- Michael Wolff (journalist)
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This article is about the journalist. For other uses, see Michael Wolff (disambiguation).
Michael Wolff 
Wolff in Rome, Italy (June 2008)Born August 27, 1953 Occupation Columnist, Internet entrepreneur, television commentator Nationality American Alma mater Vassar College, Columbia University
newser.comMichael Wolff (born August 27, 1953) is an American author, essayist, and journalist. He currently writes a regular column for Vanity Fair magazine.[1] He is well known for his acerbic, combative, and humorous style.[citation needed] His most recent book, The Man Who Owns the News, is a biography of Rupert Murdoch, based on more than 50 hours of interviews with the media mogul.[2]
Contents
Early life
Michael Wolff was born in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of Lewis A. Wolff, an advertising man, and Marguerite V. Wolff, a newspaper reporter. He went to Vassar College and then transferred to Columbia College of Columbia University in New York City. While a student at Columbia, he worked for the New York Times as a copy boy. He published his first magazine article in the New York Times Magazine in 1974, a profile of Angela Atwood, a neighbor while he was growing up, who, as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, kidnapped Patricia Hearst. Shortly after this, he left the Times and became a contributing writer to the magazine New Times, a bi-weekly news magazine started by John Larsen and George Hirsch. Wolff's first book, White Kids, a collection of essays, was published in 1979.
Career
After publishing his first book, Wolff received an advance to write a novel. He was beset with a writer's block that lasted for more than five years, at which point he gave up writing. A college friend, Steven J. Hueglin, who had become a successful Wall Street banker, asked for Wolff's help in evaluating investments in media companies, pushing him into a career as a media business entrepreneur. In 1988, Wolff took over the management of the magazine Campaigns & Elections. He became involved in advising start-up magazines, including Wired, and raising money for media companies and new businesses. In 1991, he launched Michael Wolff & Company, Inc., specializing in book-packaging . Its first project, Where We Stand, was a book with a companion PBS series. The company's next major project was creating one of the first guides to the Internet, albeit in book form. Net Guide was published by Random House.[3] On the eve of launching the title as a monthly magazine, the incipient magazine was bought by CMP Media, the publisher of computer magazines. Wolff's company continued to publish a succession of book-form Internet guides. In 1995, the company took a round of venture capital investment, with shareholders including Patricof & Co., the New York venture capital firm, and began to convert its print directories into a website and digital directory called Your Personal Network. At one point, the company was valued by bankers seeking to take the company public at more than $100 million. The venture collapsed in 1997, and Wolff was expelled from the company.
Return to writing
Without prospects, Wolff returned to writing, from which he had been absent for more than ten years, and recounted all the details of the financing, positioning, personalities, and ultimate breakdown of a start-up Internet company. The book, Burn Rate, became a bestseller and is still thought by many to be the finest book about the dot com period.[4] Wolff briefly became a weekly columnist for The Industry Standard, an Internet trade magazine published by IDG.[5] Shortly thereafter, in August 1998, he was recruited by New York magazine to write a weekly column. Over the next six years, he wrote more than 300 columns, solidifying his reputation as provocative and knowledgeable writer about the media industry.[6] During this time, Wolff, writing with a style that combined humor, business acumen, and trenchant social analysis, became a bête noire to many powerful figures in the media industry. The entrepreneur Steven Brill, the media banker Steven Rattner, and the book publisher Judith Regan, were among the figures who came to bear Wolff a special enmity.[7][8][9][10] Wolff has been nominated for the National Magazine Award three times, winning twice.[11] His second National Magazine Award was for a series of columns he wrote from the media center in the Persian Gulf as the Iraq War started in 2003. His book, Autumn of the Moguls (2004), which predicted the mainstream media crisis that would hit later in the decade, was based on many of his New York magazine columns.[12]
In 2004, when New York magazine's owners, Primedia, Inc., put the title up for sale, Wolff helped assemble a group of investors, including New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, to back him in an acquisition of the magazine.[13][14] Although the group believed it had made a successful bid, Primedia decided to sell the magazine to the investment banker Bruce Wasserstein.[15]
