Opinion
McLean: Hyped digital media models like BuzzFeed and Vice failed to work
“Most of the new business models that have come along and been hyped for a period of time have proven not to work any better than the old business models, whether it was Vice or BuzzFeed or what Vox or whatever else has come along that people have said, this is…”
Insight
Bethany McLean: Good journalism is transparency and honesty, not infallibility
“I don't think it's necessarily getting it right, because I think really provocative stories may prove to be wrong. I think it's transparency and intellectual honesty, so being clear about what the facts are and where things are coming from, so that people can …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McLean: Viable renewables will push oil into secular decline and trigger bankruptcies
“And it may bounce up and down, but it goes into secular decline. And then that means bankruptcies of fossil fuel companies, and I don't think we're being thoughtful about then what those companies obligations are for cleanup afterwards.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McLean: Shifting to renewables will dramatically upend global geopolitics
“I have no idea other than that it's going to upend everything. If a nation's wealth and standing in the world is no longer dictated by geology, but rather by the innovation of its people, and which is renewables, how does that change geopolitics? I mean, drama…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McLean: Enron investors ignored business fundamentals to chase 20% earnings growth
“So many people who were investors in the company Couldn't answer the basic question, how does this company make money? They just wanted the 20% earnings growth that would spit out the bottom line, and the stock price jump that would happen when the company met…”
Insight
McLean: Skepticism in Business Stays Within Small Circles
“In the business world, you can't, because skepticism about business tends to travel in a very small circle. Companies won't speak ill of their competitors, at least not, not publicly, or very rarely will they. Employees can't speak publicly without being fired…”
Insight
McLean: The business world is emotional and biased toward belief
“There's this idea that the business world is hard and cold and rational, and it's not, it's incredibly emotional. And everybody is biased toward belief because most people stand to make money. If a stock goes up”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McLean: Journalists criticized her for taking tips from Enron short sellers
“Back in the day when I wrote about Enron, even other journalists said to me, well, you took a tip from a short seller. How, how could you do that?”
What-if
McLean: As an Enron employee, I probably would have been a believer
“And if I had ended up at Enron, would I have been a whistleblower, or would I have been a believer? And I like to think the former, but I suspect the truth is probably the latter”
Opinion
McLean: Valeant's wrongdoing was drug price hikes, not hidden accounting
“The ways in which they were different, I don't think the substance of the Valiant story was accounting misrepresentation the way it was with Enron. You could actually see pretty clearly that what Valiant was doing with its numbers. There were a lot more of Enr…”
Assertion Supported
McLean: Unlike Enron, Valeant attracted smart money like Sequoia and Bill Ackman
“With Enron, when you got to what was commonly considered the smart money, people either weren't invested in Enron, or they were short. And it was largely long-only funds and index funds, and what we think of in terrible terms, but the dumb money that was inves…”
Insight
McLean: Inspiring a Grand Vision Makes CEOs Blind to Failure
“It's very hard to be the leader of a company, I would think, if you yourself aren't a believer, and aren't biased toward belief, because you need, as the CEO or the leader, to be able to inspire other people, right, with your grand vision. And so how, if you'r…”
Assertion Supported
McLean: Enron's top 200 employees extracted $1 billion in options before bankruptcy
“There was this great number, and I'm gonna get it wrong, but it was from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which investigated Enron after the collapse, and they calculated that the top 200 employees of Enron got a billion dollars from exercising stock options i…”
Insight
McLean: Public Investment Banks Took Greater Risks Than Private Partnerships
“When investment banks were private partnerships where people had their own fortunes and their own financial well-being on the line, you saw very different behavior than you did in the years leading up to the financial crisis where they were playing with other …”
Assertion Supported
McLean: Local newsrooms lost nearly 50% of employees over the past decade
“Local newsrooms have lost, what, almost 50% of their employees over the last decade.”
Insight
McLean: Investors succumb to charismatic founder worship over evaluating business profitability
“And I think we're particularly guilty of that today because the lure of the founder is, is so strong. And so there's this idea that the right charismatic person can build anything. And so I People latch on to that. We all want to find that person we can believ…”
Assertion Supported
McLean: Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling preferred hiring 'people with spikes'
“Jeff Skilling used to say that he liked people with spikes, and what he meant by that was that he didn't like well-rounded, genial, average people. He liked people with a really exceptional characteristic that defined them, and that may come at the expense of …”
Insight
McLean: Intimidating executive cults of personality undermine collaborative workplace cultures
“So I think people tend to see this intellectual charisma or the ability to intimidate others around you into belief as a good thing, because we all follow that kind of blindly, but I think that's probably not a good thing, at least if you believe that a collab…”
Insight
McLean: Hyper-precise language concealing broader reality is a major red flag
“And when people are very precise with language such that what they're telling you is true, but they're totally not telling you the broader truth, that's a really interesting characteristic too.”
Disclosure
McLean: Subjects Always Learn Every Unflattering Claim Prior to Publication
“We always at Fortune, and I still today have a belief, I'd always, if I'm writing something about you will know everything in the piece that is unflattering before it goes to print, so that we'll, we'll have it out before it's in print.”
Disclosure
McLean: I do not invest and have zero interest in it
“I don't invest. I have zero interest in it.”
Bethany McLean