SALON

Jack Welch leaves Fortune and Reuters

After a media drubbing, the retired executive will stick to the friendlier pastures of the Wall Street Journal

Topics: economy, Jack Welch, , , ,

Jack Welch leaves Fortune and Reuters

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch said he would stop writing for Fortune magazine and Reuters after he generated controversy for questioning government unemployment figures, Fortune.com reported.

On Friday, the retired executive tweeted that the jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were “unbelievable” and suggested that “these Chicago guys” had somehow altered the figures. Later on MSNBC he refused to back down despite his lack of evidence. President Obama’s reelection campaign is based in Chicago.

Reuters, Fortune.com and Fortune.com sibling CNNMoney have all run critical coverage of Welch since Friday. A Fortune.com article highlighted that GE had lost 100,000 jobs during Welch’s tenure, roughly a quarter of its workforce. On Friday Reuters quoted Barry Ritholtz, CEO and director of equity research at Fusion IQ, a firm which manages about $300 million, saying, ”This guy is the guy that’s telling me the books are cooked? That’s hilarious.”

Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer piled on Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” saying the economy contradicted Welch’s assessment. “I think it’s exactly the opposite of what Jack Welch is saying,” Serwer said. “Things are actually improving.”

In an email to Reuters editor in chief Stephen Adler and Fortune’s Serwer, Welch said he would continue writing for the Wall Street Journal, where his work gets better “traction.” The Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Welch wrote business pieces for Reuters and Fortune with his wife Suzy Welch. According to Daily Intel, Suzy Welch said the split was unrelated to last week’s employment figures.

(Disclosure: I worked for BusinessWeek.com when Stephen Adler was editor in chief there.)

Alex Halperin is news editor at Salon. You can follow him on Twitter @alexhalperin.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Comments

11 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>