Eisen: ‘I can’t be quick and dirty.’
Gotta love the Google alert.
That’s how Marc Eisen first learned of an inspector general report sharply critical of Cerner Corporation’s performance on a huge federal contract related to electronic health records.Why did a story on the report pop up in Eisen’s email? Because he has an alert for Epic Systems, Dane County’s giant tech company, which had been unceremoniously dumped a few years ago by the feds in favor of Cerner for that large contract.
In the days and weeks after, Eisen says he was surprised not to see anything in the local news about the inspector general report. True, Cerner’s troubles didn’t directly impact Epic, but it was an interesting, if not critical, footnote to a big story involving an important local company. Chalk it up to the struggles of local journalism — reporters with the institutional knowledge to recognize a good follow-up story are scarce and, perhaps more importantly, newsrooms often don’t have sufficient staff to do much enterprise reporting.
Eisen first pitched me a story on the results of the inspector general report, which included considering whether Cerner’s failures meant the feds would reconsider Epic for the lucrative contracts. Then, as he often does, he started to go deeper and connect the dots. How did Epic fare in the years following the loss of this large contract? What would life have been like for Epic — and Dane County — if the tech giant had not been bumped from the project?
Eisen is especially qualified to take on these questions. He has been on the Epic beat for more than two decades, recognizing early the potential of the tech company, not only in how it would shape the world of electronic medical records — and, by extension, health care delivery — but how it would transform the economy of Madison and Dane County. He even wrote a column in 2010 about how city leaders, in the mid-1990s, were seemingly unaware of the promise of the company.
In a May 2002 cover story, Eisen considered the land-use and economic implications of Epic’s decision to leave Madison for Verona and how that move might portend “profound” changes for the region. “Epic’s insistence on a horizontal workspace for its 700 or so employees, with an artful mix of private and group space in a pastoral campus setting, is turning out to be the first major land-use decision of the new century in Dane County,” he wrote. “The company is uprooting itself from Madison’s west side, where it occupies the old Odana School, 5301 Tokay Blvd., and five satellite sites. These include buildings in the University Research Park and substantial rental space at nearby Westgate Mall.”
A month later, he dug into how real estate speculators cashed in when they sold Epic the land for its new campus. County records, he found, showed that West Verona LLC sold a 346-acre parcel to Epic for $4.77 million that it had bought seven years earlier, in 1995, for $1.14 million — a 400 percent return on investment.
In June 2008, he penned a two-part series on Epic, looking at the extraordinary growth of the tech company, and, in the second installment, asking what plans, if any, were in place after founder Judy Faulkner, as Eisen put it, “leaves the auditorium.” He also put together a timeline of important events in the life of Epic.
In introducing the series, former Isthmus publisher and owner Vince O’Hern wrote in his weekly column that Eisen was marking his 20th year as editor of the paper. He noted that Eisen had confessed he was becoming weary of the “ever-mounting management duties” of the job and that he wanted to do more writing. Duties were rearranged so that he could do that, O’Hern adds, and Eisen worked on the Epic series over the course of several months.
Epic story by Marc Eisen in Isthmus
In a 2002 Isthmus cover story, Eisen explored the ramifications of Epic's decision to relocate to Verona.
Time, of course, is often what it takes to do these kinds of stories. “I always do more research than I should,” Eisen says. “I can’t be quick and dirty. I end up with way more stuff than I can use.” His interviews, he adds, “tend to wander all over the place. I will keep asking questions and going down digressions and sometimes people loosen up. I rarely do a 10-minute interview.”
Eisen estimates he’s written a story on Epic every two to three years since the 1990s. He doesn’t see it as a disadvantage that he’s approaching the story outside of a business or tech beat. “If you parachute in you see things with new eyes,” he says.
Eisen left Isthmus in August 2008, but continued to freelance for the paper and other publications. In 2014, Eisen returned for another in-depth look at Epic’s impact on the region with “Epic opportunity.” “This is the big question,” he begins. “How far can Dane County ride Epic’s success?”
In this month’s cover story, Eisen explores the impact of the loss of the big federal contract on Epic. His findings are surprising. And they lead him to the next question: How much of a threat does Cerner, recently acquired by Oracle, pose as it prepares to go after Epic’s market dominance?
Eisen’s Epic stories are representative of Isthmus at its best: exposing, explaining and analyzing issues in an in-depth way. That has always been one of the strengths of the paper and what readers look to us for.
It’s the approach Bill Lueders, former longtime Isthmus news editor, takes this month with his story on the Madison Public Market. Just as that decade-old project appeared to be heading toward groundbreaking, news surfaced this summer that critical federal funding had fallen through and the future of the market was once again in jeopardy.
The sudden loss of the federal grant revived questions about whether Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway was truly behind the project and whether city officials had done enough to try to save the funding. Lueders asks the tough questions and provides as detailed an account as there is of how the talks between the city and the feds went down. Lueders also advances the story, reporting moves by both county and city officials to fund the project.
In other news: We are kicking off our year-end fundraising appeal and I’m thrilled to share that we are once again participating in the Institute for Nonprofit News’ NewsMatch program. In addition to landing a $15,000 challenge grant, we also just learned that Isthmus has been selected to receive an additional $15,000 in matching funds from the Loud Hound Partner Fund for our dedication to “highlighting issues that impact residents’ lives and support civic engagement.”
What this means is that if you become an Isthmus member or make a one-time donation between now and Dec. 31, your money will be tripled. This money is crucial to our entire operation. Please help us start 2023 strong. Among our goals for the next year: bringing our art director on staff and hiring a writer to cover arts and culture. I hope you will consider us in your year-end giving.
