From One Grilling to Another
Alejandro Benes vividly remembers standing in front of the White House on Oct. 20, 1973, with a group of friends, after President Richard Nixon had ordered the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Benes, then a college freshman, and friends simply "were watching as people were going in and out of the White House."
He was witnessing history in the making. The firing of Cox and the resignations of the attorney general and his deputy shook the nation and became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre." Less than a year later, Nixon resigned. Benes was also unwittingly launching himself on his first career. "Watergate was my serious introduction to journalism," he says.
Benes is now 51 and director of marketing and communication for the Southern California-based restaurant group Wood Ranch bbq & Grill, where he's a partner. But that bygone era spurred what turned out to be an intriguing ride as a broadcast journalist. It's a field he has "retired from" three times-most recently in 2006, when he became a restaurateur at a salary amounting to "somewhat less than" his onetime mid-six-figure network paycheck. "None of it has ever been about the money. Not the news business, that's for sure," Benes says with a laugh.
Smart choices. For Benes, the skills he learned as a globe-trotting journalist translate directly to the acumen needed to be a savvy business operator and investor. "If you're a good reporter, you can ferret out information that helps you understand how things work," he says. "From a business perspective, you apply that knowledge to making money through smart investment choices."
In 1977, after graduating from American University with a dual major in broadcast journalism and Latin American affairs, the Cuban-born, bilingual Benes started at abc News in Washington as a desk assistant. Six years later, he was the network's Latin America bureau chief, living in El Salvador.
In 1989, Benes landed at NBC News in New York, later becoming director of news coverage. While there, he negotiated for the network to produce live Today show broadcasts from Havana in February 1992 and was the coordinating producer for news and sports at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
That year, he began stepping in and out of his Watergate-inspired profession. Among his investment moves in the next few years was as a partner in Wood Ranch, a venture cofounded by a cousin. But Benes didn't actually "retire" from NBC until 1994, when he embarked on a two-year management stint at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative think tank where he is a founding director. He coauthored with Charles Lewis, the center's founder, The Buying of the President, on the role of money in politics.
That was followed by a foray with an entertainment holding company, a quick return to journalism as a news director with Univision, then by a second "retirement" from journalism to pursue business ventures in Asia and Australia, in addition to other U.S. investments.
The day after the 9/11 attacks, Benes was at home in Teaneck, N.J., when he was called by a former colleague, an executive at nbc in New York, and lured back with a slightly desperate "we need adults in the newsroom," he recounts.
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