Michael Wolff | The New York Observer

In the Battle Between Facebook and MySpace, A Digital 'White Flight'

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:53:38 -0400

This morning, Danah Boyd was spitting out the social media Kool-Aid at Personal Democracy Forum. "Many of us believe that technologies can be these great equalizers," said Ms. Boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft and fellow of the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, during her keynote speech at the Jazz at Lincoln Center auditorium. "They can bring everybody on board, they can make a welcome, lovely place and that anybody...

Paula Froelich's Mercurial World: 'Society Is Pretty Much Dead,' Says Sassy Page Six Vet

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:00:00 -0400

Gossip writer Paula Froelich opened the front door to her one-bedroom Soho apartment on a recent evening, wearing a flattering emerald dress with puffy sleeves and woolly, moccasin-style slippers.

She had one hour, she warned, before she had to run out and meet Daily Candy founder Dany Levy and socialite Gigi Howard for an 8 p.m. dinner at Minetta Tavern. But she wanted to make sure the Daily...

Newser's Michael Wolff: Who's Got a News Fee? 'I'll Give It To Them for Free'

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:40:50 -0400

Last night, on April 20, Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair columnist and founder of Newser, was sitting on a chair—arms folded, legs crossed—on the third floor of the Time Warner Center while a downpour rumbled outside. Surrounded by flickering television screens, mobile phones and mp3 players in the "Samsung Experience" room, Bennett Zier, chief executive of Air America Media, asked him a question: "What do traditional media companies need to do to stay relevant?"...

Cold Case File: The Missing Daily News Steve Rattner Maureen White Story

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:43:48 -0500

Today on Newser, Michael Wolff writes about a New York Daily News story that appeared back in October, but then—whooosh!—disappeared from the News' Web site.

The article is about how journalist-turned-private equity investor Steve Rattner's wife was pulled over for a D.U.I. But, for some reason, the story disappeared. The New York Times, which is published by Mr. Rattner's close friend Arthur Sulzberger Jr., never ran the story, nor did The New York Post....

The Beast That Roared (for a While!)

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:19:12 -0500

One week after Tina Brown launched the Daily Beast back in October, Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair columnist and the founder of Newser, gave a typically tart assessment of his new competitor.

“She’s not a news aggregator, although that is her pretense for doing something Web-like,” he said to The Observer at the time. “In fact, she’s just an old magazine hack.”

He was right, partly: In the 110 days...

Michael Wolff v. Col Allan

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:42:52 -0500

We've heard quite a bit about Michael Wolff's feuds this week—including one with Conrad Black too!—but in case you haven't had enough, here's one more:

In today's edition of The Observer, we mention an anecdote we reported first last week: Michael Wolff invited 50 people from News Corporation to the party for his biography of Rupert Murdoch, and he said that none of them responded to the invite except for Col Allan. Mr. Wolff told...

Judith Regan: Michael Wolff 'Absurd'; 'Simply Wants to Spin Facts in Favor of Defaming Me'

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:33:09 -0500

Earlier this morning, Media Mob spoke to Newser.com founder Michael Wolff, whose recently published Rupert Murdoch biography took a beating today at the hands of an angry Judith Regan in the New York Daily News. Mr. Wolff wondered aloud why after more than a year of refusing to talk to press, Ms. Regan had chosen this moment to "get back in the game." He speculated that Ms. Regan's sudden willingness to go on the...

Michael Wolff Wonders: Why's Judith Regan After the Spotlight Again?

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:17:45 -0500

Michael Wolff is scratching his head over why after more than a year of staying almost entirely off the record, his old pal Judith Regan—whom he's known since their undergraduate days at Vassar when she was a "pretty, plumpish hippie"—is trying to get all this attention suddenly by telling the New York Daily News she's going to destroy him for the way he portrayed her in his recent biography of her old boss Rupert...

Morning Memo: Judith Regan Not Thrilled With Michael Wolff; Jennifer Aniston Auditioning 'Boyfriends'; Vacancies in St. Barts

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:29:18 -0500

Volatile publisher Judith Regan on Michael Wolff and his portrayal of her in his recent The Man Who Owns the News: "He's grossly irresponsible. I'm going to sue him personally, so he'll have to spend his own money. He projects his own perverted view of the world on everyone else. He is consumed with hatred, vitriol and pathological envy." [R&M]

Mort Zuckerman and charities run by Steven Spielberg and Elie Wiesel were among those...

