TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
By Teri Buhl
It looks like Randall Lane, former editor in chief and president of bankrupt Doubledown Media, the publisher of Trader Monthly magazine, which went under last year, has some explaining to do.
Vanity Fair is publishing, via an agreement with Penguin Press, in its July issue an excerpt from his book, “The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane,” about famed ’60s pop artist Peter Max and his business dealing with Doubledown. It’s a gossipy story that will hit national newsstands tomorrow.
It’s quite the vindictive read written from Lane’s first-hand point of view, and according to interviews with the subjects in the story, Talking Biz News has learned it’s packed with some inconsistencies.
What’s most alarming is that Vanity Fair has published a photo of exclusive Peter Max art featuring four well-known hedge fund titans that Max thinks it doesn’t have permission to publish. Max painted portraits, for the 2008 Trader Monthly Top-100 Trader Income story, of Wall Street’s famed hedge funders.
Max tells Talking Biz News he’s really disappointed and has contacted Vanity Fair asking for an explanation. A Vanity Fair spokeswoman says Peter Max’s studio gave it permission to run pictures of the artworks on the condition that it got permission from the subjects of the paintings, which it did.
How this slipped through the cracks of Vanity Fair’s stellar photo department is currently being investigated. What we have learned is that Lane went to one hedgie and its press firm and asked for permission to run the art, at the request of Vanity Fair.
Additionally, the prices Lane says the hedge funders paid Max for their self portraits — Lane says he got the prices directly from the Max studio — wasn’t ever confirmed with most of the hedgies we talked to. People inside of Jim Chanos’s firm tell us he never bought the six panels of art Lane says he did and paid less than the $175,000 Lane reports he paid — a fact Team Max confirms.
A Vanity Fair spokeswoman says, “Our figures for prices paid for the artworks were obtained through a solid source close to the deals. When we checked the figure for Mr. Chanos’s deal with Mr. Chanos he informed us that the figure was not ‘accurate,’ but did not provide other figures. The editor then emailed him and asked, ‘Jim, how do you suggest we correct them.’ Mr. Chanos never responded, so we went with our source.”
All this makes us question what else in Lane’s aggressive account, of a business deal with the artist that didn’t work the way he wanted, is real? Lane portrays the pop artist as a Wall Street leech who uses a magazine publisher to get access to moneyed financiers with big egos to sell his art.
That’s a notion that many close to Peter Max find absurd. At least when Vanity Fair checked some of Lane’s story facts with Max it learned Lane’s account of Max making art for the Larry King’s cardiac foundation and then pocketing $1 million for himself was disputed by Max and the magazine added his denial to the story. Unfortunately, Max now gets to battle with Lane’s book publisher.
What Lane’s story really shows us is a shady journalistic line. In this case it’s providing access to his reporters’ high-powered sources.
As one of the reporters on the Top-100 Trader Income story, I’m appalled Lane was pimping art to the hedgies I’d been reporting on and building trusted relationships with — if I’d known I likely wouldn’t have agreed to do the exclusive reporting for Trader Monthly. Luckily most of the traders I spoke with who bought the Peter Max art say they bought it because they like his work. But how often do we hear of magazine editor in chief turning to art sales to make money for their publication?
Vanity Fair can of course print a clarification and pay the artist for rights to his work, but that’s not all that Lane borrowed for his story in Vanity Fair.
Lane’s story waxes on about the famed trader’s income in 2007 and how they made it. Those details were taken directly from the reporting myself, Chris Gillick, and my editor Rich Blake worked exclusively to get. Lane was not involved in the research, reporting, and sentence writing for the Trader Monthly stories that it appears he’s basically rewritten for his book and Vanity Fair. That content is now owned by Dealflow Media, which bought Trader Monthly assets out of bankruptcy for only $53,000 in March.
We see Lane rewrite on pp. 124-125 of the Vanity Fair story exclusive reporting that I worked for months to get, detailing that John Paulson sought out swap deals that require cash collateral and forced a bulge bank to fork over a $500 million payout over a reverse margin call. Dealbreaker credits Trader Monthly for writing about this when I broke it – but not Randall Lane.
A spokesperson for John Paulson tells Talking Biz News they were never called by Lane or Vanity Fair to fact check the story or Lane’s book. Paulson was never interviewed by Lane. A Vanity Fair spokeswoman says Vanity Fair fact checked this fact with a totally independent source who had spoken directly to Mr. Paulson.
With Lane working as an independent journalist and contributing editor on some of The Daily Beast finance stories, you’d hope he’d at least respect journalistic standards and give reporting credit to me and my Trader Monthly editors Blake and Gillick. I’m sure they are sitting there as frustrated as I am over the hedgie news lifts by Lane — all in the name of trying to get his book promoted. A publicist working on Lane for the book says that proper credit is given to the authors in the book’s end notes and in earlier chapters.
I think we all just want an explanation from Lane, whom I called and e-mailed, on why he did it. Stay tuned.
Teri Buhl is a freelance investigative reporter covering Wall Street. She was on the edit team of Doubledown Media in 2007 and is not a creditor of the bankrupt media company. Buhl has written for Trader Monthly, New York Post, Dealbreaker, Business Insider, New York Magazine, The Atlantic.com, Fortune.com, and the Greenwich Time.
Editor’s Note: Buhl and Lane have traded barbs before, as noted here by Felix Salmon at Reuters.
