TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022206.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.4 KB | 77 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 50

How I Got That $1 Million Story


A young reporter cashes in on tales of shenanigans in the suites


    When he joined the Wall Street Journal in 1983, reporter
Bryan Burrough could barely tell a buyout from a bailout. But
Burrough, 29, co-author of the best seller Barbarians at the
Gate, has become a formidable chronicler of Roaring
Eighties-style shenanigans and greed. In a deal befitting a
literary superstar, publisher HarperCollins last month agreed
to pay Burrough $1 million for a book on American Express and
the smear campaign it waged in the 1980s against international
banker Edmond Safra. "I was absolutely stunned," Burrough said
of the cash advance. "To me, the money is not a real thing.
It's kind of like it's happening to someone else."

    Burrough is the biggest beneficiary yet of readers' hunger
for tales about the pratfalls of the corporate elite. For many
other top financial journalists, six-figure book advances have
become the rule. Publishers pay handsomely for such potential
blockbusters as author Ken Auletta's probe of the television
industry, which brought him at least $500,000 and is due on
shelves next summer. Connie Bruck, a New Yorker writer,
reportedly signed a $400,000 contract for a profile of Time
Warner chairman Steven Ross. Other high-priced works in
progress include Wall Street exposes by Anthony Bianco of
Business Week and James Stewart of the Journal.

    HarperCollins gave Burrough his million partly to reward him
for Barbarians at the Gate. Burrough and fellow Journal
reporter John Helyar shared a $150,000 advance for that vivid
saga of the $25 billion RJR-Nabisco takeover war. They wrote
the 528-page book in just seven months. An instant hit,
Barbarians has sold more than 300,000 copies so far and has
been a fixture on best-seller lists for 38 weeks.

    As the book climbed the charts, Burrough pondered what to
write about next. "I moped around for quite a while," he
recalls, "thinking I wouldn't find anything that interested me
as Barbarians had." But before long, he was probing the story
behind American Express's extraordinary campaign against Safra,
which ended last year when the company apologized to the banker
and paid $8 million in damages to him and his favorite
charities. "I told my agent and publisher that I was working on
something that could be the next book," says Burrough. When the
Journal published his 10,000-word account on Sept. 24,
HarperCollins enthusiastically agreed. "The story came out on
a Monday," Burrough said, "and the deal was signed Tuesday
night." Compared with the hurly-burly schedule of Barbarians,
the one to two years he plans to spend on the new book is
leisurely.

    A devoted reader of true crime stories and a demon for
detail, Burrough weaves suspense into his tales of high finance
and intrigue. "I try to write somewhat the way a good murder
mystery is written," he explains. "My stories sometimes read
as if [LBO king] Henry Kravis were approaching with an ax
instead of a buyout offer." Burrough may have hit the peak of
fascination with 1980s whodunits. As the 1990s wear on, his
agent Andrew Wylie says with literary disdain, readers are
likely to become more interested in advice books on "how to
stave off disaster."


By John Greenwald. Reported by John E. Gallagher and Jane Van
Tassel/New York.