have cult bicycle.”
But when the silicon dust settles for the day, Goldman returns to Gilroy and Michelle and their two sons, Jeb, 7, and Wyatt, 3. Oh, and a pair of pugs, Abby and Winston, that are as comfortable in front of a camera as the guy who buys their kibble.
Next month the Goldmans will have lived in Gilroy for 10 years, an experience Goldman says is well worth the 60-mile daily commute.
“I think we fell in love with Gilroy during the first trip we took here to look for a home,” he said. “The people we met were so friendly, so helpful. There was such a sense of community and pride in this area.”
That sense of community has been returned by the Goldmans. Jim Goldman has been active in Supervisor Don Gage’s “Tee Off for Youth” golf tournament benefiting youth centers in the area. And Michelle Goldman, a financial analyst by trade, has served on the board of the Gilroy Foundation, an endowment that distributes grants to local nonprofits.
“I think we’ve woven ourselves into so many great parts of the community, and we’re excited to look for new opportunities to do even more,” Goldman said.
And in case anyone is wondering, yes, he gets asked about garlic all the time – this from a man who has reported from Australia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and half the states in America.
“Wherever I go, and I tell people where I’m from, it always comes up, and I mean always,” he said. “They always ask does it smell there? And my answer is always the same: yes, for a couple of weeks in the summer. That first week it’s like that great garlic smell where you crave a glass of red wine to go with it. The next week, with the bulbs that didn’t make it to harvest sitting in the sun, it’s more like the ‘did-you-have-garlic-last-night’ smell. It’s a small price to pay. We love garlic, but there is so much more to Gilroy. We love it here.”
