Best of 2018: Business Writing

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

Where does this strange empire start or stop?

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. Wasn’t it just the latest chain retailer to lose the price and convenience war with Amazon, Target, and Walmart? This Businessweek story delves deep into the company’s history and filings to determine that financial mismanagement was the actual culprit. 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.

The Putian network of 8,000 facilities, which expanded rapidly with little government oversight, is facing national outrage and scrutiny over a death and fraud allegations.

As climate scientists call for a dramatic transformation of the world’s economy, a new set of deniers is starting to coalesce around something easier.

As treasury secretary, Tim Geithner criticized predatory lenders. Now the private equity firm he leads runs a company that mails high-rate loans to risky customers.

Thanks to Act 22, the 51st state has become a playground for crazy-rich Americans looking to save money—so long as they're okay cutting ties to the mainland.

In the strange universe of Amazon Kindle Unlimited, self-published romance authors collaborate and compete to game Amazon’s algorithm by any number of means. Trademark trolling of words like “cocky” is just the beginning: there are private chat groups, ebook exploits, and conspiracies to seed hyperspecific trends like “Navy SEALs” and “mountain men.”

She moved to Flushing, Queens, with dreams of success and citizenship. Now she was crumpled outside a massage parlor on 40th Road, her blood pooling on the pavement she had so often worked.

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. The piece succeeds particularly, I think, because it’s personal and thickly informational. Indeed, I think it augments Matthew Desmond’s outstanding work on this problem in the book, Evicted , adding a wrenching memoiristic element.

Ronan Farrow reports: Six women accuse the C.E.O. of harassment and intimidation, and dozens more describe abuse at his company.

Inside the growth of the most controversial brand in the wellness industry.

Despite tech executives’ insistence that their industry is incompatible with unions, labor organizing among scientists is common enough. Take the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, a union that represents more than 22,650 professionals, or the faculty and graduate-student unions that represent many white-collar professionals, many of whom go on to work in tech. Add the Alliance@IBM, a union of dues-paying IBM employees that existed from 1999 to 2016; WashTech, formed by contract workers at Microsoft; the union-like Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which boasts a worldwide membership of more than 423,000, mostly made up of electrical engineers; and the Programmer’s Guild, which “advances the interests of technical and professional workers” in IT.

A supply chain in the Carolinas creates American factory jobs, but other companies haven’t followed suit.