Randall Lane (journalist)

Randall Lane (born 1968) is an American journalist and author who serves as the chief content officer^[1][2] and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine.^[3][4][5] In 2011, Lane created the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.^[6] Lane is a former editor-at-large for both Newsweek and The Daily Beast.^[7][8][9]

Randall Lane
Speaking at the 2021 World Economic Forum
Born	1968 (age 56–57)
Education	University of Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)	Chief Content Officer and Editor-in-chief, Forbes
Notable credit(s)	Forbes, P.O.V., Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, Daily Beast
Children	2

Early life

While attending Briarcliff High School in 1985, Lane wrote an article for the New York Times detailing his ordeal of getting tickets for a Bruce Springsteen concert. He served as co-editor of his high school's newspaper during this time.^[10]

Career

Lane edited his college newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian at the University of Pennsylvania^[where?] before interning with The Wall Street Journal.^[11] Lane received the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s top non-fiction prize for a 1988 profile he wrote on former Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo.^[12]

After leaving college, he was hired as a fact checker for Forbes, and thereafter was promoted to be a staff writer.^[11][6] In 1995, when he was 27, he was promoted to Washington Bureau Chief,^[11][6] before leaving to edit three publications, P.O.V., Trader Monthly,^[13] and Dealmaker.^[6]

He founded P.O.V. with a Forbes colleague and the publication was considered by AdWeek as its start-up of the year in 1998.^[14]

At Trader Monthly, a bimonthly lifestyle magazine where Lane was the editor-in-chief, Lane created a 30 Under 30 list featuring what his magazine considered the 30 best financial traders at the time.^[13]

2010s

When Lane rejoined Forbes in 2011, he created the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list of up and coming figures in multiple business sectors.^[6][11] He then partnered with Warren Buffett to create the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy, which he and Buffett have co-chaired for more than a decade.^[15]

Lane wrote a book titled The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane.^[16] In the book, Lane laid out similarities of some Wall Street traders and Major League Baseball players in their views on the ethics of cheating.^[17] He interviewed Lenny Dykstra, about his use of steroids while playing with the New York Mets, for the book.^[17] The New York Daily News stated of the book that "Lane does a terrific job ... putting things in context".^[17] In a review for Inc, Jack Covert stated "What Michael Lewis did for ’80s traders in Liar’s Poker, Randall Lane has now done for trader rock stars of The Zeroes."^[18]

Lane was responsible for the reorganization of Forbes' contributor network. The restructure saw it shift from a model where most writers volunteered their time to an all-paid platform with a guaranteed minimum pay.^[19]

2020s

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lane took part in a multi-part virtual innovation summit hosted by the University of Waterloo.^[20][21] In 2020, The New York Times identified him as one of the 922 most powerful people in the United States of America.^[22] Lane won an Emmy award as executive producer of the documentary WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn.^[23]

Personal life

Lane was born in 1968.^[24][25] He is divorced and has two daughters, Sabrina and Chloe.^[24] During the COVID-19 pandemic, he organized and hosted a four-week summer camp for his daughters and their friends, hiring teachers out of work due to the pandemic to instruct them in core subjects.^[24]

Kanye West incident

On September 16, 2020, Lane was doxxed in a Twitter rant by American musician Kanye West. West tweeted a screenshot of a phone number labeled "Randall Forbes" and wrote "if any of my fans want to call a white supremacist... this is the editor of Forbes".^[26] Twitter deleted West's tweet after 30 minutes and suspended his account for violating Twitter's private information policy.^[27] Lane had previously interviewed West about his 2020 presidential ambitions which Forbes published in July 2020.^[28]