Longreads Best of 2014: Business Writing

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories.

我们要求一些作家和编辑在特定类别中选择一些他们今年最喜欢的故事。

Here, the best in business writing.

这里是最好的商务写作。

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Max Chafkin

马克斯·查夫金

Writer focusing on business and technology.

专注于商业和技术的作家。

## Schooled (Dale Russakoff, New Yorker)

## 受过教育（Dale Russakoff，纽约客）

This piece explores the failed attempt by Mark Zuckerberg and Corey Booker, among others, to fix Newark’s schools—and in doing so makes clear just how hard education reform is.

本文探讨了马克·扎克伯格和科里·布克等人修复纽瓦克学校的失败尝试，并在此过程中明确了教育改革有多么困难。

Most shockingly, it exposes the huge sums of money spent by the city and its supporters on education consultants who managed to extract huge fees without, apparently, doing a whole lot.

最令人震惊的是，它揭露了该市及其支持者在教育顾问上花费的巨额资金，这些顾问显然没有做太多事情就设法收取巨额费用。

It’s pretty hard to make a dense story about education reform read well, but Russakoff amazingly manages it, while managing to be fair and incisive.

要让一个关于教育改革的密集故事读起来相当困难，但鲁萨科夫令人惊讶地做到了这一点，同时做到了公平和深刻。

## The Fall of the Sleaze King (Susan Berfield, Bloomberg Businessweek)

## 肮脏之王的陨落（Susan Berfield，彭博商业周刊）

Part-profile, part-dishy tick-tock, Berfield follows American Apparel founder Dov Charney as he scrambles to save his company from bankruptcy and to save his own job.

贝菲尔德一半是个人资料，一半是滴答作响，他跟随美国服装公司创始人多夫·查尼 (Dov Charney) 努力挽救自己的公司免于破产，并保住自己的工作。

The piece effectively evaluates American Apparel’s idiosyncratic place in our economy and culture—it is at once sleazy, but also, because of its commitment to American manufacturing, totally wholesome—and also captures one of the great characters in American business.

这篇文章有效地评估了 American Apparel 在我们经济和文化中的特殊地位——它既低俗，又由于其对美国制造业的承诺而完全健康——并且还抓住了美国商界的伟大人物之一。

You read her piece and think, “Big business can’t really be this nutty, can it?”

你读完她的文章后会想：“大企业不可能真的这么疯狂，不是吗？”

## The Visible Man (J.J.

## 看得见的人 (J.J.

McCorvey, Fast Company)

麦考维（《快公司》）

I’m on contract at Fast Company and so I’m may be biased, but this piece represents, in my mind, the best of what a business profile can be.

我是 Fast Company 的合同工，所以我可能有偏见，但在我看来，这篇文章代表了最好的商业简介。

McCorvey gives us an portrait of Tristan Walker, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who happens to be black, and weaves in critique of racism in Silicon Valley and by extension racism in American society.

麦考维为我们描绘了特里斯坦·沃克（Tristan Walker）的形象，他是一位恰好是黑人的硅谷企业家，并对硅谷的种族主义以及美国社会的种族主义进行了批评。

A lot of folks have tried to get at Silicon Valley’s diversity problem (including me).

很多人都试图解决硅谷的多元化问题（包括我）。

This is the best take I’ve read yet; it’s intimate and personal and important.

这是我读过的最好的一篇；这是亲密的、个人的、重要的。

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Burt Helm

伯特·赫尔姆

Senior contributing writer for Inc. magazine and co-host of The Rewrite, a podcast about long-form journalism.

《Inc.》杂志的高级特约撰稿人，也是有关长篇新闻的播客 The Rewrite 的联合主持人。

## The Empire Reboots (Bethany McLean, Vanity Fair)

## 帝国重启（贝瑟尼·麦克莱恩，《名利场》）

How could a company that makes $23 billion in a year be in danger?

