Longreads Best of 2018: Business Writing

Max AbelsonA reporter on Wall Street for Bloomberg News, where his work often goes in Businessweek.

马克斯·阿贝尔森（Max Abelson）是彭博新闻社的华尔街记者，他的作品经常出现在《商业周刊》上。

His stories were included in Columbia University Press’ Best Business Writing anthologies in 2015 and 2013.

他的故事曾于 2015 年和 2013 年入选哥伦比亚大学出版社最佳商业写作选集。

## Sign Here to Lose Everything (Zeke Faux and Zach Mider, Bloomberg News and Businessweek)

## 在这里签名会失去一切（Zeke Faux 和 Zach Mider，彭博新闻和商业周刊）

Good investigative journalism can leave you with that curdled taste of outrage in your mouth, but only great journalism can introduce the world to a whole new kind of loan sharking.

优秀的调查性新闻报道会让你嘴里留下那种凝结的愤怒味道，但只有伟大的新闻报道才能向世界介绍一种全新的高利贷行为。

And it takes something really splendid to jump from a millionaire city marshal to a gangster named Jimmy Dimps, a Maltese Shih Tzu named Coco, a town called Canandaigua, a drug smuggler named Braun, actual piles of cash, bloody vomit, and 30,000 court cases.

从一个百万富翁的城市元帅跳到一个叫吉米·迪普斯的黑帮、一个叫科科的马耳他西施犬、一个叫卡南代瓜的小镇、一个叫布劳恩的毒品走私犯、大量的现金、血腥呕吐物和三万个法庭案件，这需要一些非常出色的东西。

Faux and Mider’s work is the best I’ve ever read on predatory lending.

福克斯和米德的著作是我读过的关于掠夺性贷款的最好著作。

## A Business With No End (Jenny Odell, The New York Times)

## 永无止境的生意（Jenny Odell，《纽约时报》）

My favorite story on commerce of the year has more in common with the dreaminess of the nuclear sequences from Twin Peaks: The Return than the everyday stock charts on CNBC.

我今年最喜欢的商业故事与《双峰：回归》中核序列的梦幻有更多共同点，而不是 CNBC 上的日常股票图表。

In one sense it’s a story about absolutely nothing, if you consider that the news peg is basically some packages that started arriving at someone’s house one day.

从某种意义上说，如果你认为新闻挂钩基本上是一些有一天开始到达某人家的包裹，那么这绝对是一个毫无意义的故事。

But it’s also a story about everything — Christianity, con artists, bookstores, the Internet, real estate, obsession, startups, copyrights, maps, and moisturizer.

但这也是一个关于一切的故事——基督教、骗子、书店、互联网、房地产、痴迷、初创公司、版权、地图和保湿霜。

I was very sorry when it was over.

结束后我感到非常抱歉。

Elizabeth WoykeSenior business editor, MIT Technology Review

Elizabeth Woyke《麻省理工科技评论》高级商业编辑

## Tears ‘R’ Us: The World’s Biggest Toy Store Didn’t Have to Die (Susan Berfield, Eliza Ronalds-Hannon, Matthew Townsend, and Lauren Coleman-Lochner, Bloomberg Businessweek)

## 泪水反斗城：世界上最大的玩具店不必消亡（Susan Berfield、Eliza Ronalds-Hannon、Matthew Townsend 和 Lauren Coleman-Lochner，彭博商业周刊）

It’s easy to assume that the decline of Toys “R” Us, which closed all its stores in the US and UK earlier this year, was inevitable.

人们很容易认为玩具“反”斗城的衰落是不可避免的，该公司今年早些时候关闭了其在美国和英国的所有商店。

Wasn’t it just the latest chain retailer to lose the price and convenience war with Amazon, Target, and Walmart?

这难道不是最新一家在与亚马逊、塔吉特和沃尔玛的价格和便利战中失败的连锁零售商吗？

This Businessweek story delves deep into the company’s history and filings to determine that financial mismanagement was the actual culprit.

《商业周刊》的这篇报道深入研究了该公司的历史和文件，以确定财务管理不善是真正的罪魁祸首。

The reporting is dense, but accessible, and explains exactly how debt — both the amount Toys “R” Us borrowed and the way it was structured – triggered the demise of this iconic company.

