How Fortune’s Brady turned into a CEO whisperer

Russell Sherman of the “Press Profiles” podcast interviewed Diane Brady, who started earlier this year as executive director of Fortune Live Media and editorial director of Fortune CEO Initiative.

Brady said she got her inquisitiveness and skepticism from her father. She started at The Wall Street Journal in 1994 covering aviation and travel in Asia from Hong Kong. “I loved being able to explore the region,” said Brady.

She joined BusinessWeek in 1999 and ran its Connecticut bureau, where she wrote about Martha Stewart and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, among other topics.

“I’ve never stopped being a journalist in any capacity that I’ve been in,” said Brady, though she says she has become more conscious of the impact her stories have on the people she’s covering. “There’s a ripple impact when you write these stories,” she said.

Brady thinks of the events that she oversees as “live journalism” by “talking to people who are in the know.”

She was attracted to the job at Fortune because it allowed her to dig deep into leadership coverage. “To be able to see the world through these different leaders and talk[ about different issues … that’s just exciting to me,” said Brady.

To listen, go here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.