Best Places to Work, WNYC, Bill O’Reilly: Broadsheet for Dec. 5

EVERYONE'S TALKING

• Need a new gig? Every year, Fortune and Great Place to Work partner to create the list of Best Workplaces for Diversity. This year’s list, like past rankings, is dominated by hospitality—Hyatt, Marriott and Kimpton all made the Top 10—as well as supermarket chains (Wegmans, Publix). Given the recent controversy about women in Silicon Valley, the tech companies that made the list are especially notable. Salesforce (No. 4), SAP America (No. 16) and Intuit (No. 21) are some of the highest-ranked. SAS Institute (No. 34) may be particularly interesting to the readers of this newsletter; its workforce is 50% female.

How did the software company manage to reach parity? The company’s CHRO Jenn Mann tells Great Place to Work EVP Kim Peters that it’s thanks to the company’s efforts around retention. For example, when an R&D executive saw that few women were taking leadership roles in product development, the company invited “anyone interested in the topic, particularly technical women, to a focus group that drew 300 attendees.” After learning about what stood in women’s way, the company took action: “Follow-up gatherings eventually led to a six-month training program for high-potential team members that offered insight from women executives and exposure to leadership roles participants might not have considered,” Mann says.

This willingness to explore exactly why women were progressing in their careers differently from men is “evident in all areas of the company’s approach to the workplace,” Peters writes. “Employees review their managers annually. As is fitting for an analytics software business, executives then pore over that data to identify any gaps in training, feedback or other areas that might leave women behind.”

The employee perks don’t hurt either. SAS’s Cary, N.C. campus includes “an expansive athletic complex, a hair salon, a pharmacy, a full-service health clinic with lactation specialists and a work-life center that helps co-workers find eldercare and plan for their kids’ college education.”

Here’s the full top 10:

1. Comcast NBCUniversal
2. Hyatt Hotels
3. Ultimate Software
4. Salesforce
5. Wegmans Food Markets
6. Publix Super Markets
7. Marriott International
8. Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants
9. Texas Health Resources
10. Capital One Financial

For the purposes of this list, “diverse” employees were anyone who identified as a racial/ethnic minority, female, LGBTQ, disabled, or who was born in 1964 or earlier. See the full ranking and methodology here: Fortune

#METOO MOVEMENT

• Moore of the same. In a statement released Monday, the White House said that President Donald Trump endorses Roy Moore for Alabama's open Senate seat. Moore, a Republican former state Supreme Court judge, has been accused of molesting multiple teenage girls while a prosecutor in his 30s. President Trump has been accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Both politicians deny all accusations. The special election in Alabama will be held Dec. 12. New York Times

• Last Underwood standing. Netflix will resume production of the sixth season of House of Cards—the show’s last. Production was suspended in October following sexual assault allegations against star Kevin Spacey. The revised Season 6 will be eight episodes and will not feature Spacey; Robin Wright will lead the show. Variety

• Bernstein v. O'Reilly. Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, one of six women known to have reached settlements after making harassment accusations against former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, is suing both O'Reilly and the network for defamation and breach of contract. Bernstein claims that by saying the allegations against him are untrue, O’Reilly “violated the settlement and portrayed her as a liar and politically motivated extortionist." The TV personality’s lawyer said in a statement that “her lawsuit has absolutely no merit, and Mr. O’Reily will respond aggressively in court.” New York Times

• There’s the real Takeaway. Celebrated radio host John Hockenberry left his WNYC show The Takeaway this August for unspecified reasons. Now, accusations of sexual harassment against the Emmy-winning journalist by at least three women have emerged. Moreover, “co-hosts and producers had been warning [station executives] that Hockenberry bullied colleagues, creating a hostile work environment," WNYC reports. Hockenberry’s statement: “I’ve always had a reputation for being tough, and certainly I’ve been rude, aggressive and impolite. Looking back, my behavior was not always appropriate and I’m sorry.” WNYC

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Leesa Sleep has added Beth Kaplan, former president & COO of Rent the Runway, as the newest member of its board. CBS has named Christiane Amanpour as an interim replacement for Charlie Rose on PBS.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

• No longer Oprah’s OWN. Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Inc. has sold an additional 24.5% of her network OWN to Discovery Communications for $70 million. Winfrey’s Harpo will still hold a 25.5% stake in OWN, which had previously been a 50/50 joint venture with Discovery; the media mogul will stay on as the network’s CEO. Wall Street Journal

• Fighting bias in AI. Bloomberg takes a long look at how AI researchers are working to combat gender and racial bias, a problem that isn’t easy to solve for a variety of reasons. There are legal challenges (certain solutions require treating protected classes differently) and plenty of technological ones (“many AI systems are black boxes; the data goes in and the answer comes out without an explanation for the decision”). Bloomberg

• Brock Turner still afloat. Brock Turner, the “Stanford swimmer” who was found guilty last March of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, is appealing his conviction. He was sentenced to six months in a county jail and three years’ probation—a sentence many believed to be far too lenient since he faced up to 14 years. Turner’s lawyer filed a 172-page brief on his behalf, 60 of which focused on the victim’s level of intoxication. The trial gained national attention after the victim’s statement circulated online. New York Times

• It’s not mutual. The career trajectories of mutual fund managers should theoretically not be affected by bias: their job performance is easy to track since funds’ performance can be measured against a benchmark like the S&P. But bias is—in fact—present in the industry, according to a new study. It found that "women are more likely than men with similar performance to permanently leave fund management and that women advance more slowly than men with the same track records.”  Wall Street Journal

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ON MY RADAR

Netflix exec tells woman the company doesn’t believe Danny Masterson’s rape accusers. Then she said she was one. Huffington Post

The insidious economic impact of sexual harassment Harvard Business Review

Former congresswoman Corrine Brown sentenced to five years in prison in charity slush-fund case Washington Post

SoulCycle is betting high fashion will get you spinning Bloomberg

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