Bad Boss

6 STRATEGISE: the path forward

There's nothing worse than finding out that one of your star team members has let you down. That's just what happened in 1998 when Stephen Glass, then considered a journalist superstar, was exposed as a fraud. Turns out most of his stories were either wholly or partially fabricated — eek!

Glass, who was still in his twenties, was a staff writer for one of America's most respected publications, The New Republic, and freelanced for Harper's, Rolling Stone and George. His lies started to unravel in May when The New Republic published ‘Hack Heaven', a story detailing the exploits of a 15-year-old who'd hacked a major software company.

Fearing they'd been scooped, the online Forbes Digital Tool (now Forbes.com) started digging around. They discovered no evidence of the existence of the company described in the article, or of the hacker or the legislation cited.

Glass had gone to extreme lengths to cover his tracks, creating a fake website for the company and business cards for his sources. He even had his brother pose as a company executive.

It is hardly surprising that the story became the subject of a movie, Shattered Glass, released in 2003. In a scene after the fraud has been exposed, Glass (played by Hayden Christensen) asks his editor, Charles ‘Chuck' Lane (played by Peter Sarsgaard), ‘Are you mad at me?' (Oh my god, wouldn't you be?)

His fraud damaged not only himself, but his colleagues and the entire publication. The New Republic eventually ...