Stories by Adam Levy
Vacation assignments for biz journalists
by Adam Levy
Your news organization has enticed you with a tempting boondoggle. Go to Davos, Switzerland, and report on the comings and goings of some of the biggest names in business, politics and entertainment.
Or, perhaps, the destination is Sun Valley, Idaho. Ah. A summer week in Sun Valley during the investment firm Allen & Co.’s annual get together.
The answer is a no brainer: you go. After all, this offer is too tempting to refuse. For starters, there’s the belief that you’ll have unfettered access to the biggest news makers in a secluded locale. And — let’s be real — there are the perks: hiking in the Sawtooth Mountains, mountain biking down the slopes in Sun Valley, skiing in Davos, and cocktail parties, concerts, and more. I should know. I’ve been to both (to be fair, the World Economic Forum I attended was in New York in early 2002 because of the security concerns that followed 9/11).
While I had a blast at both events, I’m not sure there was much if any news value in covering these events. In fact, I think that the news coverage provides the event planners with more free publicity than anything else. But that hasn’t stopped the breathless reporting. As I read the coverage this summer from Sun Valley, I smiled, and thought that the game still is being played to the benefit of the event planners and the lucky reporters.
One headline — actually it was a punctuation mark in the headline — that brought back the memories of covering these events. The Daily Mail, a British daily, previewed Allen & Co.’s summer gala in its the online headline (I don’t get the print edition): “Summer Camp for Moguls!”
What’s it really like to cover Allen & Co.’s mogul summer camp? Well, one year I stayed at the Lodge and in a condo another year. My neighbors were Haim Saban, Buzz Aldrin (he lives there, wasn’t attending the conference. I had drinks in the lobby bar at the same time that Rupert Murdoch and Paul Allen were nursing beverages. I saw Michael Dell have a picnic lunch with his kids. I saw Oprah chatting up Bill Gates for a long time. I took the chair lift up Sun Valley ski resort and rode a mountain bike down. I found an awesome natural hot springs not too far from where Ernest Hemingway took his life. I ate and drank well.
Sure I filed stories. But they weren’t really worth much. Most of Sun Valley was cordoned off as “private.” Lots of ropes, closed doors and security guards. Me and my fellow reporters would hang around, excluded from the presentations, and wait for some luminary to gently break Herb Allen’s dictum of keeping the meetings secret. Here and there, we’d get a crumb. John Malone would tell us a little something about a presentation. Nothing controversial, but it was uttered by an A name quoting another A name. Phil Knight would say the bare minimum – and we’d get a headline.
The meetings weren’t closed to all the press. Some celebrity journalists — Ken Auletta, Tom Friedman, Anderson Cooper, among them — sat in the audience or moderated a panel and honored the code of silence. Of course, my then boss Mike Bloomberg was in attendance as was Rupert and other media barons who owned the television networks, magazines and newspapers that all of us on the other side of the ropes worked for.
The story line was that SOMETHING big was happening, or might happen, and it happens here. After all, Disney’s Michael Eisner and Capital Cities/ABC’s Tom Murphy were in Sun Valley when they cooked up their deal to merge their companies. But that was 1995.
Since then, not much has happened. And Sun Valley has morphed into a business version of Cannes. And the reporters are playing right into. And Allen & Co. is benefitting, grabbing countless breathless headlines touting the importance of the conference, punctuated, even if occasionally, by an exclamation point!
Here’s my thought: what if the media decided not to cover it? What if all the reporters and film crews just didn’t show. That would deflate the self-importance that permeates Sun Valley.
Of course that would also ruin the summer vacation for some journalists!
Levy is a partner in 30 Point Strategies and a former Loeb Award winner as a business journalist for Bloomberg News
Biz editor remembers reporter Accola
by Adam Levy
Rocky Mountain News business editor Rob Reuteman wrote about reporter John Accola, who died this past weekend of a heart attack, in his Friday column.
Reuteman wrote, “As someone who runs a team of business journalists, one of the aspects I appreciated most about John was how he rubbed off on those around him. Rocky entertainment reporter Erika Gonzalez started her work here in the business section, seated next to him. ‘I soon realized that sitting next to John was the best thing that could happen to a young reporter,’ she wrote this week. ‘He was so diligent and so dedicated, you could learn something just from listening to John conduct a phone interview. He taught me the importance of exhaustive research and reporting.’