这份报告内容详尽，但易于理解，并准确解释了债务（包括玩具反斗城的借款金额及其结构方式）如何引发了这家标志性公司的灭亡。

Prashant RaoGlobal editor, The Atlantic

Prashant Rao 《大西洋月刊》全球编辑

## Scandals Catch Up to Private Chinese Hospitals, After Fortunes Are Made (Sui-Lee Wee, The New York Times)

## 中国私立医院发财后丑闻接踵而至（Sui-Lee Wee，《纽约时报》）

When we think of China, I suspect many people see a behemoth, ruled by a party that is able to do largely what it wants domestically.

当我们想到中国时，我怀疑很多人都会看到一个庞然大物，由一个能够在国内为所欲为的政党统治。

But as with all things (and perhaps more so in the case of China), the reality is far more complex, and Sui-Lee Wee’s stories on the disorder and problems with China’s healthcare system — from the inaccessibility of prescription drugs, to the crushing financial distress caused by health scares — offer evidence of that.

但与所有事情一样（对于中国来说可能更是如此），现实要复杂得多，黄瑞丽关于中国医疗保健系统混乱和问题的故事——从难以获得处方药，到健康恐慌造成的严重财务困境——提供了证据。

It has been first-class journalism, illuminating a complex subject with nuance and care.

这是一流的新闻报道，以细致入微和细心的方式阐述了一个复杂的主题。

Livia GershonBusiness and economics columnist at Longreads.

Livia Gershon Longreads 的商业和经济专栏作家。

Contributor to the Guardian, the Boston Globe, HuffPost, Aeon, and more.

为《卫报》、《波士顿环球报》、《赫芬顿邮报》、《Aeon》等撰稿。

## Denial by a Different Name (Kate Aronoff, The Intercept)

## 用不同的名字拒绝（凯特·阿罗诺夫，拦截）

If U.S. liberals are looking for someone to blame for inaction on climate change, we have an obvious, easy target: the science-deniers epitomized by our current president.

如果美国自由主义者正在寻找对气候变化不作为的责任人，那么我们有一个明显而简单的目标：以我们现任总统为代表的科学否认者。

Aronoff undercuts that simple answer by traveling to Germany, where climate change deniers are marginalized but proposals to confront the problem are still radically inadequate.

阿罗诺夫前往德国削弱了这个简单的答案，在德国，气候变化否认者被边缘化，但解决这一问题的建议仍然远远不够。

While politicians remain mired in debates over whether to do anything, companies like ExxonMobil are two steps ahead, funding research on technocratic “solutions” that would mostly protect their bottom lines.

尽管政客们仍深陷是否采取行动的争论，但埃克森美孚等公司却领先了两步，资助了技术官僚“解决方案”的研究，这些解决方案在很大程度上可以保护他们的底线。

## ‘A way of monetizing poor people’: How private equity firms make money offering loans to cash-strapped Americans (Peter Whoriskey, The Washington Post)

##“穷人货币化的一种方式”：私募股权公司如何通过向现金短缺的美国人提供贷款来赚钱（Peter Whoriskey，《华盛顿邮报》）

Parables of economic class in the financial system don’t get much clearer than this.

金融体系中经济阶层的寓言没有比这更清楚的了。

Whoriskey found that a company owned by private equity firm Warburg Pincus occupies a “fertile niche” in the U.S. economy, mass-mailing checks to strangers with the understanding that some are desperate enough to cash them.

Whoriskey 发现，私募股权公司华平投资集团 (Warburg Pincus) 旗下的一家公司在美国经济中占据了“肥沃的利基市场”，该公司向陌生人大量邮寄支票，因为他们知道有些人迫切希望兑现支票。

The story highlights interest rates as high as 36 percent and fine print that forces the borrowers to pay the companies’ legal costs if they go to court for nonpayment.

该故事强调了高达 36% 的利率和细则，如果借款人因不还款而向法庭提起诉讼，则迫使借款人支付公司的法律费用。

The punchline, though, is the identity of Warburg Pincus’s president: Timothy Geithner, who had condemned predatory lenders during his stint as Obama’s treasury secretary.

