McLean, Fabrikant named Reuters columnists

Well-known business journalists Bethany McLean and Geraldine Fabrikant will join Reuters as columnists, the news service announced Wednesday.

McLean is one of the world’s preeminent financial journalists. A math major who started her career as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, she wrote articles for Fortune Magazine that hastened the demise of one of the biggest corporate frauds in history: Enron. Her first  book, “The Smartest Guys In The Room” — co-written by Peter Elkind — became an Academy Award-nominated documentary.

A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, McLean is also co-author with New York Times columnist Joe Nocera of the recently published “All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.” Her column for Reuters.com will focus on finance, both high and low.

As a media reporter for the New York Times, Fabrikant dominated her beat. She started at the paper in 1985 and has won six publishers award since that time. In 1996, she won the Loeb Award for deadline reporting.

Before joining The Times, Ms. Fabrikant had been the media editor for Business Week magazine since 1981. While there, she received an award for her cover story on the Capital Cities/ABC merger.

For Reuters, Fabrikant will put a human face on business, focusing on the bold-face names that behind who make the money world go round.

McLean and Fabrikant are the newest additions to op-ed editor James Ledbetter‘s increasingly influential stable of columnists.