In 2005, Wolff joined Vanity Fair as its media columnist.[1] In 2007, with Patrick Spain, the founder of Hoover's, and Caroline Miller, the former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, he launched Newser, a news curator.[16] That year, he also wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, based on more than 50 hours of conversation with Murdoch, and extensive access to his business associates and his family. The book was published in 2008.[17][18] That year he also began writing a daily column for Newser.[19]
In 2010, Wolff became editor of Adweek. He lasted in the job barely a year before stepping down. [20]
Personal life
In 1981, Wolff married Alison Anthoine, an attorney. They have three children, Elizabeth (born 1984), Susanna (born 1987), and Steven (born 1991). In 2009, the New York Post reported that Wolff had been having an affair with Victoria Floethe, and that he was separating from his wife.[21][22]
Criticism
Wolff elicits strong feelings of dislike. A New York Times editor once said that "if Wolff were any further up his own ass, he'd be a colonoscopy." Another editor of Wolff's acquaintance has said, "If he lived anywhere but in the middle of the New York media world, they would say the emperor has no clothes. He can't write. He doesn't report." The Columbia Journalism Review has called his analysis "pathetic" and criticized his "twisted worldview." [23] By contrast, Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report has said, "He's a superb writer. One of the things you look for in the publishing world is the whole notion of voice. It's a very difficult thing to come by." [24]
Books
- The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
- Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet
- Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures With the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media
- Where We Stand
- White Kids
Reviews
- Haigh, Gideon (March 2009). "Vanity Fare". The Monthly 43: 54–55. Review of The Man Who Owns the News.
- Carr, David (26 December 2008). "Plowing Through the Door". The New York Times. Review of The Man Who Owns the News.
References
- ^ a b http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/wolff
- ^ http://www.newser.com/about/michael-wolff.html
- ^ ASIN 0440223903
- ^ ASIN 0684848813
- ^ http://www.mmit.stc.sh.cn/Projects/ecforum/Technology/isa.htm
- ^ http://nymag.com/nymag/author_211/
- ^ Michael Wolff Wonders: Why's Judith Regan After the Spotlight Again?
- ^ http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/03/wolff200703
- ^ http://www.observer.com/2009/media/missing-daily-news-steve-rattner-maureen-white-story
- ^ Kurtz, Howard (May 30, 2001). "New York's Media Hound; Columnist Michael Wolff Stalks the Pack and Goes for the Throat". http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/73420908.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=May+30%2C+2001&author=Howard+Kurtz&pub=The+Washington+Post&edition=&startpage=C.01&desc=New+York%27s+Media+Hound%3B+Columnist+Michael+Wolff+Stalks+the+Pack+and+Goes+for+the+Throat.
- ^ http://cursor.org/stories/nationalmagazineawards.html
- ^ Wolff, Michael (2004-09-16). Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media. ISBN 9780066621104. http://books.google.com/?id=_nyan_kWIAgC&dq=Michael+Wolff+autumn+of+moguls&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=&f=false.
- ^ http://www.slate.com/id/2090251/
- ^ Carr, David (December 15, 2003). "Bid for New York Magazine: A Dance of Money and Ego". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/business/bid-for-new-york-magazine-a-dance-of-money-and-ego.html?pagewanted=2. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
- ^ http://www.wwd.com/media-news/lone-wolff-michael-wolff-downtown-and-angry-2200119//?full=true
- ^ "Can Michael Wolff's Newser colonize the news frontier?". Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/10/michael-wolffs.html. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
- ^ Carr, David (December 28, 2008). "Plowing Through the Door". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/books/review/Carr-t.html. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
- ^ ASIN 0385526121
- ^ http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/news.html
- ^ http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/michael-wolff-steps-down-as-editor-of-adweek/
- ^ "Wolff Dodges Affair Questions". New York Post. March 2, 2009. http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/item_gZKTcnYGXzkAYJKqcB75QJ.
- ^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/30/michael-wolff-divorce-vic_n_180633.html
- ^ http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/michael_wolffs_high_cynicism.php
- ^ http://www.tnr.com/article/wolff-trapped?page=0,1
Categories:- 1953 births
- Vassar College alumni
- Columbia University alumni
- Living people
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