Getting to Know Martha Stewart
I'm not that big on cooking, entertaining, or interior design, so I have never really paid much attention to Martha Stewart before. Sure, I heard all about her insider trading scandal and subsequent imprisonment, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about her or the companies she ran. Then I started watching her television show, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, which was a spin-off of Donald Trump's popular series. And I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed with what I saw.
First of all, I had never even watched the original Trump series, so I don't know why I wanted to watch the Martha Stewart series. A friend told me that it was coming on and I just tuned in on a whim. In case you're like me and have never seen The Apprentice before, the basic premise of the show is that 16 individuals compete over the course several months for an executive-level position with a six-figure salary. It is essentially a very long, very extended job interview during which the candidates must complete a series of tasks designed to demonstrate their business acumen -- or lack thereof. At the end of each task, members of the losing team were called into a conference room for a meeting with Martha Stewart and two other high-ranking officials from her company (one of whom was her daughter). The losing members would then have to explain what went wrong, and at the end Martha would send one of them home.
I found that I learned quite a bit about Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the corporation behind most of Stewart's business ventures. I heard about how the company was founded, discovered some of the basic philosophies that the executives embrace, and got a peek into a bit of the corporate culture. As viewers, we also got to see a side of Martha Stewart that not many people in the business world get to see. For example, members of the winning team for each task were given rewards. Some of the rewards included hanging out with Martha at one of her many homes in the New York area. So a few of the candidates got to go horseback riding with her, play Scrabble with her, and even eat a homemade breakfast with her. After watching the series, I had a whole different opinion of Martha Stewart and the MSLO Corporation, which, I suppose was the point of the show. After all, both entities had suffered from some seriously negative publicity in the months leading up to the premier of The Apprentice.
So if you're interested in learning more about Martha Stewart, then watching this television show might be a good place to start. It's a lighter, more entertaining look at the entertainment mogul than you are likely to find anywhere else and presents a good contrast to the way Stewart is portrayed in other media outlets.
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