The staff on Jorgenson’s show swelled to more than 35, and it ended up being big enough that participants could get college credit. As with TikTok at the Post, Jorgenson managed to fuse fun and creativity with legitimate work.
After DePauw, Jorgenson went through what he considers the lowest point in his career. He moved to Los Angeles aiming to write for a late-night TV show, but ended up in Jared Leto’s basement working for the actor’s concert-ticket company. He spent most of the eight months he was there working part-time at Starbucks and podcasting about “Survivor” and bad movies.
“In retrospect, recording podcasts was the only thing keeping me afloat. I have a really hard time remembering those nine months. I barely drank and didn’t do drugs or anything like that, but it just all blurs together,” he said. “Now I recognize I was probably suffering from some form of depression.”
During this period, Jorgenson realized he needed some sort of structure in a job — like a boss, regular hours and assignments. That’s sort of paradoxical coming from a guy who now walks around the office in a cockroach costume. But he soon landed at a digital outlet with a bunch of other millennials.
Jaconi recalls the first time she met Jorgenson in person. He was rocking a Ninja Turtles shirt that said “Republican Party,” “Democratic Party” and “Pizza Party,” with a check mark next to the latter. This was at the Independent Journal Review, a right-leaning digital
Read more here: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2019/how-the-washington-posts-tiktok-guy-dave-jorgenson-gets-millions-of-views-by-being-uncool/
