Portfoli—oh!
That didn't take long. In the pages of TNR, Elizabeth Spiers, founder of the blog DealBreaker.com, calls for the firing of Portfolio editor Joanne Lipmann—after all of two issues.
Two issues? Magazines take time, and any editor deserves more than that. Portfolio's not very good so far, but how many magazines are after two issues?
And now, a Portfolio-related mea culpa. A few days back, I ripped into CBS Marketwatch columnist Jon Friedman for criticizing Portfolio for the manner in which it obtained an interview with New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Friedman, I said, should appreciate that Steinbrenner's fair game.
Well, having now, um, read the Portfolio story, I have to say something I never thought I'd write: Jon Friedman was right.
Don't get me wrong, I still think his column was abysmally written and argued in a slapdash and juvenile manner. But the gist of his piece is right: The Portfolio article feels sleazy.
In the Portfolio piece, reporter Franz Lidz accompanies Tom McEwen, an 84-year-old friend of Steinbrenner's, to Steinbrenner's Tampa home—and asks Steinbrenner a bunch of questions.
To start, McEwen sounds like he may not be entirely all there himself. The two drive to Steinbrenner's and proceed to sneak into his gated driveway after another car drives out.
Never in the piece does Lidz mention whether he ever actually tells Steinbrenner what he's working on.
Great to see you, George,” McEwen says. He introduces me as a writer working on a story and asks about Steinbrenner’s wife, Joan.
That's pretty vague—half a sentence. Such vagueness is almost always deliberate. Did McEwen say exactly what Lidz was writing a story
about?
Now, it may not have made any difference; Steinbrenner might be too far gone mentally to have cared or perhaps even realized that he was talking to a reporter working on a story about whether he was senile.
Still, I do think the ethics of this manner of getting an interview are pretty questionable. But as you read the story, you realize why Lidz did it—because he's got nothing else. After this lede, the piece is a snooze.
So perhaps Joanne Lipman (who, for the sake of full disclosure, I have met once) ought not to be fired. But her magazine does have some serious work to do.
