Being a valued member of that team, practicing journalism at the highest level, would have been the pinnacle of my career. But Jeff Fager wasn’t having it—a well-known, fully baked female journalist threatening the power structure, the male cabal in charge. I was one in a long line of very capable women who were drummed out of that place or left, too demoralized and fatigued to keep putting up with the BS, no matter how fulfilling the work could be.
Some who stayed went along to get along. As Lesley Stahl told the Hollywood Reporter, “I just wanted to be a survivor.” Mission accomplished.
Aren’t you glad that kind of retro, sexist office culture is finally on the way out?
Me too.
97
Bleeding Purple
SINCE LATE 2013, I’d been global news anchor of Yahoo News. John couldn’t believe the grandiosity. “Why not call you intergalactic news anchor?” he said.
Yes, it sounded a little silly, but they were offering me a network news anchor’s salary, and I was jazzed to be a part of the tech giant’s expanding empire, telling Politico, “It almost feels like a start-up, but with a very established distribution platform. So it’s the best of both worlds.”
Even before I arrived, Yahoo’s fearless leader, Marissa Mayer, was hauling in big names to helm various verticals they were launching: makeup magnate Bobbi Brown and fashion guru Joe Zee for beauty and style; David Pogue of the New York Times for technology. Marissa also shelled out for impressive print talent: Times political reporter Matt Bai, indefatigable Michael Isikoff, Newsweek veteran Dan Klaidman.
My first week there, I had an idea. Along with creating content, I could help forge powerful partnerships with people I knew socially, had worked with, or had interviewed. People like Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
“Howard,” I said, during a visit to his jumbo spread in East Hampton, “wouldn’t it be cool if the Yahoo home page was the default setting when you logged onto the Starbucks Wi-Fi?”
I added that we could join forces on content that tackled big social issues, something I knew Howard cared about. And we could set up screens in every Starbucks across the land so that people could lap up the latest news while waiting in line for their skinny caramel macchiatos.
Howard told me he had been kicking around that very idea with Tim Armstrong over at AOL.
“Don’t do anything until you talk to Marissa,” I said.
I connected them on an email; Howard replied all, saying he was excited to meet. Not a peep from Marissa.
So I reached out to Sandy Gould, head of Global Talent Acquisition （I mean, Intergalactic Talent Acquisition）， who looked like a grown-up Jimmy Neutron, in cool specs and designer kicks from his vast collection. My email was a nudge with a smidge of WTF.
Sandy assured me “MM is definitely excited” and “going to follow up shortly,” signing off with “Be well.”
Three weeks later, another email arrived:
I never heard from Marissa. But, no worries.
All my best,
Howard
Are you kidding me?
I’d later learn this was Marissa’s MO. Not returning emails （and certainly not anything as old-school as a phone call）， showing up for dinners with clients when they were already on dessert, leaving powerful people waiting for hours outside her office. Apparently there was a long line of major players who’d left the sprawling Yahoo campus in Sunnyvale, California, feeling less sunny than irate.
Our video group was small but mighty. I tapped Tony Maciulis, a quick-witted and talented writer/producer who was by my side at the Evening News and Katie, to lead the charge. Together, we assembled a fantastic, mostly female team. We did strong work right out of the gate, including short-form video explainers called Now I Get It on complicated topics like immigration, fracking, 3D printing, the Armenian genocide, artificial intelligence, and March Madness. I sat down with disrupters and game-changers like the founder of Airbnb and the hilarious women of Broad City. I went to LA to interview Betty White on her 95th birthday and to Nashville to talk happy marriages and corny jokes with Dolly Parton. I was particularly proud of a beautifully crafted piece we did about Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee’s newly discovered prequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, and the controversial fact that she was in failing health in a nursing home when it was decided the manuscript would be published.
That piece was part of Yahoo’s Viewfinder series. Which would have been fine, if viewers could find it. In fact, there was just one problem with the great content we were producing: no one could find any of it.