Michael Wolff (journalist)
Michael Wolff (born August 27, 1953)[1] is an American journalist, as well as a columnist and contributor to USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and the UK edition of GQ.[2] He has received two National Magazine Awards, a Mirror Award, and has authored seven books, including Burn Rate (1998) about his own dot-com company, and The Man Who Owns the News (2008), a biography of Rupert Murdoch. He co-founded the news aggregation website Newser and is a former editor of Adweek.
Michael Wolff
On January 5, 2018, Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was published, containing unflattering descriptions of behavior by U.S. President Donald Trump, chaotic interactions among the White House senior staff, and derogatory comments about the Trump family by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.[3] The book quickly became a New York Times number-one bestseller[4] and became the first of a trilogy about Trump in power, the other two books being Siege (2019) and Landslide (2021).[5]
Early life[edit]
Michael Wolff was born in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of, Jewish,[6] Lewis Allen Wolff (1920–1984),[7] an advertising professional, and Marguerite (Vanderwerf) "Van" Wolff (1925–2012)[8] a reporter for Paterson Evening News.[9][10] Wolff graduated from Montclair Academy (now Montclair Kimberley Academy) in 1971, where he was student council president in his senior year.[11] He attended Vassar College and transferred to Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1975.[12][13] While a student at Columbia, he worked for The New York Times as a copy boy.[14][15]
Career[edit]
1970s[edit]
He published his first magazine article in the New York Times Magazine in 1974: a profile of Angela Atwood, a neighbor of his family who helped kidnap Patricia Hearst as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Shortly afterward, he left the Times and became a contributing writer to the New Times, a bi-weekly news magazine started by Jon Larsen and George Hirsch. Wolff's first book was White Kids (1979), a collection of essays.
1990s[edit]
In 1991, Wolff 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.[16]
In the fall of 1998, Wolff published a book, Burn Rate, which recounted the details of the financing, positioning, personalities, and ultimate breakdown of Wolff's start-up Internet company, Wolff New Media. The book became a bestseller. In its review of Wolff's book Burn Rate, Brill's Content criticized Wolff for "apparent factual errors" and said that 13 people, including subjects he mentioned, complained that Wolff had "invented or changed quotes".[17]
In August 1998, Wolff was recruited by New York magazine to write a weekly column. Over the next six years, he wrote more than 300 columns [18] that included criticism of the entrepreneur Steven Brill, the media banker Steven Rattner, and the book publisher Judith Regan.[19][20][21]
Personal life[edit]
Wolff was formerly married to lawyer Alison Anthoine. Wolff and Antoine are parents of three children. He is now married to Victoria Floethe, and they have two children.[65][66]
Wolff and Floethe are parents of Louise Wolff, born in 2015.[67]
His daughter, Susanna Wolff, was the editor-in-chief of CollegeHumor.[68][69]
Wolff is known for his pugnacious personality, and has reportedly been ejected from numerous New York City restaurants.[65][66][67]