VideoAge’s January 2022 edition featured a story on how a TV trade publication such as VideoAge, reported on an issue before a newspaper of The Wall Street Journal’s caliber did. And that wasn’t the only instance where VideoAge published a story before a major publication did. Indeed, in the “Sunday Business” section of the January 9, 2022 issue of The New York Times, a front cover story announced that “beleaguered employees are standing up to bad bosses and obnoxious colleagues.”
The interesting aspect of this latest VideoAge “scoop,” is that, while the WSJ “picked up” VideoAge‘s story about the threats presented by social media, “just” 53 months after VideoAge ran the story, the NYT took 11 years (actually 135 months) from VideoAge’s September/October 2010 Issue, when the trade paper reported that the “Industry’s Toughest Bosses are Demanding Executives.”
To make a point, the Times reported the example of “the Hollywood mogul Scott Rudin, who […] also threw staplers at underlings.” On the other hand, VideoAge had reported that, “There are stories of executives who threw chairs at their underlings and others who just launched videocassettes. There are also those who are screamers, and others who use antics.”
VideoAge’s 2010 story was in the works well before the premiere of New Line movie Horrible Bosses, which starred Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman, but it took inspiration from the 1980 movie 9 to 5 with Jane Fonda. Not that the subject of tough bosses was a rarity. Indeed, in 2011, The Wall Street Journal ran this headline: “New GM CEO: Brash, Blunt, Demanding,” followed by a subhead that concluded, “Others Wonder If His Style Is Unsettling.” Then, between 1980 and 1993, Fortune magazine ran several features called “Ten Toughest Bosses in America.”
Still, VideoAge can pride itself on having scooped both the NYT and the WSJ one way or another.
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