“Some of Accola’s phone interviews, easily overheard by those around him, are legendary. Deputy business editor Gil Rudawsky recalled listening to him on the phone with money manager Will Hoover, well before he was convicted and jailed for bilking clients. Rudawsky recalls hearing Accola say, ‘I’m reading through this report, and it looks like you’re a crook.’ Rudawsky expected an abrupt end to that interview, but an hour later Accola was still on the phone with Hoover, typing out a lengthy explanation of his innocence.
“Indeed, John had an incredible knack for saying something to someone that would completely disarm them. I remember a couple years ago when John and I were at a Christmas party at the home of our friends Mort and Edie Marks. Gov. Owens was there, too, and John and I went to engage him in conversation. John opened with, ‘Bill (not governor, as I would have begun), you look fantastic. Have you had work done?’ For a split second I could see the lack of decorum register in Owens’ eyes. Just as quickly, I saw that decorum shatter. Owens burst out laughing and chatted with us for a good 20 minutes.”
Read more here.
Biz journalists report fluff by choice
by Adam Levy
If political reporters are behind the curve and missing the real story, what about business journalists? Are they, too, remiss in reporting what really is going on at the companies they cover?
This past Sunday, Sasha Issenberg presented a strong argument in The New York Times: political journalists aren’t even good at covering what’s devolved into a horse race — let alone the issues, ideas and basis for what it takes to govern. The Slate columnist quoted Terry Nelson, who served as John McCain’s campaign manager in 2008, on how easy it is for campaigns to obfuscate real issues in an election: “The ability of campaigns to run circles around journalists in some places is strong, and it’s not healthy.” Nor, as Issenberg posits, is it likely to improve.
I started thinking about whether financial journalists were any different. As a financial journalist for two decades, my defense of business-news reporting was swift and steadfast: Sure, political reporters can be duped, but not business journalists. But that sentiment didn’t last long.
Companies are not more naïve than political campaigns. Both corporation and political strategists have mastered the ability to shape their message and reveal only as much information as they need or want to disseminate. My years of reporting on businesses have been counterbalanced by almost seven years of working with companies and executives to help them find their voice, and articulate their message – or at least the message they want to articulate.
The dynamic between journalist and campaign is not fundamentally different than journalist and company. Executives, like candidates, have been prepped. They know how to pivot away from controversial topics and talk about the things they want to talk about. They know what to reveal and what not to talk about.
Reporters might think they know a company and understand its inner machinations. I doubt it. I hazard a guess that most company profiles capture a sliver – say 10-20 percent — of what really happens at a company.
Why so little? Issenberg writes “journalists tend to mistake the part of the campaign that is exposed to their view … for the entirety of the enterprise.” Her point is that the travel, speeches, and TV ads, aren’t the whole story. Same with financial news. It’s fascinating to read about the hedge fund manager who booked his wedding at Versailles, or the company founder who has six homes, a vintage car collection, a vineyard or a hoodie-wearing predilection. Who cares? It may be slightly insightful to read about where a CEO went to school and what sport he excelled in despite his height or speed – telling signs about his competitive drive.
I’m not sure this information will help any reader decide whether to buy or sell a stock or provide insight into whether this executive is equipped to run the company. Instead, it’s just creating the cult of personality around the CEO, not the promised inside look at whether he or she is right to run the company.
Issenberg finished up her article in the Times by stating that we might be spending more time than ever covering elections, but we’re covering the wrong things. “We’re looking at the wrong part of the track and don’t know how many legs are on a thoroughbred.”
That’s what financial journalists need to do: count the legs. In business journalism, it’s all about the numbers. That’s what separates financial journalists from the rest: they have at their disposal a huge array of numbers that can help them shape their coverage, their interviews and provide revealing, nuanced, informed insight into companies.
I’ll forgo the anecdote about a CEO’s wedding or putative boardroom dust-up (the information is bound to be one-sided and lacking the perspective from the other side). Yep, I’ll take a pass on the next lead about how CEO X was a Yale rower or a Michigan shot-putter and the lessons learned from the blisters on his hands.
Instead, give me a cash flow analysis. Show me that a company overpaid for its recent acquisition. Walk me through the thought process of how a hedge fund manager profited from the collapsing Euro.
Political reporters may be doomed to reporting fluff. Financial journalists do so by choice.
Levy is a partner in 30 Point Strategies and a former Loeb Award winner as a business journalist for Bloomberg News