Ceci Connolly Cashes In
Who knew the world of journalism had the same kind of revolving door as government does? But apparently, if you build a reporting beat entirely around portraying the views of top corporate representatives as the only views that count, and if your newspaper pimps you out as the “play” in a Pay2Play scandal, then you, too, can make the jump to consulting.
CECI CONNOLLY leaves the WP for McKINSEY: “Friends, Pardon the group email but I wanted to tell you all my big news. After 13 great years on the National staff of the Washington Post I’ve decided to take on a new adventure, serving as a senior adviser at McKinsey & Co. to the firm’s new Center for US Health System Reform and its global Health Systems Institute. It is a phenomenal opportunity to grow, learn and have an impact on health care worldwide. I have been blown away by the brainpower at McKinsey and felt that its non-ideological, fact-based approach is the ideal environment for an old-fashioned news gal like me. Throughout 25 years in journalism, I have been blessed with fascinating assignments, warm colleagues and generous sources. Six presidential campaigns, epic health care battles, Hurricane Katrina, two blogs and the machinations of Capitol Hill gave me all I could have ever hoped to write about. Whether bumping along the frost heaves of New Hampshire, talking politics with Juan and Brit on Fox and Gwen on PBS, racing to catch Air Force One (and Two) or sneaking a bite of black market lobster in Cuba, it has been an amazing journey. I hope to catch my breath for a few weeks, do some cooking and play a little golf. I’ll send out my McKinsey coordinates soon. Chrs, Ceci.”
Mind you, I’d rather Connolly be brokering health care deals for McKinsey than do it under the guise of “reporting,” which is what she was doing at the WaPo. So we’re probably all better off!
The biggest problem, though, is the lesson it offers for other journalists: the best way to get out of the troubled news industry and into something more lucrative is with corporate shilling masquerading as journalism.
Not just her.
Richard Wolffe.
like Ceci knows anything about health care other than what her corporate overlords tell her. Haha!!
Just for shits and giggles, I interviewed w/McKinsey coming out of grad school. I figured, why not, I had consulted for business before. The interviewer found out what my PhD was in and said, “Oh good, then you won’t be distracted on the case study by technical knowledge.” “What do you mean,” I asked. “The chemists and the engineers tried to approach the case study w/their expertise and it tended to distract them.”
So he does the case study: it’s to determine what transport industry would best benefit from the use of a new superlight alloy.
I walked through it and said, “Well, obviously not the rail industry.” “Why not,” says the McKinsey interviewer. “Our company used to do the rules for all the railroads. While we worked for them, we saw the entire industry get concentrated beyond belief. There’s no real competition in the industry, so why would one railroad (or a supplier to them, like GE) invest money when there would be no competitive advantage?”
Interviewer guy ultimately told me that I came to that conclusion too quickly for his taste. Only later did I learn that it was a real question McKinsey had gotten, and they had counseled their client to pitch to the railroads. Their advice bombed, because of the lack of competition in the industry.
All of which I take to mean that culturally I was piss poor fit, but that I was right where they had been wrong and that wasn’t enough for them. And that they really didn’t want to admit the real expertise distracting someone WAS from the Lit girl. (Mind you, something almost identical happened to me 10 years earlier, when General Foods told I was the most qualify undergrad applying for one of their competitive programs, but I didn’t want the job so I couldn’t have it.
Great story. I dealt in a minor way with Booz, Hamilton, Associates when
I worked for a bank, and then with AD Little. A.D. Little was more down to earth. Management consultants tend to be embued with their own self-importance, I reckon…
fox fox heads closer to the chicken coop.
Another corporate tool.
I have been blown away by the brainpower at McKinsey and felt that its non-ideological, fact-based approach is the ideal environment for an old-fashioned news gal like me. (doth protest too much much?)
ladies and gentlemen, I give you the MSM.
“We’ve already determined what you are – now we’re just haggling over price.”
“Now watch this drive” – Ceci
Teddy Partridge has a fresh cross-post available: NORML: Full Legalization, Full Steam Ahead
You could say the same about government officials and politicians. The message is that if you whore for the corporatocracy there is no downside. Lose your job or an election? No matter. If you did the corps’ bidding they will take care of you. Not because they really need any more mindless fucks but precisely because of the message it sends. This is not a bug, folks. It’s a feature.
What’s the big deal? We always knew that prostitution pays, if you are a high-echelon whore.
But even high echelon whores have a limited shelf life. I once read about a woman who may have been the most beautiful woman of the 19th century. For a while she was indeed a high echelon whore. But eventually, she got old, and increasingly abused by her patrons, and wound up on skid row or some such.
But I guess the smart high echelon whores know how to convert their few years of stardom into a lifetime sinecure.
Bob in AZ
What an astonishing implicit acknowledgment that national-level “journalists” are really just part of the corporate-industrial industrial complex. Enjoy your corner office and expense account, Ceci.
A good move for Ceci –
she has been a corporate spokesperson for years as a national reporter – this moves her into a slot that is a better fit.
And while folks make fun of McKinsey being a fact based organization, they actually are such an org – indeed their analysis from a few years back
ww1.mckinsey.com/mgi/reports/pdfs/healthcare/US_healthcare_report.pdf
is excellent (but repetitive – they may get paid by the page – start at page 98 which is a “summary” and you will miss nothing).
I disagree with some of their conclusions and note that they do not make conclusions I would make (I believe single payer with a national budget for total and for individual procedures – tight regulation – with Doctor education free and student loans forgiven to clear that hardship from the change away – is the way to go – with Medicare for all as the initial step). They report – accurately – that medicare admin expense jumped in 2005-06 with the drug benefit – but so what? In any case they do not try to force conclusions and are not in any way biased and pushing an insurance company approved, drug company approved solution – I wish Obama had read this report – but then I realize that Obama is a corporate whore and nothing he knew would stop him from caving to the corporations.
If a journalist hasn’t learned the lessons of shilling by their 3rd day on the job, then they’re probably so McArdled that they could be spun into shilling for free.
Worse, think of all the up-and-comers, the ones who think Broder and Milbank are the be-all and end-all of political reporting, who realize now how that pleasing corporate masters in one’s reporting — and Ceci was at the center of it, no doubt, as her “play” role proved — has a cash-out component.
You needn’t worry about having to make embarrassing YouTubes about Mad Bitch Beer with the NewJ2.0 blogger at the WaPo, like Milbank did — or even wait for late pudding, like Broder. There’s a pot at the end of that rainbow, as long as your reporting aims for it on every single deadline.
Shameful. Simply shameful.
I saw an invitation letter soliciting contribution from a WaPo editor during Health Care debate to write for or against the topic which opened up my eyes regarding the illogical crap I see most of the times in MSM but could never make sense of. It is not only disturbing ethics wise that the fourth branch is not doing its job to ensure checks and balances in our government and commerce but reflects a sad state of affairs that one has to turn to Rolling Stones for some true journalism right now, some times on HuPo and of-course FDL.