Too Close to the Source   

The revelation of an affair between the Harvard Business Review’s top editor and her interview subject roils the magazine’s staff.

The Harvard Business Review becomes a real-life case study as its editor, after acknowledging an affair with interview subject and former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch, negotiates a resignation but not a departure, and two staffers quit in protest.

The story of former Editor Suzy Wetlaufer's revelation that she and Welch had developed a romantic relationship after she conducted and wrote the interview became big news in early March. That's when the Wall Street Journal reported that four top editors had written letters to Walter Kiechel, editorial director of Harvard Business School's publishing operation, demanding Wetlaufer's resignation. Wetlaufer had asked Kiechel to spike the interview during final editing because she was concerned that her objectivity could be called into question, Kiechel says, and he quickly assigned two senior editors to re-interview Welch. The piece ran as scheduled in the February issue.

Four days after the Journal story appeared, Wetlaufer sent an e-mail to her staff announcing she was stepping down as editor. But, she said, she would remain at the magazine as a full-time editor at large. The same day, two senior editors, Harris Collingwood and Alden Hayashi, resigned because Wetlaufer wasn't clearing out. Collingwood, in a message on Jim Romenesko's MediaNews Web site, says that Wetlaufer "will remain, literally, in the same place. As Harvard Business Review editor at large, she will continue to operate out of the corner office she occupied as HBR editor. The senior leaders of Harvard Business School Publishing insist that she will exert no influence over the editing of HBR. Such compromises with reality are typical of HBSP's senior leadership."

Kiechel says "a lot of people" who remain on staff "are expressing concerns" about the arrangement for Wetlaufer to stay on, albeit at a lower salary, and that "we're discussing all sorts of things," including whether to allow her to keep the same office when she returns in mid-April from what she calls a "breather." (The Journal reported that at the Review, Wetlaufer "earned $276,964 including bonus in 2000, according to tax filings.")

A subsequent Journal story said that Welch was involved in helping Wetlaufer secure her sort-of departure deal. Kiechel would say only that "we did not negotiate with Welch." A spokeswoman for Wetlaufer, who declined to be interviewed, told AJR that Welch served as Wetlaufer's "adviser" in the negotiations.

The Journal's initial story raised an issue that seems to concern outsiders more than Review staffers, namely that interview subjects are allowed to collaborate on the pieces prior to publication. Kiechel says that a Review interview "is more like a Socratic dialogue. Its analogy from a newspaper is like an op-ed piece, an as-told-to piece. It's not a kind of 'gotcha' thing." However, he says, "We will kill the interview if they want to take all the juice out of it."

"It's certainly a rich case study with lots of lessons to be learned," Kiechel says of the imbroglio. "We're in the process of distilling and learning those.... As one of the editors said, we are going to get through this and come out stronger."