Editor’s note: Cal Chang Yocum, one of the first writers retained for Local Tech Wire (now WRAL TechWire) at its launch in 2002, has worked with WRAL TechWire cofounder Allan Maurer. Yocum wrote on Medium about their intertwined careers, how he inspired her, and offers insights into the reporter who became a legend within North Carolina’s entrepreneurial community. Allan has been in poor health recently. Ms. Yocum gave TechWire permission to reprint her story.

Remembering Allan

It’s fitting that my inaugural piece on Medium is about the reporter who helped shape my writing 20 years ago.

Cal Chang Yocum from her LinkedIn profile.

He’s known for his signature tweed jacket, beard and fedora, and his impeccable journalism skills. And he could be equal parts curmudgeon and optimist. I met Allan Maurer 20 years ago when we reported on venture-backed and small-cap tech and biotech companies in Research Triangle for an online publication called LocalBusiness.com. For context, online news sites were just making their way on the scene at the time, struggling to figure out a viable revenue model. The company we worked for had a presence in 25 markets across the U.S., from New York City to Ft. Lauderdale and across the country to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in between. It was a company with a vision that news would move online and occur in real time. Two decades later, it’s a no-brainer because that’s how most of us get our news. At the time, however, we were pioneers in the space, where the concept of not having an office, publishing exclusively online and connecting via AOL Instant Messaging for collaboration was novel. Why did we use something as antiquated as AIM? It was the main texting app at the time.

When Allan and I started working together, he was in his 50’s and I was in my 20’s. I had written for and edited some trade and city magazines, but I wasn’t the seasoned news reporter he was. He had done his time at a few newsrooms and placed articles in big magazines like OMNI and Playboy, and even published a book. To say he taught me a ton is an understatement. Allan was a great mentor who never spoke down to me. In fact, he would encourage me and say things like, “You know what I like about you? I only have to tell you something once and it’s in your writing going forward.” And when I had a tiff with our editor about a story, he went to bat for me. He told me, “I don’t care about his pedigree or that he cut his teeth at Dow Jones Newswire, he’s wrong about this one.”

Together we were a heck of a team, combingthrough SEC filings, calling CEOs and analysts and cranking out as many as eight articles a day, often beating the Raleigh News & Observer to a story. We worked our tails off, sitting at our laptops in our respective houses from 8 am until 6 pm, usually not stopping for lunch. But we also had our share of laughs. We would grab a drink or dinner after a long day of covering a conference and he would say, “You should approach him about the funding story tomorrow — you’re female, younger and better looking. I’ll talk to [the female VP] about the product launch. She likes me.”

There was a dark joke we shared about how we would know when a company was about to shutter. Someone at the company would use the phrase, “We have the full support of our syndicate of investors.” That phrase was the kiss of death. We did our best to balance cheering for the fledgling companies we covered, while abstaining from the Kool-Aid.

Allan’s books in a photo provided by Cal Chang Yocum.

Allan’s dream was to be able to support himself as a freelance journalist. The times we spoke after I left North Carolina, he would tell me with giddiness that he couldn’t believe he was being paid as much as he was to do something he loved. To be clear, reporting as a whole is far from lucrative, but Allan is old-school, so covering tech companies for online news sources is financially a huge step up from writing for a small city newspaper. When I lived in Durham, he would often invite me over so he could show off his hip loft housed in an old tobacco warehouse. There were stacks of books on the floor everywhere and bookshelves lining every wall. Meanwhile, his cats would gracefully pounce from stack to stack and then hide upstairs.

As I write this, Allan is in hospice. My heart is heavy that I wasn’t able to connect with him in mid-July when I reached out to him. But I hope that in his final days, he feels love and respect from those of us who were lucky to call him a colleague and friend. Well done, Allan.

Note: This is reprinted with Ms. Yocum’s permission. It was originally published at this site: https://medium.com/@calyocum/remembering-allan-3fe4a7c92fcf.