Trophies in Various Forms
from Winter 1999
by Caroline Donnelly
Every so often, all of us see somebody doing something so perfectly that we know he—or she—was born to do that thing. Baseball fans like to talk about a natural, though our National Pastime doesn’t have an exclusive on such talent. Naturals exist everywhere: in sports, the arts, the professions, and yes, in business. What else would you call Bill Gates?
From an editor’s point of view, a natural is a journalist who can combine dogged reporting and great writing to produce—without any apparent exertion—an article where the thwack is as perfect as Mark McGuire knocking the ball out of the park. For example, consider Julie Connelly’s cover story on succession planning, which begins on page 32.
As with all naturals, it’s hard to believe that Connelly ever had another profession. But she did. “I thought I was going to be an actress,” she says. “I was 23 and waiting for my cue to go on stage during a production of Where’s Charley? at a tiny dinner theater in New Hampshire. I looked across the stage at the guy playing Charley and I thought to myself, ‘When I’m his age (he was about 45), will I want to be doing this?’” The answer: a resounding no, though she did finish the run—and, she says, has been fond of Where’s Charley? ever since.
Connelly claims she “fell into writing,” landing jobs first at a brokerage firm house organ and then moving on to editorial positions at Institutional Investor, Money, and Fortune. It was while she was at Fortune that Connelly wrote “The CEO’s Second Wife,” in which she coined the term “trophy wife,” now part of the lexicon. As she says, “If only I’d thought to trademark it.”
Trophies come in various forms, of course, and trophy writer is one of them. I’m proud to have Connelly and so many others contributing to this magazine.
Speaking of trophies, ahem, and of pride: It gives me great pleasure to report that Corporate Board Member has been singled out for a special “Best of Knight-Bagehot” award by the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. This prestigious program annually offers a small group of mid-career journalists the opportunity to spend the academic year at Columbia, where they study the worlds of business, finance, and economics in the classroom and meet with the movers and shakers of those worlds after hours. Funded by the John F. and James L. Knight Foundation and dozens of other foundations and corporations and named for Walter Bagehot, founding editor of the Economist, the 24-year-old program aims to foster more informed coverage of business in all media. I am an alum (class of ’78), as are a number of contributors to Corporate Board Member, including Michael Brush (class of ’95), who wrote “Stadia Mania” on page 12. This marks the first time that the Knight-Bagehot award, normally given for a distinguished article or series, has been presented to an entire magazine.
In March, Corporate Board Member will put on a conference, Making Great Acquisitions, that will feature some of the dominant players in the field. Top M&A specialists from Credit Suisse First Boston, J.P. Morgan, Deloitte & Touche, and McKinsey & Co. will be among the speakers, as will Alfred Berkley III, president of Nasdaq. Managing directors of a number of investment banks, including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs, will lead industry-specific discussions.
The conference, which runs March 26 through 28, will take place at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. And yes, there’s time set aside for one-on-one conversation or golf—not that the two are mutually exclusive. For more information, visit our website (www.boardmember.com) or call us at (800) 452-9875.
