Welles took on the oil industry

The New York Times has an obituary Wednesday of noted business journalist Chris Welles and recounts how he took on the oil industry in the 1970s.

Dennis Hevesi writes, “His 1970 book, ‘The Elusive Bonanza,’ accused the oil industry of neglecting the development of America’s vast oil-shale reserves. It was an expansion of an article he had written for Life magazine several years earlier. Life did not use the piece, and after Mr. Welles sold it to Harper’s, Life fired him.

“The book had repercussions in 1977, when he was named director of the Walter Bagehot Fellowship Program in Business and Economics Journalism at Columbia (now the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program). For 35 years, it has provided a midcareer opportunity for business journalists to expand their expertise. Shortly after Mr. Welles’s appointment, the Mobil Oil Corporation withdrew its financial support for the fellowships, saying that while it considered the program excellent, it ‘didn’t have confidence in the leadership.’

“Besides Life, Mr. Welles also worked for BusinessWeek, The Saturday Evening Post and The Los Angeles Times. Among his awards for business reporting were a Gerald Loeb Award and a National Magazine Award. He ran the Bagehot program until 1985.”

Read more here.