一家年盈利 230 亿美元的公司怎么会陷入危险呢？

Bethany McLean explains how in “The Empire Reboots,” a clear-eyed analysis of Microsoft that appeared in Vanity Fair’s November issue.

贝瑟尼·麦克莱恩 (Bethany McLean) 在《名利场》11 月号上对微软进行的清晰分析《帝国重启》中解释了这一点。

I loved how this story paired a sophisticated explanation of Microsoft’s business with in-depth reporting about the personal interplay among Bill Gates, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and newly appointed chief Satya Nadella.

我喜欢这个故事，它对微软业务的复杂解释与对比尔·盖茨、前首席执行官史蒂夫·鲍尔默和新任命的首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉之间个人相互作用的深入报道相结合。

Like most of my favorite business writing, the piece became a relationship story.

就像我最喜欢的大多数商业写作一样，这篇文章变成了一个关系故事。

McLean shows how the falling out between lifelong friends Gates and Ballmer has influenced Microsoft’s strategy and its decision to appoint Nadella.

麦克莱恩展示了盖茨和鲍尔默之间的终生好友的争吵如何影响了微软的战略及其任命纳德拉的决定。

As a result, I left the story feeling like I had an insider’s knowledge of the tech giant and its leadership, and I’m now fascinated to see what they try next.

结果，我在看完这个故事后感觉自己对这家科技巨头及其领导层有了内部了解，现在我很着迷于看看他们接下来会尝试什么。

## The Dumbest Person in Your Building is Passing Out Keys to Your Front Door!

## 你大楼里最愚蠢的人正在给你前门钥匙！

(Jessica Pressler, New York Magazine)

（杰西卡·普莱斯勒，纽约杂志）

Jessica Pressler’s New York Magazine story, “The Dumbest Person in Your Building is Passing Out Keys to Your Front Door!” is one of those features that does so many great things at once that I get jealous just thinking about it.

杰西卡·普莱斯勒 (Jessica Pressler) 的《纽约杂志》故事“你所在大楼里最愚蠢的人正在给你前门发放钥匙！”这是同时做很多伟大事情的功能之一，光是想想我就嫉妒。

It’s a sharp explanation of Airbnb’s business, a vivid portrait of the company’s battle with regulators, an essay about the smug attitudes of startup founders and the rough-and-tumble nature of public life in New York—and it’s all just so damn entertaining!

这是对 Airbnb 业务的尖锐解释，生动地描绘了该公司与监管机构的斗争，是一篇关于初创公司创始人的自以为是的态度以及纽约公共生活的混乱本质的文章——这一切都太有趣了！

Funny sentences like, “If there is one thing we know about the True Spirit of New York, it is that she is a moody bitch,” distracted me from how much ground Pressler was covering, and what rich and detailed reporting underpinned her words.

像这样有趣的句子，“如果我们对纽约的真正精神有所了解，那就是她是一个喜怒无常的婊子”，这分散了我的注意力，让我没有注意到普雷斯勒涵盖了多少内容，也没有注意到她的话背后有哪些丰富而详细的报道。

Then I finished and realized I had a whole new appreciation for Airbnb, how its founders think, and how opposed interests battle it out in New York City.

读完后，我意识到我对 Airbnb 有了全新的认识，了解它的创始人是如何思考的，以及纽约市对立的利益集团是如何展开斗争的。

Really great stuff.

真的很棒的东西。

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Longreads Editor’s Pick (Mark Armstrong)

长读编辑精选（马克·阿姆斯特朗）

## No Exit (Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Wired)

## 没有出口（吉迪恩·刘易斯·克劳斯，《连线》）

According to the hundreds of stories published about tech startups in 2014, this was supposed to be the year the bubble popped—if not literally, at least we’d all finally see that Silicon Valley was a sham, that true innovation was dead, and that massive income inequality had turned San Francisco into a homogeneous playground for brogrammers.

根据 2014 年发表的数百篇有关科技初创公司的故事，今年应该是泡沫破灭的一年——即使不是字面意义上的，至少我们最终都会看到硅谷是一个骗局，真正的创新已经死了，巨大的收入不平等已经将旧金山变成了程序员的同质游乐场。

But these were merely recycled caricatures from the last dotcom boom.

