Media News

Business Insider recommended non-existent books to staff

June 2, 2025

Posted by Chris Roush

Business Insider, which last week laid off 21% of its staff and announced a push into using more artificial intelligence, suggested a book list to its staff that included fake titles, reports Maxwell Tani of Semafor.

Tani reports, “In an email to staff last May, a senior editor at Business Insider sent around a list of what she called ‘Beacon Books,’ a list of memoirs and other acclaimed business nonfiction books, with the idea of ensuring staff understood some of the fundamental figures and writing powering good business journalism.

“Many of the recommendations were well-known recent business, media, and tech nonfiction titles such as Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin, DisneyWar by James Stewart, and Super Pumped by Mike Isaac.

“But a few were unfamiliar to staff. Simply Target: A CEO’s Lessons in a Turbulent Time and Transforming an Iconic Brand by former Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jensen Huang: the Founder of Nvidia, which was supposedly published by the company Charles River Editors in 2019. Semafor could not find any evidence that either book exists.”

Read more here.

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