Whitney Tilson has collected some great articles from Carol Loomis over time, check them out below.
Carol Loomis is, without doubt, the greatest business writer of all time – an absolute tiger of a journalist and an absolute sweetheart of a person, a true class act – so her retirement is worthy of note.
Below is an article about it in today’s NYT (gotta love Buffett’s quip about men vs. women):
In January 1954, a bright-eyed 24-year-old from Cole Camp, Mo., walked into Fortune magazine’s offices at Rockefeller Center. Armed with a college journalism degree and work experience writing for a Maytag company magazine, she took an entry-level job assisting Fortune’s male writers.
The young woman, Carol Loomis, navigated the magazine’s “Mad Men”-like culture, on one occasion slapping a married colleague whom, she delicately recalled, “had an agenda.” She proved herself as a reporter but had to battle gender stereotypes. In 1970, she fought her way into an Economic Club of New York dinner after its director said he did not want “any frivolous little Smith girls looking for a free dinner and the chance to spend an evening with 1,200 men in black tie.”
After 60 years at Fortune, Ms. Loomis is retiring as one of the country’s most venerated financial journalists, with a collection of work that reads like a history of modern Wall Street.
“She has an analytical mind and she keeps learning,” said Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor and a close friend. “We males never do that. We quit at about 15. We just think we know it all. At 85, she is interested in learning more.”
I’ve gone back through my archives to find some of her greatest hits. To start with, read her book about Buffett, Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2013, 2012:www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591845734/tilsoncapitalpar
Here are some of her greatest Fortune articles about Buffett (by no means a comprehensive list; I couldn’t find links for many, so I didn’t include them):
- The Jones Nobody Keeps Up With, 4/66: attached and posted at: The Jones Nobody Keeps Up With-Loomis-4-66
- The Inside Story of Warren Buffett, 4/11/88: http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1988/04/11/70414/index.htm
- A House Built on Sand (Long-Term Capital Management), 10/26/98:http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/10/26/250015/index.htm
- Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market, 11/22/99: http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/11/22/269071/index.htm
- The Value Machine, 2/19/01: http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/02/19/296860/index.htm
- Warren Buffett on the Stock Market, 12/10/01: http://www.tilsonfunds.com/BuffettStockMarket.pdf
- The Wit and Wisdom of Warren Buffett, 11/19/12: http://fortune.com/2012/11/19/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-warren-buffett/
If you’re interested in other articles about and speeches by Buffett, see http://www.tilsonfunds.com/buffettmungerspeeches.html and http://www.tilsonfunds.com/motley_berkshire_warren_speeches.php