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Remember when you were 10 and Randal Lane is the kid who sat next to you and copied all your answers on the test and you bothered to study and he does it with no shame. You look over and glare at him and he looks at you like your crazy and then he gets a higher grade than you on the test...
I'm desperately trying to care about this, because Randall Lane does sound like a dick... but, ugh, can't seem to muster it. Just let the copyright owners sue him and VF and be done with it.
Wait a minute - Vanity Fair finds out that Lane's reporting on what hedge fund manager Jim Chanos paid for art work Peter Max made of him is not factually true but then doesn't add a correction to Lane's story before it gets printed? They have a staff writer Ms. Bethany Mclean who is close to Chanos and could have easily gotten the correct price Chanos paid. It's clear their fact checking failed in this story and I can't imagine Mr. Max would give the publication use of his art for such a mean spirited story. The whole thing reads like a set up. Very disapointed in Vanity Fair here.
Vanity Fair has morphed into a pretentious tabloid, disguised as high-brow journalism. There's no critical thinking, no thoughts or ideas contained in the pages of VF that haven't been regurgitated by legions of PR hucksters advancing deadbeat financiers and other movers and shakers that have no real relevance other than their unique talent of draining the rest of us dry and leaving financial ruin in their wake. It's no surprise that a magazine that works in collusion with these types would also deprive an artist his due or real investigative journalists the attributions that they've worked for.
Buhl deserves a lot of credit for calling these misanthropes out.
Thanks for reporting this Teri and Talking Biz. I know Lane strong arms most journalist who try to report on his asset miss-managment and ad fraud at Doubledown- glad to see some publications getting the facts out there about the lack of credibility this person has.
Lane's hit piece on Peter Max just shows he has no problem sinking the bottom of the well to get a story sold. Since we know now he sells journalistic access I don't understand how The Daily Beast thinks he has any street cred to write or edit for them?
I'l'll give Vanity Fair the benefit of the doubt - that they were snowed by Lane and hopefully some one on their editorial team has the ethics to issue an applogy to one of our generations greatest pop artist Peter Max.
I still can not believe people take Teri Buhl serisouly as a journalist. Teri is a very very bitter woman who was told to leave Doubledown Media because she lied in most of her stories and the rest of the editors had to correct the lies. She is obsessed with all things related to DoubleDown Media and clearly Randall Lane whom she has cyber stalked for a long time now. This bitter woman writes lies to conjure up sensationalism, this is why she has been fired from EVERY job she has had.
Teri please please do something with your life.
I have to second what M. says here. I had the displeasure of working with Teri Buhl, so I know of what I speak (as, I'm guessing, this "M." also does). Anyone who would call Teri a "journalist" either does not know Teri or has little to no respect for the profession.
I am surprised to see that this site would publish the ginned-up charges that Teri is leveling here. (Indeed, it's worth noting that every significant charge that she hurls at Randall Lane is contradicted -- and rather plausibly, at that -- by the fact-checking department at Conde Nast. Read the story carefully, and it falls apart at the seams.) This "article" is the journalistic equivalent of screaming "when did you stop beating your wife!" as loudly as possible, at a cardboard cutout of Randall Lane. Which leaves Randall two choices: either sink down into the mud with Teri Buhl, or take the high road, ignore it, and thereby, unfortunately, allow her malicious hack job to assume the veneer of truth.
Has Randall Lane made mistakes? Sure. Did he screw up the business side of Doubledown? Absolutely. But that does not now allow for a bitter, vindictive individual to attempt to forge some kind of reputation out of slandering him at every opportunity.
Go away, Teri. Stop it. You're embarassing yourself. (And no, for those who are wondering, I am NOT Randall Lane.)
The Vanity Fair article was magnificient. It was the most entertaining expose' I've read in ages. Say what you will about Randal Lane, he exposed both his greed and Peter Max's over the top con-man like operation. But it's hard to feel sorry for any parties involved. It was the perfect article in VF.
Max will no doubt be plagued with hawking his computer generated crap on ebay or worse....shopping malls. This is the beginning of a straight down-hill ride. My friends in Aspen who were also roped in to buying their computer generated portraits from Peter will likely stowing their so called originals.
Who could have been an icon, if he behaved and laid low is now on the same level as the other greed mongers he painted from the great 100.
@M - For the record I quit Doubledown Media in Jan 08 after I had finished my year commitment. It was my frist business journalsim job and I've always been thankful for the editorial support Rich Blake and Chris Gillick gave me- during my time their I rarely interacted with Lane on editoral projects. My senior editor Rich Blake asked me to come back as a freelancer for the Top 100 Trader Income story because he said they couldn't do it without me. (A story who's reporting Lane rewrites in his Vainty Fair piece.) After that 2 month project I moved on to breaking news for the New York Post during the financial crisis.
I don't think I've heard my peers call me bitter but I am passionate about reporting on individuals or financial service firms who conduct fraud and abuse investors. In the case of Randall Lane I am still waiting for him to respond to interview questions and on the record statements, about the miss use of company funds, from those he worked with. I am also waiting for answers on the why Lane bounced checks to Peter Max and never paid him ($48k) for the project he begged him to do for the Cigar Report Hall of Fame issue.
I know all(and I mean all) the players in this saga(except the hedgies)...this is such an accurate description it is simply amazing...Any comments that disagree are simply ignorant of the actual facts and people. This is Peter to a T and the whole charade that goes on at MAX....Randall is so on, it is just good writing and so accurate...BRAVO