Tim Cook, Bob Iger and Reading Between the Media Lines

Just as there is an art to managing a CEO succession process from the inside (at least I imagine that to be the case—I have never done it myself), there’s a not so often discussed playbook for how a reporter writes about succession.

It starts by writing a profile of the person you really, really think will get the job, though you can’t come out and say it directly. You can’t say it because it hasn’t been decided and you can’t say it because you don’t want to be wrong. But you kind of know it in your bones.