“I think the process of throughly researching an investment is really analogous of what I do,” said McLean, who currently works for Vanity Fair. “The real difference is what’s actionable. For me, it’s creating a story, creating a narrative.”
McLean said it’s not been intentional that her career has been to focus on companies gone bad such as Enron and Valeant. When she started at Fortune, she wrote a column about stocks to watch.
“I just like to figure things out,” said McLean. She added that it’s satisfying to go against the grain of the general consensus about companies.
McLean said she likes to interview people who have privy to information that is available about a company to only a small circle of people.
“There is something that doesn’t add up. Either people don’t understand it, or there is something that isn’t being explained,” said McLean.
She did not consider herself to be an investigative journalist until her famous “Is Enron Overpriced?” article that ran in Fortune in 2001. The company collapsed by the end of the year.
Listen to the entire interview here.
Former Business Insider executive editor Rebecca Harrington has been hired by Dynamo to be its…
Bloomberg Television has hired Brenda Kerubo as a desk producer in London. She will be covering Europe's…
In a meeting at CNBC headquarters Thursday afternoon, incoming boss Mark Lazarus presented a bullish…
Ritika Gupta, the BBC's North American business correspondent, was interviewed by Global Woman magazine about…
Rest of World has hired Kinling Lo as a China reporter. Lo was previously a…
Bloomberg News saw strong unique visitor growth to its website in October, passing Fox Business…