James Ledbetter, a prominent journalist in the US, died at age 60 in his Manhattan apartment, his sister Kathleen Ledbetter Rishel confirmed to me. From the 1990s to the 2000s, Ledbetter took a trenchant view of the culture and business of media through his Press Clips column at The Village Voice and as editor in chief at Inc magazine. He wrote sardonically about everything, from the whiteness of New York’s publishing scene to state tax breaks for corporations owned by billionaires such as Rupert Murdoch.
Ledbetter’s career has been a mashup of journalism and business; he was New York bureau chief for The Industry Standard magazine when it launched around the height of the dot-com boom, and worked for the publication through its spectacular collapse during the dot-com bust, chronicling its rise and fall in his book Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard (2002). He has written about business for Time magazine, Fortune, and Slate’s business spinoff The Big Money, before focusing on financial technology as the founder of a successful weekly Substack newsletter called FIN, launched just last year.
In addition to his considerable professional success, Ledbetter speaks and writes extensively; he has written two books and edited a book of articles by Karl Marx; his careers included speechwriting and senior positions at media and consulting businesses managing editorial content. He leaves behind a body of thoughtfulness about media reporting and analysis, and a record of innovation.
Source: The New York Times
