Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bartiromo is all business

Jessica Pressler of New York magazine profiles CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo, spending time with her during one of her workdays.

Pressler writes, “Bartiromo, 42, is all business. She’s married to Jonathan Steinberg, son of the corporate raider Saul P. Steinberg, and lives on the Upper East Side in a townhouse, but, she confesses, she doesn’t do much besides work. ‘I love what I do,’ she says. ‘But I have not been able to figure out the balance in life.’ Still, it’s a long way from Bay Ridge, where, she says, ‘growing up, my nickname was Bullet, because I was always running faster than all the other kids.’ Even this family-gift run is work: She’s talking to me to promote her new book, The 10 Laws of Enduring Success. It’s a self-helpish memoir peppered with life lessons from the likes of Bill Gates and Jack Welch.

“Bartiromo is efficient like that. Her conversation with Watson will be sliced into derivatives that will pay off in various ways. A clip of it aired on her live show, Closing Bell. Afterward, she leaned in and—“That was so great, thank you so much”—got a few more moments of his very precious time for her other show, The Wall Street Journal Report. And of course exposure to such prestige enhances her own brand, which is that of someone who knows, gets, and is empathetic to Big Business.

“If this approach has made Bartiromo very successful (she’s the network’s top-rated personality), it has also gotten her in trouble: Back in 2007, she made headlines when a relationship with a Citigroup source was criticized as too cozy. At the time, she suggested to the Times that she was being targeted by envious peers.”