不过，最有趣的是华平投资集团总裁的身份：蒂莫西·盖特纳(Timothy Geithner)，他在担任奥巴马财政部长期间曾谴责掠夺性贷款机构。

Kevin NguyenFeatures editor, The Verge

Kevin Nguyen专题编辑，The Verge

## Puerto (Very) Rico: The Newest Haven for the Super Rich (Jesse Barron, GQ)

## 波多黎各：超级富豪的最新避风港（Jesse Barron，GQ）

Sometimes you just have to read a thing that makes you furious — not at the writer or the reporting (both of which, in this case, are fantastic), but at all the rich asshole subjects that inhabit it.

有时你只需要读一些让你愤怒的东西——不是针对作者或报道（在这种情况下，两者都很棒），而是针对其中存在的所有丰富的混蛋主题。

And Jesse Barron’s dispatch from the nouveau riche tax haven has rich assholes in spades, and they are a bizarre bunch.

杰西·巴伦（Jesse Barron）从暴发户避税天堂发来的消息中确实有一些富有的混蛋，而且他们是一群奇怪的人。

But the piece also reinforced the idea that taxes reinforce the wealth gap, that it encourages a kind of colonialism.

但这篇文章也强化了这样一种观点，即税收加剧了贫富差距，鼓励了某种殖民主义。

I mean, tattoo this line on my body: “Government is a business, and its most important customers are the rich.” Or maybe I should get a tattoo of an iguana, because (without spoiling anything) the very last section is a total killer.

我的意思是，把这句话纹在我身上：“政府是一个企业，它最重要的客户是富人。”或者也许我应该纹一个鬣蜥，因为（在不破坏任何东西的情况下）最后一部分是一个彻底的杀手。

## Bad Romance (Sarah Jeong, The Verge)

## 糟糕的浪漫（Sarah Jeong，The Verge）

Jeong’s story is about a lot of things: group chats, scams, friends who are no longer friends, trademark law, jpegs of sexy firefighters.

郑的故事涉及很多事情：群聊、诈骗、不再是朋友的朋友、商标法、性感消防员的 jpeg。

All of these elements are the sum parts of a bit of high drama within the self-published romance author community called Cockygate.

所有这些元素都是自出版浪漫小说作家社区 Cockygate 中的一部精彩戏剧的总和。

Few people can boil down the nitty gritty of tech as well as Jeong, and even the byzantine systems of Amazon come through clear.

很少有人能像 Jeong 一样概括科技的本质，甚至连亚马逊错综复杂的系统也能说得一清二楚。

But more than anything, “Bad Romance” is the kind of business reporting I love—one that feels low stakes at first and ratchets up as you read on.

但最重要的是，《糟糕的浪漫》是我喜欢的那种商业报道——一开始感觉风险不大，但随着阅读的深入，风险逐渐加大。

And it leaves us with pressing questions: What is a book?

这给我们留下了紧迫的问题：什么是书？

What is fraud?

什么是欺诈？

And are werewolves multicultural?

狼人是多元文化的吗？

To that last question, maybe we’ll find out when Jeong writes a follow up called “Born This Way.”

对于最后一个问题，也许我们会在郑写下一篇名为“生来如此”的后续文章时找到答案。

Alissa QuartExecutive Editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Alissa Quart经济困难报告项目执行编辑。

Author of five books including Squeezed, Branded, and the poetry book, Monetized.

着有五本书，包括《Squeezed》、《Branded》和诗集《Monetized》。

She writes The Guardian’s Outclassed column.

她撰写《卫报》的“被淘汰”专栏。

Business stories tend to be portraits of power that are either celebratory or dirt-digging exposes.

商业故事往往是权力的肖像，要么是庆祝性的，要么是揭露真相的。

My sort of business stories are about the black market or illegal professions, and often also about poor people who are ripped off by crooked or corrupt companies and practices.

我的商业故事是关于黑市或非法职业的，也经常是关于被不正当或腐败的公司和做法欺骗的穷人的。

These nontraditional business stories are sometimes also first-person accounts of lower-income or struggling consumers or workers.

这些非传统商业故事有时也是低收入或陷入困境的消费者或工人的第一人称叙述。

These women and men are exploited or ejected from their homes.

这些妇女和男子受到剥削或被赶出家园。

They are unfairly arrested or fined.

他们被不公平地逮捕或罚款。

Occasionally, they overcome the systemic injustice against them, or at least unveil it.

