Talk of the Town - Web editor December 09 2000

Nestled amongst corporate offices in downtown Atlanta, the home base of eTour looks like a cross between the set of "Romper Room" and a cube farm. The 3-year-old Internet company scopes out the best sites on the Net to make surfing easier for its members. Before site updates or member e-mails are sent to electronic in-boxes, they go through Editor-in-Chief Bonnie Bertram.
Bertram travels between eTour offices in Atlanta and New York City, using a laptop and a cellular phone to keep in touch. In addition to minding the small details, she's negotiated a newspaper column with Scripps Howard News Service and is working on a book deal.
Bertram joined eTour 14 months ago after working almost 15 years at newspapers, magazines and in television. She worked nine years at CNN, rising from the newsroom to work for "Talk Back Live" and as a producer for "NewsStand: CNN & Fortune." Her print journalism experience includes stints at Spy, Premiere and Atlanta magazines, as well as the New York Post and the International Herald Tribune.
How did you get this job?
I got my job because I got into an argument with the guy sitting next to me on the plane, who's now my boss (Senior Vice President of Marketing Jim Lanzone). We started getting into an argument about David Foster Wallace. He was reading Fortune magazine, and I had been working for the "Newstand/Fortune" show on CNN, so I teased him about reading Fortune. We had a pretty contentious four-hour plane ride. Then he said, 'Have you ever thought about working for an Internet company?' I said, 'No, no way' because I had this dumb bias about Internet companies. I started meeting Jim for lunch and he slowly started convincing me that this was in fact a good Internet company. It was so great to go from covering these kinds of cultures and jobs [at CNN] to actually having one.
What's the average salary?
The range is from $60,000 to $90,000.
How is editing a website different from working in other mediums?
It's much more conversational, and it's much shorter. Brevity is king on the Internet. People don't give you a second chance. If they read you and they think that you're wasting their time, they're on to something else. You have to be compelling and informative at the same time. It has a lot more attitude, and that's sort of fun pushing the envelope. We have this category called weird/wacky, and it captures that totally smart, totally irreverent personality that the Web has. Our best writing sort of has that same snap to it.
What's a typical day at work like for you?
It's mostly supervising, doing some of the hands-on copy editing, and then being on the lookout for new projects that are coming down the pike. I'm editing some of the site reviews and signing off on the column that we send to Scripps Howard. I'm also just kind of making sure that the sites that we have in our categories are up to par.
Do you spend much time in eTour's game room?
I'm embarrassed to say I have not played ping pong in about three months, but we're getting air hockey and that's my game. That's going to be bad for my work production.
How many hours do you put in?
As the projects come and go, it tends to ebb and flow, but it's not those 80-hour work weeks regularly.
How do you divide your time between the Atlanta and New York offices of eTour?
My husband is a producer for "60 Minutes," so that's why we've made New York our base. It exposes me to what happens in New York, since it tends to be a trend center. I don't think I have to sacrifice much, because between the Internet and between phone calls on my cell phone and e-mails that are instant, I'm still pretty much hooked up. I come down here every other week for a few days.
Do you have to be a computer geek for this job?
No. I don't have the pocket protector and I don't have a sleeping bag under my cubicle.
What kind of education and skills do you need for the job?
A lot of it's just communication. This is not a technical job. I'm not coding. It's a matter of recognizing what people want and making sure our members are constantly delighted and surprised by the sites that we serve them. What eTour does by virtue of making the Web manageable in a lot of ways is what news does with world events. There's this whole wide world web of content, and these are the things we think you're going to be interested in. I got a degree in English and humanities at the University of California at Berkeley.
What's the best perk of your job?
My department took a retreat and went white water rafting. We have happy hours on Fridays. People start cracking beers around 5 p.m. And when I first got here I couldn't believe the free candy.
How much time do eTour employees spend surfing the Web?
The editors probably spend about six hours a day surfing the Web.
What kind of dress code does the company have?
I don't think there is a dress code here. If you showed up at work wearing something that your mom wouldn't want to see you wear, you should probably go home. Once I was going out after work so I wore a pants suit. Everybody I saw that day said 'Do you have a job interview?' You get more harassed if you over dress than if you under dress.
What would surprise people about your job?
You hear so much about those Internet jobs that just sound like "Bozo the Clown" or "PeeWee's Playhouse." While there's an element of that here, it's backed up by really smart business people. What surprises me is that those two things can exist so peacefully.
What are your goals?
My parents are probably like most everybody else's. The Internet's still kind of a scary word to them. I want them to know all the great things that are out there for them to see. Everybody knows the Internet's the future, the bridge to the 21st century and all that stuff. But for a lot of people that bridge looks really rickety and really scary. I don't want people to be afraid of the Internet.
If you won the lottery what would you do?
There's this donkey hospital in this place called Lamu in Africa, and I would give it all to the donkey hospital. It's in Kenya.
Since you spend time in New York and Atlanta, do you root for the Yankees or the Braves?
That's a toss-up, but I'm the No. 1 Thrashers fan.