We recently featured a colorful 1995 profile of former Intel CEO Andy Grove by the legendary Fortune writer Brent Schlender. It was one of many memorable features he wrote during his two decades at the magazine. Today, we showcase another remarkable story by Brent—this time in homage. Brent passed away this month, at the age of 71.
Brent wrote “Steve Jobs and Me: A Journalist Reminisces” quickly after Jobs’ death 14 years ago, in 2011. The essay describes Brent’s 25-year relationship with this historic figure—one that was largely friendly, though Brent observed that he and most others who wrote about Jobs “sooner or later came to realize that we were complicit in the making of a modern myth.”
Brent came to Fortune from the Wall Street Journal in 1989 and got right down to business with a feature about Jobs, who was then at Next, the company he founded after getting kicked out of Apple. Later, in the seven years after Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, Brent wrote four Fortune cover stories plus multiple other articles about Jobs and Apple.
Jobs wasn’t Brent’s only subject; he also had close acquaintances with Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and many of the other leaders who brought the digital revolution to the world. He wrote a knowing analysis of how baseball’s Oakland A’s transformed themselves from worst to first. And Fortune sent Brent to run the Tokyo bureau in the early 1990s, as Japan’s economic magic evaporated.
His relationship with Jobs was uniquely close, in part because they were the same age, and “we shared a strikingly similar taste in books and movies and music,” Brent once recalled. Incredibly, one of Brent’s high school friends almost married Jobs’ sister. While those ties made for strong rapport, Brent maintained a professional and journalistic distance. Jobs didn’t always like what Brent wrote, and said so—but the relationship survived.
Reading Brent’s article today brings back Jobs’ human intensity and brilliance, the traits that place him on any shortlist of all-time great entrepreneurs. For those who have no memory of him—remember, this year’s incoming college students have never known a world without iPhones—it may be a revelation.
As for Brent: He was an exemplary journalist and a wonderful colleague. Both of those qualities come through in this article.
