Awesome topic!
I’ll tell my own story since I didn’t join T Nation as a staffer until a year or so after it launched:
I loved Muscle Media 2000 magazine back in the 90s. Devoured every copy.
Then, one day, it started to suck. This was that day:
Those who know… know.
I found out later that the editor, TC Luoma, had parted ways with the magazine. Not long after, the mag went away. I think EAS supplements was bought out, but the buyers didn’t want the publication side of the company… or something.
Anyway, lost without a good source of real info, I hopped on my first home computer in 1998 (dial-up connection, slooooow) and looked for TC and Charles Poliquin. T Nation, then Testosterone, popped up. Finally, great training and nutrition info again!
In 1999 I took a bunch of caffeine and truck-stop ephedrine and ran a mile on my office treadmill. Jacked out of my gourd and riding that euphoric wave, I emailed the website about contributing as a freelancer. (I remember really trying to be funny… because TC was funny.) My only published article before appeared in a Japanese powerlifting magazine, so I didn’t have much hope once the ephedrine wore off.
TC himself (!) answered me back and accepted my first article – a breakdown of Arnold’s intensity techniques.
Sometime later, he asked if I wanted to help him out with editing. I was a high school English teacher at the time. I took a part-time position while still teaching. My first job was compiling the Reader Mail section. Soon I was editing and working with all my favorite coaches from Muscle Media, like Charles Staley and Charles Poliquin. I’d call Poliquin up, ask him questions, write down and flesh out his answers, send him a copy for approval, and those became Question of Strength columns.
I even hilariously demonstrated exercises once the internet got fast enough for us to use more photos (took a while to be able to upload videos):
Then Tim and TC made me a full-time offer.
24 years later, here I am.
