Leadership Spotlight

Making News
By Sharon L.Crenson

Wharton alumni trade business careers for headlines and bylines.

David A. Vise, W'82, WG'83, must hold the record for fastest return on his Wharton education. The summer after his freshman year, he parlayed his classroom studies and two semesters worth of reading The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer business sections into an internship at The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville. It came with an astonishing amount of responsibility.

Up until then, The Tennessean's business coverage was limited to one page in the Sunday paper. But the city was headed for a boom. Its population grew from 455,651 in 1980 to 488,374 in 1990 and 569,891 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census.

Vise, still in his late teens, convinced The Tennessean's top editor that readers were ripe for the breadth and depth of a full-fledged business section. "He looked at me and said, 'We're going to start it a week from Sunday, and you are the staff,'" Vise recalls. "Suddenly, I'm 19 years old, and I'm sitting down with CEOs and CFOs."

Vise, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with The Washington Post, is among a number of people in the media industry whose resumes include degrees from Wharton. Others include Bill Keller, AMP'00, executive editor of The New York Times; Margaret Popper, WG'89, business writer for Bloomberg News; Mort Zuckerman, WG'61, owner of U.S. News & World Report; John Daniszewski, W'79, an international reporter for the Los Angeles Times; and Cenk Uygur, W'92, host of the nationally syndicated radio show "The Young Turks." Following are the stories of Vise, Uygur, Daniszewski, and Popper, whose vastly different career paths all began with a Wharton business education.

Vise, W'82, WG'83

Cenk Uygur, W'92, Couldn't Stand Finance, Couldn't Get Enough of Controversy

John Daniszewski, W'79, Reporting from Baghdad

Margaret Popper, WG'89: Balance is key