但这些只是上一次互联网繁荣时期的循环漫画。

And it was Gideon Lewis-Kraus who finally examined the tech industry with deep reporting, empathy, and a sense of humor.

吉迪恩·刘易斯·克劳斯 (Gideon Lewis-Kraus) 最终以深度报道、同理心和幽默感审视了科技行业。

(“He’d been around long enough to make over a hundred grand a year, but not long enough to know that carbs were bad signaling.”) Rather than seeing startups as something to mock, he sees the psychological toll on young founders who are lured to town with tales of Zuckerbergian riches, then required to maintain unflagging optimism on the road to near-guaranteed failure:

（“他已经工作了足够长的时间，每年能赚到一百多万美元，但还没有足够长的时间知道碳水化合物是不好的信号。”）他并没有将初创公司视为值得嘲笑的东西，而是看到了对年轻创始人的心理伤害，这些创始人被扎克伯格的财富故事引诱到城里，然后被要求在几乎注定失败的道路上保持坚定的乐观态度：

It is, as Nick puts it, “the place where everybody is killing it all the time.” This might seem peculiar, given that the lot of the small-business founder has always been a fragile one.

正如尼克所说，“这里是每个人一直在杀戮的地方。”鉴于小企业创始人的命运一直都很脆弱，这可能看起来很奇怪。

But in recent years the Valley has successfully elaborated the fantasy that entrepreneurship—and, more broadly, creativity—can be systematized.

但近年来，硅谷成功地阐述了创业精神（以及更广泛的创造力）可以系统化的幻想。

Lewis-Kraus follows the money all the way up to the venture capitalists who truly profit from this system, where startups are actually just “doing low-overhead, low-risk R&D for five corporate giants.” That might sound deflating, but really it’s a story that reminds entrepreneurs and would-be founders that they are not alone.

刘易斯-克劳斯（Lewis-Kraus）追踪资金一直到真正从这个系统中获利的风险投资家，在这个系统中，初创公司实际上只是“为五家企业巨头进行低管理、低风险的研发”。这听起来可能令人泄气，但实际上这个故事提醒企业家和未来的创始人，他们并不孤单。

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Longreads Editor’s Pick (Mike Dang)

长读编辑精选（Mike Dang）

## A Toast Story (John Gravois, Pacific Standard)

## 祝酒故事（John Gravois，太平洋标准）

A story about how toast became an artisanal food craze in San Francisco would, under most circumstances, be considered annoying and twee—which is exactly what John Gravois initially thought when he began reporting the origin story of the fancy toast trend for Pacific Standard, where he is an editor.

在大多数情况下，关于吐司如何在旧金山成为手工食品热潮的故事会被认为是烦人和矫揉造作的——这正是约翰·格拉沃斯(John Gravois)在开始为《太平洋标准报》(Pacific Standard)报道花式吐司潮流的起源故事时最初的想法，他是太平洋标准报的编辑。

But then he met Giulietta Carrelli, the 34-year-old proprietor of the Trouble Coffee & Coconut Club, who put toast on her menu long before the $4 version became a symbol of the “shallow, expensive new San Francisco.” Carrelli’s own story about her schizoaffective disorder and how Trouble became “a tool for keeping her alive” shifted this piece into something really stunning.

但后来他遇到了麻烦咖啡和椰子俱乐部 34 岁的老板朱丽叶塔·卡雷利 (Giulietta Carrelli)，早在 4 美元的吐司成为“浅薄、昂贵的新旧金山”的象征之前，她就将吐司列入了自己的菜单。卡雷利自己讲述了她的分裂情感障碍以及“麻烦”如何成为“让她活下去的工具”的故事，这让这篇文章变得非常令人惊叹。

It’s the most surprising story I’ve read all year.

这是我一年中读过的最令人惊讶的故事。