Jack Welch Quits Fortune Magazine Gig

After last Friday's nonfarm payroll report was released, Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), tweeted that the Obama administration had juggled the numbers in an effort to make the U.S. economy look better. The response was fast and furious, including from CNNMoney.com, which has a content-sharing deal with Fortune magazine, for which Welch and his wife write an op-ed article.

Today, Fortune.com published a story citing Welch's record as a destroyer of jobs while at GE. According to the story, GE lost nearly 100,000 jobs while Welch was CEO, although a fairer number may be around 30,000, which does not include those people fired by buyers of the pieces of GE that Welch sold.

In response to CNNMoney's and Fortune's negative coverage of Welch's tweet, the Welches have quit. According to the website:

Following the story, Welch sent an e-mail to Reuters' Steve Adler and Serwer saying that he and his wife Suzy, who have jointly written for Reuters and Fortune in the past, were "terminating our contract" and will no longer be sending our "material to Fortune."

Says Welch at the end of the job-destroyer article, "I've never passed myself off as an employment agency."

Paul Ausick