April/May 2007

Volume 47, Number 5

Senior Member Celebration Dinner Features Al Lewis

by Al Kemp

Held at the Palace Chinese Restaurant on East Evans Avenue, the 2007 Senior Member Celebration Dinner on March 15th brought Rocky Mountain Chapter members together for an evening of fellowship, good food, and an entertaining presentation by Al Lewis, business columnist for the Denver Post.

Members having fun at the Senior Member Celebration Dinner

President Deb Lockwood greeted the attendees and acknowledged the chapter's senior members and STC Associate Fellows. Following Membership Manager Tammy Van Boening's drawing for door prizes, which included the complete version of RoboHelp (!), Martha Sippel introduced Al Lewis. Lewis writes about trends in business and the human drama as it unfolds in the business arena. His thrice-weekly columns in the business section of the Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/allewis) offer an inside look at the people behind the stories from self-serving CEOs to the inhabitants of corporate cubicles.

Al Lewis began his presentation by relating how he had accidentally broken a mirror off a parked vehicle. He was surprised that his insurance agent recommended not leaving a note. The agent was processing claims from six customers whose vehicles had been damaged while parked. Of those six claims, a note was left on only one vehicle. The note read "Sorry I hit your car." There was no phone number. (Lewis disregarded his agent's advice and left a note with his phone number.)

Following his thought-provoking story about business and personal ethics, Lewis gave his Top Ten Rules for Good Writing with humorous examples that broke the rules.

Lewis started his journalism career at the Amarillo Globe-News. He became a business journalist because he believes corporations wield more influence than any government. Americans don't live in a real democracy when powerful special interests peddle influence. Business shapes not only the country's political power structures but also the entire environment.

Ethics in business was a recurring theme throughout Lewis's presentation. He recommended reading at least one biography of Charles Ponzi, the father of the Ponzi scheme. Ponzi took Boston by storm in the 1920s. The Boston newspapers published articles stating that Ponzi was an extremely clever businessman. Eventually, however, Ponzi was arrested, imprisoned, and deported.

Lewis has covered many business debacles including the savings and loan crisis with Charles Keating and Enron, which was essentially a giant Ponzi scheme. Lewis noted that when the stakes are high enough, they surpass people's morals.

His columns are not objective stories, and they are not editorials. He likes to bring a point of view to his stories and to write about people who try to become successful, both those who succeed and those who fail.

People often ask Lewis where he gets the ideas for his columns. His ideas come from personal observations, news, people who contact him, and being present when stories happen. He once wrote a column about a well-known retail establishment that wouldn't give him a lemon for his tea. One of the ways he comes up with ideas is by getting to know people. Sometimes his columns are written around great quotes that people give him. Sometimes he attends events that he thinks will be newsworthy, but he doesn't get much to write about.

Lewis looks for color, emotion, and drama, but he never makes his stories up. He sees himself as a "found object artist." He finds something, gets back to the office, and finds something else. The two findings together may provide the basis for a column. For example, he once went to Vail and toured the log "palace" of Dennis Kozlowski, the convicted former CEO of Tyco.

After the presentation, Lewis fielded questions from the audience.

When asked who creates the headlines for his articles, Lewis commented that he never sees his headlines until his columns are published in the newspaper. "When you are in the business, you accept it."

When asked what good things he finds in business, Lewis responded that he finds many good things. He just wrote a nice profile of Rich Karlis (http://www.denverpost.com/allewis/ci_5447434), who now works for Qwest. He writes about many good entrepreneurs. Despite his positive columns, people remember only his negative stories and keep asking him why he writes such nasty stuff.

When asked about the most important impact of technology on newspaper media, Lewis replied that the Internet has made newspaper audiences bigger than ever before. His column appears in several places on the Internet. Unfortunately, newspapers don't make money from Internet publishing. As a result, foreign news bureaus are becoming too expensive for newspapers to run and newspaper staffs shrink each year.