spent a frightening week in a violence-torn Port-au-Prince. But at some point, a poisonous notion entered my brain and began to spread: newspaper journalism was dying. All people spoke about in London were our dwindling readership and the lack of investment by our owners. Those long flights and hours spent in clammy airport departure lounges, breathing the noxious fast food odors, began to feel worthless, and I started looking for a way out.
One day, I was sent to interview Gustavo Cisneros, a Venezuelan billionaire and a friend of the then owner of The Daily Telegraph, Conrad Black. Interviewing and writing nice things about Black’s friends and potential friends was part of the job of the New York correspondent. Early in my posting, I had spent a harrowing day with the television presenter Barbara Walters, who ten minutes into our interview told me my questions were the most boring she had ever heard. Later she refused to let the photographer who accompanied me get within five feet of her, insisting he take his shots from the other side of the room. Black also sent me to interview Henry Kissinger in his office on Park Avenue. He growled at me for an hour or so about geopolitics. Later, I discovered that the tape recording of my interview skipped every few seconds. In my paranoia, I suspected some magnetic distortion machine in Kissinger’s office had done me in. I was missing every fourth or fifth word Kissinger had said. “The key to peace . . . click, grumble . . . negotiation between the Lebanese . . . squeal, grunt . . . Bush needs a strategic . . . wheeeeeeeeeee. ” The piece I wrote was thin on quotes and long on description and analysis. What the journalism pros call “broad brush.”
Cisneros had his offices in a townhouse on the Upper East Side and had decorated them in accordance with his status as a Latin American plutocrat: dark wood paneling, oil paintings of conquistadors on horseback, deep, comfortable armchairs, and footmen offering perfectly brewed coffee. Cisneros himself was a smallish man. He wore a pale gray suit, white shirt, and blue, patterned tie. He sat tidily in his chair, using spare hand gestures to describe an acquisition here, a sell-off there, a sales thrust into new markets somewhere over there. His hair was a slight distraction, boot-polish black and combed so tightly back over his skull it seemed to be stretching the creases out of his forehead. His family had made its money in gritty businesses such as bottling, haulage, and agriculture, but he had expanded successfully into media and technology. All of that toil and sweat, however, was occurring thousands of miles from here, on the roads of Latin America and the production back lots of Miami. Here, Gustavo and I could sit, sip our coffee, and talk big picture—about the impact of globalization, the importance of local brands. If this was business, I could get used to it. As I was escorted out by his secretary, a door in the wood paneling creaked open and I glimpsed a small conference room where a man and a woman, both immaculate and beautiful, were sitting at their laptops and chatting. They looked toward me and smiled and continued their conversation. The secretary said, “Mr. Cisneros only hires Harvard MBAs to work in his private office.” I felt I had been given a glimpse of a better world.
Several of my friends had obtained MBAs, mostly from INSEAD, a school just outside Paris, and spoke well of their experience. The few who had been to HBS were dismissive of it. They mocked its self-importance, the earnestness of the students, the very opposite of British insouciance. All, however, said that the MBA had taught them the language of business. For that they were grateful. So, in August 2001, in a gray, windowless cubicle in an office tower close to Penn Station, I took the GMAT, the standardized test in English and math required for graduate business school. I waited a few moments for a computer to spit out my score: 730 out
One day, I was sent to interview Gustavo Cisneros, a Venezuelan billionaire and a friend of the then owner of The Daily Telegraph, Conrad Black. Interviewing and writing nice things about Black’s friends and potential friends was part of the job of the New York correspondent. Early in my posting, I had spent a harrowing day with the television presenter Barbara Walters, who ten minutes into our interview told me my questions were the most boring she had ever heard. Later she refused to let the photographer who accompanied me get within five feet of her, insisting he take his shots from the other side of the room. Black also sent me to interview Henry Kissinger in his office on Park Avenue. He growled at me for an hour or so about geopolitics. Later, I discovered that the tape recording of my interview skipped every few seconds. In my paranoia, I suspected some magnetic distortion machine in Kissinger’s office had done me in. I was missing every fourth or fifth word Kissinger had said. “The key to peace . . . click, grumble . . . negotiation between the Lebanese . . . squeal, grunt . . . Bush needs a strategic . . . wheeeeeeeeeee. ” The piece I wrote was thin on quotes and long on description and analysis. What the journalism pros call “broad brush.”
Cisneros had his offices in a townhouse on the Upper East Side and had decorated them in accordance with his status as a Latin American plutocrat: dark wood paneling, oil paintings of conquistadors on horseback, deep, comfortable armchairs, and footmen offering perfectly brewed coffee. Cisneros himself was a smallish man. He wore a pale gray suit, white shirt, and blue, patterned tie. He sat tidily in his chair, using spare hand gestures to describe an acquisition here, a sell-off there, a sales thrust into new markets somewhere over there. His hair was a slight distraction, boot-polish black and combed so tightly back over his skull it seemed to be stretching the creases out of his forehead. His family had made its money in gritty businesses such as bottling, haulage, and agriculture, but he had expanded successfully into media and technology. All of that toil and sweat, however, was occurring thousands of miles from here, on the roads of Latin America and the production back lots of Miami. Here, Gustavo and I could sit, sip our coffee, and talk big picture—about the impact of globalization, the importance of local brands. If this was business, I could get used to it. As I was escorted out by his secretary, a door in the wood paneling creaked open and I glimpsed a small conference room where a man and a woman, both immaculate and beautiful, were sitting at their laptops and chatting. They looked toward me and smiled and continued their conversation. The secretary said, “Mr. Cisneros only hires Harvard MBAs to work in his private office.” I felt I had been given a glimpse of a better world.
Several of my friends had obtained MBAs, mostly from INSEAD, a school just outside Paris, and spoke well of their experience. The few who had been to HBS were dismissive of it. They mocked its self-importance, the earnestness of the students, the very opposite of British insouciance. All, however, said that the MBA had taught them the language of business. For that they were grateful. So, in August 2001, in a gray, windowless cubicle in an office tower close to Penn Station, I took the GMAT, the standardized test in English and math required for graduate business school. I waited a few moments for a computer to spit out my score: 730 out
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