NY Times biz news desk upset with Theranos CEO profile

Charlotte Klein of Vanity Fair writes about how the New York Times business news staff is unhappy with the recent profile of now-imprisoned Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and expressed those concerns to business editor Ellen Pollock.

Klein writes, “At the all-hands meeting Tuesday, attended by some 80 people, Pollock was asked how the story came about and what she thought of the backlash. Pollock defended the Holmes profile, and said she didn’t ‘give a fuck’ about the criticism, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. (‘My mother, may she rest in peace, would be appalled to hear that I cursed in public,’ Pollock told me in an email.)

“Pollock told staffers there was nothing atypical about how the story had come about—Chozick, a former Times reporter who has for the past several years been a writer-at-large for the paper, was offered the profile by a contact, and the Times saw it as a newsworthy story, given Holmes had not given an interview since 2016. One person in the meeting pointed out that the Times had recently hired John Carreyrou, the Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter whose articles led to Holmes’s downfall, exposing her and the fraudulent practices of Theranos. Pollock noted that Carreyrou—as well as Erin Griffith, a business reporter who covered Holmes’s trial for the Times—read Chozick’s piece before it was published. Neither liked the story, Pollock said. (‘John Carreyrou and Erin Griffith are wonderful!’ Pollock told me. ‘Amy Chozick too!’) Executive editor Joe Kahn, however, did like the piece, complimenting it in a morning meeting following publication, according to a Times reporter.”

Read more here.