During his four decades at Fortune magazine, Shawn Tully has become a master at reporting, writing and publishing more than 40 cover stories as well as a stream of other high-profile, longform articles, including on Boeing’s leadership failures, the promise and peril of Trump’s economic policies, GE’s collapse and how CEO Jamie Dimon transformed JPMorgan. He has achieved this partly by developing long-term relationships with dozens of high-profile figures, including JPMorgan’s Dimon, GE CEO Larry Culp and billionaire investors such as Carl Icahn and Nelson Peltz.
Veteran journalist and NYFWA board member Greg Miles interviews Tully about how he initially spots a potential cover or longform story, how he develops it, works with his editors and structures it to maintain readers’ interest in a world of short attention spans –and also how he cultivates CEOs. Additional topics covered include how Tully has mastered the art of producing large volumes of quality short stories –incessantly demanded by editors today– while also doing longform stories and covers. This interview is relevant not only to senior and junior journalists, but aspiring journalism students at Columbia, NYU, CUNY and other schools.