By examining the post-retirement outside board seats held by former CEOs of S&P 1500 firms, we find that CEOs’ post-retirement outside board memberships are influenced by the level and the tone of media coverage given to the CEOs’ firms while the CEOs were “on the job.” These results provide evidence of a direct economic link between media coverage of CEOs’ performance today and CEOs’ future opportunity sets. These results lend support to the proposition that the media can play a role in corporate governance by influencing the value of CEOs’ human capital.

We use increases and decreases in the ranking scores of Fortune's Most Admired Companies to test the proposition that media shocks can increase (decrease) the value of a manager's reputational capital and, thus, enhance (diminish) his power to extract corporate resources for private benefit at the expense of shareholders. Consistent with the proposition increases (decreases) in scores are associated with stock price decreases (increases). And, CEOs whose firms experience increases (reductions) in scores experience increases (reductions) in compensation and in job tenure, and their firms undertake more (fewer) acquisitions and the acquisitions are less (more) value increasing.