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A little background on my story about the Global Antitrust Institute and a lesson on the value of good editors and why journalism is expensive. I started getting interested in GAI more than a year ago 1/
I was rooting around on the GAI website when I noticed that was hosting an econ institute for competition officials that week in Southern California. I asked @puiwingtam if I could go down there to see if I see anything. There was no guarantee I'd come back with anything 2/
There was a flight to LA, a night (and a delicious breakfast) in an expensive hotel. She said yes without a moment of hesitation. At the conference, I saw firsthand how the officials were being wined and dined and found out who was there and what they were studying. 3/
The next question is who was paying for all this. A public university? So we put in a FOIA request. It would cost $1500 to get all the documents I wanted. Narrowed the scope and it was still $850. Again, there was no guarantee that there would be anything in those docs. 4/
I sheepishly asked @ellenjpollock1 if I could expense $850 for the FOIA. I warned her that it might come up empty. Without any hesitation, she told me to do it. The documents laid out the donors, the relationships with regulators. 5/
Not to mention, we had @leticiadlcasado pressing officials in Brazil to answer our questions. Here is our final product, a testament to the time and financial commitment of the Times to do important journalism. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/technology/global-antitrust-institute-google-amazon-qualcomm.html
And of course, none of this would have been possible without my rabbi @jimkerstetter who noodled the idea with me and saw it through to the final edit!
