Speaking of quid pro quos, just noticed this from a couple of days ago in the Houston Chronicle:

Correspondent Scott Pelley talks with former Enron Corp. Chairman Ken Lay in an interview that will air Sunday on 60 Minutes, CBS confirmed Wednesday.

The interview is in conjunction with the release of the book Conspiracy of Fools, written by New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald.

"Although there are a number of conclusions in the book with which Mr. Lay strongly disagrees, he believes that Mr. Eichenwald's book has done a better job than the other Enron books of explaining what caused the collapse of Enron," said Kelly Kimberly, a publicist for Lay.

That's a hell of a nice mutual back-scratching club Kurt and Kenny Boy have got going on there. Gotta love the whole CBS/NYT/Random House synergy, too.

Tell me again where I was wrong about the ethical compromises inherent in this sort of reporting, willya, Kurt?

posted by michael  7:14:42 PM  
tell me about it []  

 

Kurt cashes in. In December, just as I was easing my way back into blogging, NYT business reporter Kurt Eichenwald favored me with a visit: more specifically, he came by to call me a liar and an incompetent for a post ("so loaded with falsehoods it is ridiculous") I'd written months earlier reacting to his splashy, Sunday-A1 exclusive interview with Ken Lay, then soon to be indicted for Enron crimes. [Having left a drive-by accusation, containing no specifics to back it up (supposedly an earlier comment had, but he hadn't been successful in posting it, or something), Eichenwald then never bothered to respond to my thoroughly polite email asking for clarification, and offering to correct the record if he were to show me that any of his complaints had merit: behavior which as far as I'm concerned entitles me to consider him a putz.]

One thing I wrote in the offending post was this:

A1 placement in the Sunday New York Times is a PR gold standard; Ken Lay's media people are definitely earning their bones. It's a transaction that works for all concerned: Ken Lay gets to peddle his story in an enormously influential venue, with a tacitly understood guarantee of sympathy; having the interview conducted by someone with a reputation as a ferreter-out of financial shenanigans is an especially fine PR touch, lending as it does an extra sheen of credibility to the proceedings. And Eichenwald, who's hawked his reporting in two previous books, including a volume about corruption at Archer Daniels Midland, gets a plum interview and, who knows, a leg up on his next shattering corporate exposé.

Well, color me prognosticated! There taking up half yesterday's Business front page, complete with big full-color illustration, were excerpts from Kurt Eichenwald's forthcoming book on Enron (Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story). Which means that there's at least one thing I wrote that Eichenwald can't have been accusing me of getting wrong.

In fact, yesterday's excerpts (caution, non rot-safe NYT link) are only the first of two parts: we're promised more flogging of Eichenwald's book in next Sunday's Business section. [I can't help wondering whether this very pricey gift promotional real estate from his bosses gets figured in at all in Eichenwald's compensation. Money in the bank, boy. What author with a book to push wouldn't kill for this kind of treatment?] And, as you might have guessed—as I might have guessed, given my earlier looks at Eichenwald's coverage—Ken Lay, faithful, ill-used, unculpably-out-of-it Ken Lay, is front and center:

Ken Lay settled into his black Mercedes 600 SL on the morning of Oct. 24, 2001, easing out of his parking space at the Huntingdon condominiums. ... Ahead, the morning sun rose behind a glittering tower that defined the architectural rhythm of Houston's skyline. It was the headquarters of Enron - his Enron - the once-obscure pipeline company that in a matter of years had been transformed into a politically connected energy colossus. ...

His company was under attack; Lay was sure of it. Stock traders who had bet that Enron's share price would fall were whispering rumors - no, lies - about his company. The Wall Street Journal was running a series of articles suggesting Enron had played games with its finances.

They just don't understand.

By all rights, Lay shouldn't have been stuck with the mess. He had stepped down as chief executive the prior February, handing the reins to Jeffrey Skilling, the brains behind Enron's growth. Then, in August, with almost no warning, Skilling resigned. The bombshell had left Lay with little choice; he headed back to his old post.

If any better treatment could have come for Ken Lay out of his (and his team's, let's not forget) cooperating with Eichenwald, I can't imagine what it would be.

As for the rest: well, the Random House blurb calls the book "a you-are-there glimpse behind closed doors ... an all-true financial and political thriller of cinematic proportions," and the excerpts read like Eichenwald is sweating hard to deliver on the marketing-speak. (And he must have been sweating anyway, to get this on the shelves before the likely summer date of Lay's trial.) The style is all breathless short sentences and exclamation marks: everyone rushes, everything happens at a frantic pace (and a worrying one at that, considering how many of the protagonists are overweight middle-aged white guys). It's like Boy's Adventure Crony Capitalism, or something. Let this passage stand for the whole:

Waiting inside the doorway of the conference room, Whalley saw Palmer dashing toward him. How bad was it this time? He darted over to his public relations chief.

"What do they know?" he asked hurriedly.

Palmer looked at Whalley and said nothing. Whalley noticed Palmer's eyes were watering. Palmer's mouth filled with saliva as a wave of nausea washed over him. He was about to vomit, right in front of Whalley.

He turned, dashing into the men's room. He ran to the farthest sink.

Hell, if one more of these guys dashes anywhere, I'm gonna hurl. Based on what I've seen so far of his stylistic and intellectual accomplishments, I'll have to recommend giving Kurt's latest opus a pass.

posted by michael  5:50:35 PM  
tell me about it []