| | October 12, 2017 | Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The Boy Scouts are no longer a boys’ club, even more Harvey Weinstein news, and we wrap up the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Have a lovely Thursday. |
| | •MPWs get political.Yesterday was the last—but certainly not the least potent—day of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. The half-day session was packed with Washington power players from across the political spectrum, and discussions touched on everything from gun control to immigration to "fake news." A few highlights: | Kellyanne Conway on the role of the media: | "I don't utter [the term] ‘fake news,'" the counselor to the president told the MPWs, adding that her concern is instead with "incomplete coverage" of Donald Trump. (Her Twitter feed, however, reveals she has used the term at least once.) She said that "major measures" he's helped put into law—legislation that serves veterans and protects whistleblowers, for instance—don't get the media attention they deserve. "We need a full and free press in our nation," she said, minutes after the president called for revoking NBC's license. | | Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) on the latest gun legislation: | A bipartisan bill banning bump stocks—devices that make weapons fire more rapidly—was introduced in Congress yesterday, but Congresswoman Dingell doesn't think the accessories will be banned anytime soon. "It's very hard to get anything through," she told the MPW audience yesterday. "People have a way with the legislative process of adding other things to the bump stock legislation, which will make it toxic and will get it killed in the Senate." | Sally Yates on her 10-day tenure as acting AG: | The former acting attorney general told the MPW audience the inside story of her 10 days in office—a tenure that ended when she was fired by Trump for instructing the Justice Department not to enforce his (first) ban on travelers from several majority Muslim countries. One of her first jobs, she said, was to notify the White House that Michael Flynn, then the president's national security advisor, could be compromised because of his contact with the Russians. "There's no playbook for this," said Yates."There's not really a script for how you handle it." | More news from the Summit below... | |
. | | | . | |
|
| | • A silver lining? Gretchen Carlson told the MPW audience that while the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein have not come as a shock, she has been "buoyed" by the number of women—both household names and not—who have made public accusations against the film mogul. "If I had anything to do with those women feeling empowered to have a voice, my life has had so much purpose," the former Fox News anchor said. Her own sexual harassment suit against Roger Ailes last summer sparked a flurry of similar suits and ultimately led to the Fox News chairman's resignation. Fortune • King on Kaepernick. Billie Jean King—tennis icon, gender warrior, and the subject of the film Battle of the Sexes—says that while she doesn't quite agree with the practice of kneeling during the national anthem, she respects "that he was peaceful," referring to former 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick. Moreover, she told the women in D.C., NFL players are right to point out racial injustice: "People of color still aren't getting a fair shake. They're just not." Fortune •Don't blame us.NBC reporter Katy Tur was one of the earliest news correspondents assigned to Donald Trump's campaign trail—meaning she spent more than 500 days traveling the country with the now-president. She told the Summit that although many blame the media for "electing Trump," he was a force long before he garnered national attention. "He was getting 20,000 people to show up at a rally in August of 2015 at a time when Jeb [Bush] and Marco [Rubio] were getting maybe a couple hundred," Tur recalled. "He got a lot of attention because he was getting a lot of attention." Fortune • Wrestling with new media. While many media and live event companies are struggling, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) just reported record quarterly revenue. How does it do it? Chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon shared the wrestling company's secret: The WWE has structured its "content ecosystem" around the feedback it gets from its fans. "Our audience tells us what they love, what they don't like, and—worst—what they don't care about," she told MPW attendees. Fortune • No such thing as e-commerce. Kirsten Green, founder of VC firm Forerunner Ventures, says she doesn't believe in e-commerce—"We call it commerce," she said, arguing that separating physical stores from digital marketplaces is bad for business. Rebecca Minkoff, founder of her eponymous fashion brand, agreed, adding that it's important to meet customers where they are: "I have to make sure my girl chooses us," she said. Fortune MOVERS AND SHAKERS: President Donald Trump plans to name cybersecurity expert Kirstjen Nielsen as his next secretary of homeland security. | . |
|
| | Nurturing careers and families | A two-career household often makes it challenging for parents to raise children while handling high-powered jobs. But an inclusive culture empowers all individuals to play to their strengths, says Deloitte University Managing Director Heidi Soltis-Berner. | READ MORE |
| . |
|
| | • What's up with Weinstein? And because no Broadsheet this week would be complete without an update on the Harvey Weinstein harassment scandal: • A woman takes the helm. The Helm, a "venture community" that invests exclusively in female entrepreneurs, is launching to the public today. It's not just a matter of taxonomy, co-founder and CEO Lindsey Taylor Wood tells me. She hopes to make VC investing a much more hands-on, inclusive, and social experience, attracting a broader range of investors (i.e. not just white men in tech). The Helm's annual membership fee is $2,500 and the minimum investment is $50,000. Though it will only begin deploying capital next year, it has already raised funds from founders of Airbnb, The Muse, and Katapult. Fortune • No longer a boys' club. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) announced that welcoming girls has been ‘unanimously' approved by the organization's board of directors Monday. It's important to read the fine print in the BSA's plan—not all packs will immediately open their doors to girls. Resistance from the Girl Scouts is expected, based on this scathing letter regarding recruitment of girls that GSA's president wrote to BSA back in August. Fortune • Girl geniuses. This year's recipients of the so-called "genius grant" (formally called the MacArthur Fellowship) have been revealed. Among this year's winners: "Grammy-award winner and the first woman and person of color to win the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, Rhiannon Giddens; 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker; Regina Barzilay, a breast cancer patient who has begun applying machine learning to the field of oncology; and Kate Orff, the first landscape architect to win the award." Fortune • PayPal's progress. PayPal's second diversity report is out and the results show progress for women in leadership, but little change for ethnic minorities, who make up just 8% of the company's U.S. workforce. Fortune Share today's Broadsheet with a friend. Looking for previous Broadsheets? Click here. | . |
|
| | Verizon's Marni Walden on why she's leaving the company Fortune ESPN is terrified of Jemele Hill's honesty on racism New York Times First Latina Fortune 500 CEO: Here's what should be done about DACA Fortune The Last Jedi star Daisy Ridley is Vogue's November cover girl Vogue | . |
|
| | | | | | | This message has been sent to you because you are currently subscribed to The Broadsheet Unsubscribe here
Please read our Privacy Policy, or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://www.fortune.com/privacy
FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.
For Further Communication, Please Contact: FORTUNE Customer Service 3000 University Center Drive Tampa, FL 33612-6408
Advertising Info | Subscribe to Fortune |
|
|