Greetings readers. My name is Jared Bilski, and I’m the new editor-in-chief of Asphalt Contractor and Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction. I’m thrilled to join the team and work on a publication with such a long-standing, well-respected place in the industry.
I know I have some big shoes to fill as I step into the seat of my predecessor, Brandon Noel. I’m not Brandon, and I’ll never pretend to be. But I will promise you this: I will do everything in my power to bring you the same type of relevant, engaging and useful content you’ve come to depend on from Asphalt Contractor and Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction.
I’m not going to lie you; I have a lot to learn – I mean A LOT. I’ll be calling on many of you to help me out in these early months.
But I am excited to dig in. I’ve actually built an entire career around on-the-job learning.
My first job out of college was as an assistant editor for PGA Magazine, a trade magazine for the club professionals who worked long hours teaching people much wealthier than themselves how not to embarrass themselves on the course. I started that job with about as much knowledge of golf as Happy Gilmore when he tackled his caddy for trying to steal his clubs. By the time I left, I could hold my own in any conversation about the state of the golf industry, and I gained a profound respect for the work the men and women of the PGA did day in and day out.
Even scarier was introduction to the world of medical publishing, where I started as an associate editor whose medical experience consisted of the episodes of Grey’s Anatomy I was forced to watch by my wife, a nurse. My first day on job I was thrown into the fire by interviewing a combative orthopedic surgeon with a touch of a god complex. Instead of pretending I was an expert, I was honest about my limitations, and a strange thing happened. The minute I revealed my own weaknesses, there was an immediate shift in Dr. God’s brusque tone, and he went out of his way to help me. To this day, I still talk to that surgeon (and yes, when he’s a little too full of himself, I do call him Dr. God).
In my own rambling way, what I’m trying to say is that I do plan to learn everything I possibly can about the world of asphalt. I’ll devour articles and videos, sign up for a ridiculous amount of email newsletters and attend every conference that is even remotely related to what I need to cover. But no matter how much I learn, one thing will always be true: I will never be the expert here. That role belongs to you.
I consider it a great privilege to report on the industry in which you make your living, and I want you to know how seriously I take that responsibility. In the upcoming months, I plan to schedule calls and meet up with as many of you as possible at industry events. I hope to slowly but surely earn your trust and respect through the content we produce.
My old boss, a grizzled former Chicago crime reporter who used to draw stick figures vomiting on the margins of my stories that he didn’t care for, had a saying about writing that I think applies to basically everything. In a raspy, whisky-soaked chain-smokers voice he’d say: “If you can’t tell me what you’re writing about in one simple sentence, you don’t know what the [bleep] you’re talking about.”
I’ll be searching for my simple sentences about this industry now, and I hope I can count on many of you to help me find them.
