On october 2, James Walker Michaels, the former editor of Forbes magazine, died. He was 86. With him, an era has come to a close. Jim Michaels was, without question, the best editor of our time. In the four decades that he led Forbes, it held sway as the most influential and readable business magazine in the world. In the field of business journalism, Forbes was the gold standard, and Michaels was the standard bearer. Forbes stories were provocative, relevant, lively, short, to-the-point, and told through the people who ran businesses. At the end of the pithy, three-column piece in Forbes, was the lesson of the story — just like a morality play, as Steve Forbes, the owner of the magazine, put it. Forbes reporters had to have an opinion on the subject they were writing about, and every opinion had to be reported out to perfection, so it could be defended in a court of law. Overseeing these operatic observations on American and global business, was Jim Michaels, the Friend of the Reader and the Terror of the Newsroom. I worked for Forbes magazine for five years, during those heady eighties and early nineties, when America ruled, and business ruled America. American business was starting to globalise, and Jim decided he needed some global expertise in-house. So he began hiring reporters with international affairs degrees. I fell into that category, and joined Forbes as a fact-checker — that lowest of the low on the reporting totem pole, but the place where, we were told, all great reporting careers began. I would have gladly started as a janitor at Forbes. For me, the biggest thrill of being at Forbes was not the magazine so much as the chance of being in the aura of the legendary Jim Michaels. I think I’d heard of him from the moment I was born — and every Indian should have. Michaels was posted to India as a reporter with United Press in the 1940s, the years when a new nation was taking birth — and Jim recorded the pangs and the ecstasy. But he made history when his became the first account of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination that the world would read — a story that beat rival Associated Press by 15 minutes. Michaels saw a devastated country weeping over Gandhi’s body at Birla House; the world saw what Michaels saw. He said, later, that his time in India had changed his life and his view of the world. (How karmic, that Michaels should die on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary.) I had been at Forbes over a month before I actually met Jim Michaels. I’d heard so much about him, but never saw him. I began to think he didn’t exist. Forbes, I was convinced, was run by an invisible editor, a Wizard of Oz, who everyone knew about but who no one had seen. The only evidence of Jim’s existence was his searing comments on writers’ copy. A sampling: “What old fashioned service? There’s not a line here about what it is except some shit about watering a plant. story’s dead. Jim Michaels.” Or “I took out at least 50 lines without losing a single worthwhile fact. Jim Michaels.” And to a writer who he thought was too nice to a company, “Why not send them a nice, lacy Valentine?” Finally, to a fellow rookie reporter, “This piece is a jumble. They’re being taken over, yet margins are being squeezed but they are doing well abroad, but then the writer drags in mortgage payments. Is this supposed to be a parody? Journalism of the absurd. Jim.” So when I finally received a summons from Harriet Miller, Jim’s (also legendary) secretary, to meet the Great Man, I was terrified. Would I be sacked on the spot? Humiliated in front of everybody for not understanding the simple rules of fact-checking quickly enough? As I stood outside his office, waiting to be ushered in, I saw a framed front-page of the New York Times, datelined January 30, 1948: “Gandhi Assassinated.” The byline was James W. Michaels. My terror ebbed; I knew I had arrived at my destination. I peered into the room. There he was, the Wizard of Forbes, a neat little bespectacled man, perched on an impossibly high swivel chair, jabbing his fingers at a keyboard in front of him. He turned and peered down at me: “Come in. You’re the new reporter. From India? We don’t want an Indian mafia here.” And I was dismissed. Mafia? There were only three Indians at Forbes then, one of whom was senior editor Subrata Chakravarty, an elite Bengali from Yale and Harvard Business School who Jim Michaels had managed to bamboozle into writing for then little-known Forbes over making millions working for a mighty corporation. Those days, everyone was an iconoclast at Forbes. The magazine was full of characters — and it started from the top. There was Malcolm Forbes, the owner, larger than life, who seduced corporate chieftains into parting with their advertising dollars over luxurious lunches at the Forbes town house at tony 60, Fifth Avenue in New York. His partner in crime was Jim Michaels, the irascible, brilliant editor who produced the best business magazine without ever meeting chief executives (Michaels believed journalists shouldn’t socialise with their subjects; he was incorruptible). The two were perfect together — and made the magazine what it was. They were ably supported by staffers hired in their own image. Many were eccentric, but Michaels harnessed their energy and edginess expertly. A colleague reminded us last week of advice that was given to him when he joined the magazine: “If you want to get along at Forbes, it helps to come from a dysfunctional family.” In the magazine business, Forbes was like Hindustan Lever. Its reporters made their careers in the magazine; many had been there for over two decades, and it was almost impossible to poach a Forbes reporter. But the few who left were much sought after. Norman Pearlstine became the editor-in-chief of Time magazine, Ed Finn became the chief at Barrons, Allan Sloan became a star at CNN before the joined Fortune magazine, Gretchen Morgenson joined the New York Times and won them their first Pulitzer for financial reporting in a decade, Mark Clifford became editor of The South China Morning Post. The world of business journalism is filled with former Forbes reporters — and they carry Michaels’ high standards of journalism and the art of writing the pithy one-pager with them. Jim Michaels maintained his connections with India, and in the last decade, visited often, with his family. His son adopted two girls from India. Michaels was amazed — and pleased — at the changes in India. He was always gracious to me when we met, and I think, maybe, pleased that his ‘charge’ was reporting the India story as he may have. No award, however prestigious, was ever as good as a word of praise from Michaels. These days, alas, business journalism has veered away from the Michaels model. It has become celebrity based journalism, and editors and reporters frequently fraternise with their subjects. Now the Vishwamitra of the business is gone. Hopefully, his spirit will endure through those of us fortunate enough to be his students. The writer is the India bureau chief for BusinessWeek magazine
