I've written influential features on a range of subjects in business and culture. Below, some of the stories that were most interesting to write and report.


       

Stories About Culture and Society...

A lot has been written about malpractice law and tort reform, but few stories look at what actually happens in the typical malpractice case. For "The Equation" (2007) [PDF] [Website] I followed the three way tug of war between a top New York hospital and a law firm specializing in the difficult cases of children with grievous brain damage.

Three months of reporting led to "Sam Walton Made Us a Promise"(2002), [PDF] [Text] a nuanced look at Wal-Mart and its workforce that steers clear of both Wal-Mart's PR machine and easy Wal-Mart bashing.


Profiles...

"George Soros is Mad As Hell" (2003) [PDF] [Text] profiled the internationalist billionaire, focusing on his despair at the the nation's political direction in a newly paranoid age. I also profiled another billionaire involved in politics, New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, in "Mayor Mogul".

"Little Better Yellow Different" (2004) [PDF]  [Text] was a New York Magazine feature that deconstructed the conventions of advertising through a profile of the new creative head of a big ad agency.

 A story about business guru Tom Peters asked "Now That We Live In A Tom Peters World, Has Tom Peters Gone Crazy?" (2000) [PDF] [Text] and looked at the cultural and ethical implications of his critique of American business. This was one of the first features I wrote at Fortune but remains one of my favorite profiles.

Stories About the Financial World...

"You Bought, They Sold", (2002) [PDF] a Fortune cover project I conceived to illustrate with hard numbers the amazing peaks of executive greed in the stock market frenzy, showed how officers of some of America's losingest corporations walked off with billions in profits as their companies crashed and burned.

Of a number of investigative stories I did at Fortune, the most successful may have been "What Did Joe Know?" (2003) [PDF] [Text] a report on telecom kingpin Joe Nacchio and the telephone company Qwest. In 2007, Nacchio was convicted of multiple counts of insider trading.

From BusinessWeek and the New York Times...

For the New York Times Sunday Business section, I wrote about investors who sued the brokerages (2005) that hyped the dogs of the market boom. I also wrote about the likelihood of a hedge fund shakeout (2005).

My favorite of the stories I've written for BusinessWeek is this essay (2006)about why the phone giants can't innovate, a point AT&T execs managed to drive home better than I could have imagined with their own efforts to stage a technology demo. I also like this piece about Enron's Jeff Skilling (2006).

Some Older Articles...

I covered Silicon Valley during the dotcom boom for The Industry Standard, Salon.com, and Fortune. Several Salon.com stories capture the atmosphere of the time, including a piece about a venture capitalist's efforts to teach 4th graders about finance and a profile of one of the era's bumper crop of mega-millionaires. An essay about the manic optimism of the late 90s pointed out the flaws already evident in the picture. I started at Fortune just as the market peaked, and wrote this story [PDF] about Silicon Valley's shell-shocked response to the crash.