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 TheStreet.com debuted in November 1996, making a bet on the dual phenomena of the Internet as a mass market medium and the burgeoning bull market in stocks. In its early days, TheStreet.com was known for its snappy (even snarky) writing and irreverent style.
As a pioneer in a new medium, TheStreet.com gave its reporters wide berth to cover
stories other publications ignored as it sought to capture the Zeitgeist of those often tumultuous times.
Clearly, the major story of that era was the explosive growth of the stock market, particularly tech stocks, as examined in the 1999 Mad Dash to Nasdaq series. The staff also came together to compile
100 Events That Shaped a Century at the end of the millennium.
On a more sobering note, staff also convened to cover the implosion of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, including:
But the roots of TheStreet.com's success -- and a key reason it survived the bursting of the dot.com bubble -- was its commitment to top-quality investigative journalism and its determination to take on the entrenched interests on Wall Street, without fear or favor. These included Dave Kansas' expose of Gene Marcial's Inside Wall Street column in Business Week and Dan Colarusso's undressing of 1990s investment guru Wade Cook.
Underscoring the staff's efforts was (and is) a dedication to empowering the individual investor, as represented in the stories below.
The mantra of empowering individuals was embodied in the Cracking the Books series of 1998 and 1999, which were based on a simple premise that became glaringly obvious with the subsequent scandals at Enron, Worldcom et al: "When it comes to investing, everything starts and ends with accounting. Within the ledgers lie stories revealing both risk and opportunity for investors. You must understand the underlying fundamentals, current investing fashion to the contrary."
The packages excelled in both examining broad issues such as the failures of the Financial Accounting Standards Board as well as company-specific issues such as Peter Eavis' examination of Televisa's books.
Accounting issues at individual companies were also at the heart of much of Herb Greenberg's "Herb on TheStreet" columns in that era. Then, as now, Herb took a contrarian stance and sought to separate the pretenders from the truly worthwhile investments, often raising the ire of the very readers he aimed to serve. Two prime example from those years include his coverage of Lernout & Hauspie and Iomega .
As with Herb's coverage of (among others) Iomega, Cory Johnson went against the crowd with his expose of Diversinet. At the time, the Toronto-based seller of digital certificate technology was an Internet highflyer. But Johnson saw beyond the hype of the company's much touted relationship with Research in Motion to reveal "the sale of RIM devices hasn't brought Diversinet a dime -- let alone a loonie -- in reported revenue thus far."
The Internet boom provided plenty of fodder for TheStreet.com's reporters. Few, if any, covered the sector (and Silicon Valley proper) better than Adam Lashinsky, whose reporting on WebVan's roadshow prompted an SEC investigation and ultimately forced the online grocery to postpone its initial public offering.
But Internet and technology companies weren't the only ones in TSC's sights. Alex Berenson's five-part series from 1999, Disney's Dilemma, was far out in front of the mainstream media in understanding and examining problems in the House of Mouse. As described in the introduction: "The icon of American culture, which in its heyday regularly steamrolled Wall Street's expectations as it churned out top-notch entertainment, is struggling to redefine itself as an evolving society threatens to make its core business less relevant."
Finally, Jesse Eisinger’s story about black market Viagra in Mexico, Going South of the Border In Search of the Blue High, epitomized TheStreet.com’s marketing campaign of the era: Insightful, Irreverent and Opinionated as Hell.
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