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: Lawbeat

Fortune hypes an already-good feature

By Mark Obbie

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The new Bernie Madoff narrative in Fortune by James Bandler and Nicholas Varchaver is a hell of a page-turner. I haven't devoured every Madoff detail -- and who can, judging only from the CNNMoney.com Madoff archive -- so I'm not the best judge of how much new ground this nearly 11,000-word feature actually breaks. But I do know that the story promises something specific that sounds new and interesting. After using the opaque attribution that "Fortune has learned" of a key Madoff aide's plea negotiations, the writers cite "a person familiar with the matter" as the source for saying that the witness, Frank DiPascali, "has no evidence that other Madoff family members were participants in the fraud." DiPascali will name names -- certain Madoff investors who knew of the Ponzi scheme or at least manipulated investment results for their own needs -- the writers quote their anonymous source as saying. Here's the nut graf:

The emergence of this potential star witness may well stand assumptions about the case on their heads: Some people widely assumed by the public to have been involved in the fraud may not have been, and a small group of Madoff investors who appeared to be innocent victims may not have been entirely innocent after all. But then, few things about the life of Bernie Madoff turn out to be as they seem.

That sets up a chronological narrative that spends relatively few words on the workings of the scheme itself, or adds much more detail to what DiPascali supposedly will testify to. Note the many qualifiers: DiPascali "has no evidence" is not the same as saying that he has proof that they were uninvolved. The word "may" makes three critically important appearances in the nut. And it's all pegged to one anonymous source.And all of that is fine. The writers carefully frame the story as one that concerns what one witness may say, and about what led up to this. Here's where I have a problem -- with the hed and dek:

How Bernie did it

Madoff is behind bars and isn't talking. But a Fortune investigation uncovers secrets of his massive swindle.

That's not really what the story is about, or what it can deliver. Yes, the dek doesn't say "the secrets"; it says merely some secrets. But there's no mistaking the tone -- that this is the real story, finally. It's a shame that a good story ends up falling short of its hyped heds (though I don't know if the magazine's editors or the web editors are to blame for this particular set of heds). Still, I recommend the story, sans display type.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 25, 2009 (boomark / email).