How was it different writing about business for New York and Esquire magazines?
I always had the same approach. Whatever I was writing about had to be clear to everybody. I wrote very simply and backgrounded anything. I made things very simple so I could understand them. I figured if I could understand them, the readers could understand them. But the overarching thing for me was breaking news stories. Q: Why breaking news? A: It’s like being in the Olympics. You want to beat everybody else. In journalism, you want to have the story first. That was the determination. Some people will say it’s how much money you make, but to me it was who got the story first. It made me feel good about my work and that I had the right kind of sources. That was the most fun, beating everybody else, beating The Wall Street Journal and every other paper. It’s competition. You want to win. But you had to be right. Q: You were known for breaking the story that Time and Warner Communications were going to merge, and later that Paramount was going to make an offer to buy Time Warner. How d
