When Robert Wagner quit Goldman Sachs in February, many assumed he would join the seemingly endless flow of Wall Street talent seeking hedge fund riches. Not quite. Turns out the 42-year-old is learning to “follow the money” in a slightly different, and far less lucrative, way -- as a journalist.
“I want to write and report,” says Wagner, who led Goldman’s loan financing group to a record year in 2004. The Michigan native enrolled this summer as a part-time student in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Wagner is scratching an itch he’s had since his teenage years, when he served as sports editor for Grosse Pointe South High School’s newspaper, The Tower. He later wrote for the Michigan Daily, the University of Michigan’s student newspaper, while pursuing his undergraduate business degree there.
During his years on the Street, Wagner remained a self-described “media junkie,” scouring several newspapers each day and recording evening news broadcasts to watch when he returned home from long nights at the office. By last November he’d begun thinking seriously enough about leaving the world of leveraged buyouts and loan covenants that he played hooky from work one afternoon to attend an open house at Columbia’s journalism school.
Wagner’s studies have taken him far from Wall Street indeed -- to the streets of Long Island City and Astoria, Queens, where he’s learned the rudiments of beat reporting by covering, among other things, needle-exchange programs, urban agriculture and abortion protesters. He expects to graduate by the end of next year.
He’s not completely ruling out a return to business and perhaps even a future in the, ahem, esteemed world of financial journalism. But his dream career track would be a few years in political reporting followed by a stint as White House press secretary. Having dealt with his fair share of reporters while running Goldman’s loan business, he’s already learned a few tricks of the trade. “I have a good sense of when I am being spun,” he says.
