• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 22, 2015

Well, it’s my first full-day of flying solo on the Real-Time Daily beat without Tyler Loechner, so I might as well kick this post off by thanking Tyler for getting us to this point.

I first met Tyler when he interned at MediaPost a couple of summers ago, and since he was about to graduate college, I made the case that we should hire him to my boss Ken Fadner.

It was tough to ask, because we already have so many Loechners working for MediaPost. In fact, Tyler is the third generation.

His father Jeff is our president and de facto CTO and helped found MediaPost with Ken. His grandfather Jack has been the sole author of Research Brief, one of the first publications published by MediaPost.

Despite the appearances of nepotism, I convinced Ken, and the timing couldn’t be better. We were just about to launch Real-Time Daily and I knew Tyler was super smart, extremely curious and had a passion for all things techie.

Well, he ran with it, and even though I promised I’d stay heavily involved, he was just so good, I did the thing editors in chief normally do when confronted by a prolific young talent: We get out of their way.

I also knew that it was only a matter of time before someone outside MediaPost realized how good he was, and that he’d be plucked away. The only concession in losing Tyler is that he’s going to a good organization -- Accordant Media, where he begins this week as content marketing manager.

It could have been worse. Tyler could have gone to a rival publisher; though I guess in some ways, we will be competing with the content he publishes for Accordant.

In the meantime, you’ll see my byline gracing these pages -- especially RTBlog -- a bit more. That is, until we can find another smart, curious, prolific journalist to tackle some of the big themes we’ve been trying to tame here at RTD. (P.S. If you know any good candidates for that, I’m all ears -- joe@mediapost.com.)