James Ledbetter, Former Editor-in-Chief of Inc., Dies at 60

James Ledbetter, former editor-in-chief of Inc. magazine, died on October 28 at the age of 60. The cause of death was a heart attack. A widely respected and admired journalist, Jim was an accomplished reporter even before graduating from college. During his senior year at Yale, in 1985, he wrote a sprawling cover story for the student magazine The New Journal about the recently formed right-wing group Accuracy in Academia (AIA), whose mission was to identity leftist professors and “weed out 10,000 known Marxists” from U.S. campuses. The hard-hitting expose came into being after the AIA president mistook an inquiring phone call from Jim as a request to join the group and be its Yale contact. 

“For the next four months, I would be a liberal infiltrator of the New Right,” Jim wrote in the nearly 4,000-word report, adding, “I was a spy for Accuracy in Academia”—except he wasn’t.

The kind of story many journalists would wait a lifetime for, it “arrived beautifully written and painstakingly reported and was incredibly gutsy for a college journalist—or any journalist,” says Richard Bradley, a classmate at Yale and the former editor-in-chief of Worth magazine. “It had a big impact.”

Part of that impact was helping Jim land a job at The Village Voice in 1990 as the paper’s “Press Clips” columnist. That same year, he wrote the first “Off the Record” column for The New York Observer, which in 1998 described him as “the city’s most prominent leftist media critic.” In his final column for the Voice, Jim called the compliment “awfully nice,” while noting that “very few are vying for the title.” 

Jim next served as New York bureau chief for The Industry Standard, a San Francisco-based publication that billed itself as “the Newsmagazine of the Internet Economy.” Despite generating more than $200 million in revenue, it folded in 2001 alongside many of the startups it covered from the dot-com era. Jim chronicled the experience in Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of The Industry Standard, one of his six nonfiction books. 

After four years as senior editor at Time, Jim held editor roles at Fortune, Slate’s short-lived business site The Big Money, and Reuters. He arrived at Inc. in 2014 and quickly earned a reputation as an approachable leader who inspired others to do their best work. He trusted young reporters with cover stories because he trusted the editorial process. “It takes a village,” he would say. He was rarely sentimental, but on at least one occasion he got teary-eyed while toasting a departing editor. He knew editorial talent when he saw it, and hated to lose a valued colleague.

“Jim brought me to Inc., and I’m supremely grateful for that opportunity, in part because I knew that working for him would be a top-shelf experience,” says Inc. editor-at-large Bill Saporito, a former colleague of Jim’s at Time. “The kind of editor every writer wants to work for.” 

If you went above and beyond on an assignment, Jim would reward you, sometimes with an emailed compliment, sometimes with a spot bonus.

“He fought much harder for people behind the scenes than anyone realized,” says Jon Fine, editor-in-chief of The New Wine Review and former Inc. acting editor-in-chief. “Because he was so adept at this job, he understood exactly how much information you needed to do yours, while shielding you from a lot of the bullshit.”

It also let him set a high bar.

“An ‘old school’ journalist in the best sense of the word, he loved great storytelling (and gossip!),” says Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures, parent of Inc. and Fast Company. “He loved that Inc. and Fast Company were among the few places left where business writers got the space they needed to tell yarns and offer rich portraits of entrepreneurs.”

Jim also loved food—the indulgent kind—and sharing with colleagues. He would often bring baked goods to the office from home, sending emails to the staff before 9 a.m. with “Girl Scout cookies” or “Homemade banana bread” in the subject line. “(It is not gluten-free.),” read the body. And Jim could knock them back like an old-school journalist, too. He was not one to turn down a happy hour, and could be counted among the last few standing and conversing at the end of the night. At the office holiday party, you could usually find him in the conference room singing karaoke. 

Jim had bylines in too many publications to list, but they included The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and The New Republic. He held several leadership positions after Inc., which he left in 2019, including head of content at Sequoia Capital, chief content officer at Clarim Media, and executive editor of the rebranded Observer. He also started the popular fintech newsletter FIN. His most important role was undoubtedly being a father to his son, Henry, whom he brought to Inc.’s offices many times.

Asked over email in 2023 whether he was working on book number seven, he responded by saying that spending time with his son was more important.

“My kid will presumably be in college in five years,” he wrote. “How many weekends do I want to spend in libraries and archives? Especially since I am in the middle of a divorce, which cuts the weekends in half. After he goes to college, I will probably pursue something.” Sadly, he won’t get that chance.

Last month, Jim joined more than a dozen of his former Inc. co-workers for drinks outdoors at a watering hole in Manhattan’s financial district. At night’s close, only a handful of journalists remained. Jim was one of them. He loved great stories and the people who wrote them. That’s why we wanted to work for him.