有时，他们会克服针对他们的系统性不公正现象，或者至少揭露它。

Often, they don’t.

通常情况下，他们不会。

## The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail (Dan Barry and Jeffrey E.

## Jane Doe 马尾辫的案例（Dan Barry 和 Jeffrey E.

Singer, The New York Times)

歌手，纽约时报）

This is my hands-down favorite business story of the year.

这是我今年最喜欢的商业故事。

It is at once a murder mystery, a thickly naturalistic portrait of an immigrant population, and the story of a neighborhood and its underground subculture.

它既是一个谋杀之谜，也是对移民人口的厚重自然主义描绘，也是一个社区及其地下亚文化的故事。

It makes excellent use of multimedia and found imagery.

它很好地利用了多媒体和图像。

It is a devastating profile of one woman’s life, and, finally, an argument for the decriminalization of prostitution.

这是对一名妇女生活的毁灭性描述，最后也是对卖淫合法化的争论。

This piece was original, well-reported, visual, well-told, and remarkable for its implicit political conclusions.

这篇文章是原创的、报道良好、视觉化、讲述得好，并且因其隐含的政治结论而引人注目。

## Evictionland (Joe Williams, Curbed)

## Evictionland（乔·威廉姆斯，Curbed）

This autobiographical, EHRP-supported story is both a reported story of people being uprooted from their homes due to gentrification and the reporter Joe Williams’ own eviction.

这部由 EHRP 支持的自传体故事既是报道人们因中产阶级化而背井离乡的故事，也是记者乔·威廉姆斯 (Joe Williams) 自己被驱逐的故事。

The piece succeeds particularly, I think, because it’s personal and thickly informational.

我认为这篇文章特别成功，因为它是个人化的且信息丰富。

Indeed, I think it augments Matthew Desmond’s outstanding work on this problem in the book, Evicted, adding a wrenching memoiristic element.

事实上，我认为它增强了马修·德斯蒙德（Matthew Desmond）在《驱逐》一书中关于这个问题的杰出工作，增加了令人痛苦的回忆录元素。

Sui-Lee WeeCorrespondent for The New York Times in the Beijing bureau covering business in China, Chinese consumers, health care, and the intersection of demographics and the economy.

Sui-Lee Wee 《纽约时报》驻北京分社通讯员，报道中国商业、中国消费者、医疗保健以及人口统计与经济的交叉点。

## Les Moonves and CBS Face Allegations of Sexual Misconduct (Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker)

## Les Moonves 和 CBS 面临性行为不端指控（Ronan Farrow，《纽约客》）

It’s hard not to think about impactful journalism without coming up with Ronan Farrow’s name.

如果不提到罗南·法罗的名字，很难不去思考有影响力的新闻业。

We’re still seeing the reverberations of his August piece on CBS’s Les Moonves and his pattern of sexual misconduct.

我们仍然看到他八月份在哥伦比亚广播公司的《Les Moonves》上发表的文章的影响以及他的不当性行为模式。

The piece, and a follow-up story in September, was well-reported, and the stories from the women were compelling.

这篇文章以及九月的后续故事得到了广泛报道，而这些女性的故事也很引人注目。

More importantly, Mr. Farrow showed how having a sexual harasser at the top of a company cascaded down into the lower ranks, enabling the behavior of other executives.

更重要的是，法罗展示了公司高层的性骚扰者如何向下级蔓延，从而导致其他高管的行为。

Mr. Farrow has been relentless in speaking truth to power, and all of his stories have been must-reads.

法罗先生一直坚持不懈地向权力讲真话，他的所有故事都是必读的。

## How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million (Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times)

## Goop 的仇恨者如何让格温妮丝·帕特洛 (Gwyneth Paltrow) 的公司价值 2.5 亿美元（Taffy Brodesser-Akner，《纽约时报》）

All good business stories are about people, and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s piece on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop empire followed this maxim to a T.

所有优秀的商业故事都与人有关，Taffy Brodesser-Akner 关于格温妮丝·帕特洛 (Gwyneth Paltrow) 的 Goop 帝国的文章充分遵循了这一格言。

Many stories on Ms. Paltrow caricature her, but Ms. Brodesser-Akner’s article gave me new insights into Ms. Paltrow and the challenges facing her business.

