Gopro Article Analysis

The title of the article that I chose to critique is, Epic wipeout! GoPro CEO loses $3B. It was written by USA Today market reporter Matt Krantz. The article begins by mentioning that there has been a severe decline in GoPro’s stock prices over the course of the past 2 years. He then begins to discuss founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman and how he was affected by the decline it stocks prices since he is the largest single holder of the stock. If he were to sell his stocks today as opposed to selling them two years ago he would have lost over $600 million. He then mentions that Woodman’s shares were once valued at over $3.4 billion so he would have lost roughly $3 billion now from the point he was at just a few years ago. The decline in stock prices is a result of the company struggling to turn a profit. Finally the author concludes that we do not need to feel bad for him because he still has millions of dollars he is just not a billionaire any longer. The reason that I chose to do this article is because in class I found the discussion of CEO’s

They do not just get paid a salary or just simply receive shares of the company. These different methods should be discussed so the reader does not feel that the CEO only has these shares and truly lost that much money. The second critique could simply be fixed by clarifying that Woodman did not actually lose $3 billion but lost $ 3 billion in value. I feel that simply doing this would change the entire tone of the article. It would not seem as drastic or like a major issue if they simply specified it was just value that was lost. How I would fix the third critique is by talking about why CEOs get paid the way they do. By that I mean I would want to discuss the fact that CEOs value typically reflects the value of the company so if the company declines in value so should the CEOs