Michael Wolff (journalist)
Encyclopedia
Michael Wolff is an American
author
, essayist, and journalist
. He currently writes a regular column for Vanity Fair magazine. He is well known for his acerbic, combative, and humorous style. 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.
, 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.
, 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
. 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.
, became a bestseller and is still thought by many to be the finest book about the dot com
period.
Wolff briefly became a weekly columnist for The Industry Standard
, an Internet trade magazine published by IDG
. 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. 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.
Wolff has been nominated for the National Magazine Award
three times, winning twice. 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.
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. Although the group believed it had made a successful bid, Primedia decided to sell the magazine to the investment banker Bruce Wasserstein
.
In 2005, Wolff joined Vanity Fair as its media columnist. 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. 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. That year he also began writing a daily column for Newser
.
In 2010, Wolff became editor of Adweek
. He lasted in the job barely a year before stepping down.
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.
has called his analysis "pathetic" and criticized his "twisted worldview." 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."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, essayist, and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. He currently writes a regular column for Vanity Fair magazine. He is well known for his acerbic, combative, and humorous style. His most recent book, The Man Who Owns the News, is a biography of Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
, based on more than 50 hours of interviews with the media mogul.
Early life
Michael Wolff was born in Paterson, New JerseyPaterson, New Jersey
Paterson is a city serving as the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, its population was 146,199, rendering it New Jersey's third largest city and one of the largest cities in the New York City Metropolitan Area, despite a decrease of 3,023...
, the son of Lewis A. Wolff, an advertising man, and Marguerite V. Wolff, a newspaper reporter. He went to Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
and then transferred to Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...
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
Angela Atwood
Angela DeAngelis "General Gelina" Atwood was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army , a domestic terrorist group of the 1970s.-Background:...
, a neighbor while he was growing up, who, as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army
Symbionese Liberation Army
The Symbionese Liberation Army was an American self-styled left-wing urban militant group active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a revolutionary vanguard army...
, kidnapped Patricia Hearst. Shortly after this, he left the Times and became a contributing writer to the magazine New Times
New Times Magazine
New Times was an American glossy bi-weekly national magazine published from 1973 to 1979 by George A. Hirsch. Hirsch had been publisher of New York magazine, but resigned after conflicts with founder/editor Clay Felker. New Times began as a bridge between the newsweeklies and the more reflective...
, 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 WiredWired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, 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
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
. 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
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
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 RateBurn Rate (book)
Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, by Michael Wolff is the account of Wolff's dotcom company, Wolff New Media, in 1997.-Content:...
, became a bestseller and is still thought by many to be the finest book about the dot com
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
period.
Wolff briefly became a weekly columnist for The Industry Standard
The Industry Standard
The Industry Standard is a news web site dedicated to technology business news, part of InfoWorld, a news web site covering technology in general...
, an Internet trade magazine published by IDG
IDG
International Data Group is a technology media, research, event management, and venture capital organization.IDG evolved from International Data Corporation which was formed in 1964 in Newtonville, Massachusetts, by Patrick Joseph McGovern and a friend, Fred Kirch...
. 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. 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
Steven Brill (law writer)
Steven Brill is the founder of CourtTV and American Lawyer magazine. He also founded the failed Verified Identity Pass, Inc., the New York-based company that operated the Clear airport security fast-pass. The service abruptly shut down June 23, 2009, without any notice to the company's 260,000...
, the media banker Steven Rattner
Steven Rattner
Steven Lawrence Rattner is an American financier who served as the lead auto advisor in the United States Treasury Department under President Barack Obama...
, and the book publisher Judith Regan
Judith Regan
Judith Regan is an American editor, producer, book publisher and television and radio talk show host. She is the mother of a son and a daughter and lives in New York City and Los Angeles.-Early life:...
, were among the figures who came to bear Wolff a special enmity.
Wolff has been nominated for the National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
three times, winning twice. His second National Magazine Award was for a series of columns he wrote from the media center in the Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf, in Southwest Asia, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers...
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.
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
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
publisher Mortimer Zuckerman
Mortimer Zuckerman
Mortimer Benjamin "Mort" Zuckerman is a Canadian-born American business magnate with interests primarily in magazines, publishing, and real estate. He is now a naturalized citizen of the United States....
, to back him in an acquisition of the magazine. Although the group believed it had made a successful bid, Primedia decided to sell the magazine to the investment banker Bruce Wasserstein
Bruce Wasserstein
Bruce Jay Wasserstein was an American investment banker and businessman. He was a graduate of the McBurney School, University of Michigan, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School, and spent a year at Cambridge University...
.
In 2005, Wolff joined Vanity Fair as its media columnist. In 2007, with Patrick Spain
Patrick Spain
Patrick J. Spain is the co-founder of Hoover's, founder of HighBeam Research and is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of news curation site Newser....
, the founder of Hoover's
Hoover's
Hoover's, Inc., a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet, is a business research company that has provided information on U.S. and foreign companies and industries since 1990. Since 1993, the company has made its information available on its website.-Operations:...
, and Caroline Miller, the former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, he launched Newser
Newser
Newser is an online news site based in the United States. It is the brain-child of journalist Michael Wolff, an Internet pioneer, Vanity Fair columnist, and author of the Rupert Murdoch biography, The Man Who Owns the News...
, a news curator. That year, he also wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
, 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. That year he also began writing a daily column for Newser
Newser
Newser is an online news site based in the United States. It is the brain-child of journalist Michael Wolff, an Internet pioneer, Vanity Fair columnist, and author of the Rupert Murdoch biography, The Man Who Owns the News...
.
In 2010, Wolff became editor of Adweek
Adweek
Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
. He lasted in the job barely a year before stepping down.
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
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
reported that Wolff had been having an affair with Victoria Floethe, and that he was separating from his wife.
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 ReviewColumbia Journalism Review
The Columbia Journalism Review is an American magazine for professional journalists published bimonthly by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961....
has called his analysis "pathetic" and criticized his "twisted worldview." By contrast, Mortimer Zuckerman
Mortimer Zuckerman
Mortimer Benjamin "Mort" Zuckerman is a Canadian-born American business magnate with interests primarily in magazines, publishing, and real estate. He is now a naturalized citizen of the United States....
, publisher of the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
and U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...
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."
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 InternetBurn Rate (book)Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, by Michael Wolff is the account of Wolff's dotcom company, Wolff New Media, in 1997.-Content:...
- 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