许多关于帕特洛女士的故事都对她进行了讽刺，但布罗德瑟-阿克纳女士的文章让我对帕特洛女士及其业务面临的挑战有了新的认识。

Ms. Brodesser-Akner’s eye for detail is amazing, and the piece was written with so much finesse.

布罗德瑟-阿克纳女士对细节的洞察力令人惊叹，这篇文章写得非常巧妙。

This line, in particular, is seared in my memory: “She wore a white shirred-neck dress by Tibi that would be advertised in the Goop newsletter the next week as she stood in front of her stove, steaming clams and grilling bread in her devastating kitchen.

这句话在我的记忆中尤其深刻：“当她站在炉子前，在她那破烂不堪的厨房里蒸蛤蜊和烤面包时，她穿着一件 Tibi 的白色褶皱领连衣裙，这件衣服将在下周的 Goop 时事通讯上刊登广告。

She wore no apron and cooked the meal herself right in front of me.

她没有穿围裙，在我面前亲自做饭。

She wore no apron and cooked it herself right in front of me and drank a whiskey on the rocks.” As with all great stories, the quotes just sang.

她没有穿围裙，就在我面前亲自做饭，还喝了一杯加冰块的威士忌。”与所有伟大的故事一样，这些引言只是歌唱。

Ethan ChielFact-checker, Longreads

伊森·奇尔 (Ethan Chiel) 事实核查员，长读

## Code Red (Alex Press, n+1)

## 红色代码（Alex Press，n+1）

Over the past couple years questions of if, when, and how workers at technology companies might unionize have loomed large.

在过去的几年里，科技公司的员工是否、何时以及如何加入工会的问题日益突出。

The nature of these companies (how many people they employ, the wide variety of work those people do, the tech sector’s traditionally anti-union stance) has made those questions complex, to put it lightly.

简单地说，这些公司的性质（他们雇用了多少人、这些人从事的工作种类繁多、科技行业传统上的反工会立场）使这些问题变得复杂。

Alex Press’s reporting on organizing efforts among tech workers did a wonderful job of explaining that complexity, looking at the history of organizing at tech companies, and laying out some of what might be next.

亚历克斯·普莱斯（Alex Press）关于科技工作者组织工作的报道很好地解释了这种复杂性，回顾了科技公司组织的历史，并列出了接下来可能发生的一些事情。

Catherine CusickAudience editor, Longreads

凯瑟琳·库西克（Catherine Cusick）长读读者编辑

## American Manufacturing Doesn’t Have to Die (Meredith Haggerty, Racked)

## 美国制造业不必消亡（Meredith Haggerty，Racked）

Haggerty turns what could have been yet another day in the life of the average American CEO into a counterintuitive meditation on what it means — what it costs, and what it takes — for a product to be Made in America.

哈格蒂将普通美国首席执行官生活中的又一天变成了对“美国制造”意味着什么——它的成本和需要什么——的反直觉思考。

She starts with all the reasons why a story like this would be boring to read, then debunks each assumption to reveal meaningful questions about what exactly we want to make in this country, who we want doing the making, and what sort of job security we want coming back home.

她首先解释了为什么这样的故事读起来很无聊，然后揭穿了每一个假设，揭示了一些有意义的问题，比如我们到底想在这个国家做什么，我们想让谁来做什么，以及我们想回国获得什么样的工作保障。

She pits the promises of benevolent billionaires, conscious capitalism, and ethical consumerism against the betrayals of automation, income inequality, and the legacies of slavery.

她将仁慈的亿万富翁、有意识的资本主义和道德消费主义的承诺与自动化、收入不平等和奴隶制遗产的背叛进行了比较。

It’s a story, ultimately, “about doing something instead of doing nothing because doing nothing is easier.” Individual consumers’ personal choices may not scale, but integrity and loyalty tend not to scale, either.

归根结底，这是一个“关于做某事而不是无所事事，因为什么都不做更容易”的故事。个体消费者的个人选择可能不会扩大规模，但诚信和忠诚度也往往不会扩大规模。

And if the human beings behind business decisions have their flaws, the ideal of growth does, too.

如果商业决策背后的人有缺陷，那么增长的理想也有缺陷。