GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram: Follow your passion … and maybe not your TV

Here’s an interesting interview with GigaOm senior writer Mathew Ingram, who gets mentioned on this blog from time to time and with whom, full disclosure, I once ate lunch.

Ingram covers the tech business for GigaOm, and in that role is a keen observer of changes in media. A longtime writer, editor and blogger for the Financial Times of Canada and, the Globe and Mail, he’s interested in both the rise of new media and the death of the newspaper. Hillel Fuld interviewed Ingram for Tech ‘n’ Marketing.

A couple of interesting points. First, Fuld notes that Ingram is not only interesting but also prolific on Twitter, and when Fuld asks him how he can tweet, analyze and write so much while also carrying on a life, Ingram’s answer sounds familiar. It’s what people who seem to produce a lot or do a lot of things always seem to say when someone asks them how they do it:

I think the secret, if I have one, is that I don’t watch TV.

That’s a little hard to pull off for sportswriters, or even sports fans—when we dined together, it was in the thick of the Richie Incognito scandal, and when I mentioned it Ingram joked, “Pretend I don’t know who Richie Incognito is.” But it’s worth thinking about. If you find yourself wishing you had more time, think about whether you need to watch every awesome new HBO series that everyone’s talking about.

Or, if you’re like me, every episode of Jerry Springer. Don’t judge.

Fuld asks Ingram what tips he’d give to a startup founder after having covered so many over the years:

I would never claim to have any secrets about starting or running companies, but I know that the entrepreneurs I have admired over the years are always the ones who are passionate about what they are doing for some reason other than just making money—someone once said that passion will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no passion. And they are almost always honest, even about their flaws and mistakes, which is difficult to do.

Putting aside the good advice that journalists should be entrepreneurial, that sounds like a good formula for success in a lot of fields, including this one.