Waiting for Rupert: Michael Wolff Fetes Murdoch Bio as Guests Search For Mogul

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:48:26 -0500

Michael Wolff invited fifty people from News Corp to his book party last night celebrating his biography of Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, at Milk Studios in West Chelsea, but none of them showed.

"None of them RSVP'd, none of them said yes or no," he said last night, while speaking to a reporter, Gabriel Snyder from Gawker, Gawker czar Nick Denton and David Carey, the group president of Condé...

Michael Wolff: MySpace Users Are Poor, '[Expletive]' Cretins

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:31:47 -0500

Ah, now that Michael Wolff has released his new biography on Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, it was just about time for him to babble some highly quotable comment and drum up some press for it: like, say, "MySpace users are [expletive] cretins."

His friend, Jon Fine of BusinessWeek, took the author out to dinner and discussed a subject he doesn't go into depth in his new book: MySpace....

Michael Wolff on The Daily Beast: 'It's Preposterous'; Tina Brown 'Just an Old Magazine Hack'

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:21:51 -0400

While we had him on the phone talking about Rupert Murdoch, we thought we'd ask Michael Wolff what he thought of The Daily Beast, the new Web site from Tina Brown that is in plain competition with Newser.com, the news aggregator site that Mr. Wolff started last year.

Mr. Wolff first shared his thoughts on The Daily Beast back in April, when he told Gawker that he didn't expect much out of Ms. Brown...

Murdoch Biographer Says He Tried to Portray Real Mogul: 'I May Even Like The Man at Various Levels'

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:46:16 -0400

Rupert Murdoch trusted Michael Wolff to write a nice book about him, but then Mr. Wolff went and wrote all about how Mr. Murdoch ridicules Fox News and is embarrassed of Roger Ailes. Mr. Murdoch got a copy of Mr. Wolff's book, The Man Who Owns The News—which comes out in six weeks—through a well-placed pal in Europe, and now he's gone public in the pages of The New York Times with his objections.

...

Where Did That Bloomberg to Buy New York Times Rumor Come From?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:01:47 -0400

How do rumors get started? They get started, apparently, by journalists who seek to connect with powerful sources, according to Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff, who shares an excerpt from his upcoming Rupert Murdoch biography in the October issue of the magazine.

In Tuesdays with Rupert, Mr. Wolff writes:

[Mr. Murdoch] may be among the biggest gossips in New York. In the months of interviewing him, I found that the most reliable way to hold...

In Which Michael Wolff Rides in a Golf Cart With Rupert Murdoch's Mother: A Q&A

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:41:33 -0400

The New York Post's Keith Kelly reported yesterday that Michael Wolff’s book on Rupert Murdoch and the Dow Jones takeover is coming out in December, instead of February as initially intended. This spurred Media Mob to get in touch with Mr. Wolff and find out why. We did, pretty much right away, and the answer was just “Christmas,” so we stayed on the line for another few minutes and asked Mr. Wolff some...

Michael Wolff Bashes WSJ Media Reporter's Murdoch Book

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:00:22 -0500

Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff, who is writing an authorized biography of Rupert Murdoch due out next fall, takes a shot in today's New York Post at the Wall Street Journal's media reporter Sarah Ellison, who recently announced plans to write a book about the transformation of the news media, using Mr. Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones as its centerpiece.

Mr. Wolff told the Post's Keith Kelly that Ms. Ellison has no business...

Newser.com Launch Party: "Somebody's going to reinvent the way people get news!"

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:04:07 -0400

Yesterday evening, journalists and newsy iconoclasts alike gathered at Graydon Carter's uber-trendy, West Village bistro, the Waverly Inn, to celebrate the launch of Newser.com, Michael Wolff's latest project, an innovative online news service that claims to "do the reading for you."

The site, which has been available in beta form since August but launched yesterday with all the bells and whistles, uses high-tech machines to scour the web for news....

Facelift For Newser.com, Fun New Slider Tool Either "Ludicrous or Miraculous"

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:49:37 -0400

Newser.com, the online news aggregator that web entrepreneur/journalist Michael Wolff started last summer in an "attempt to rescue a common narrative of public life," is in the process of a redesign. A Newser insider gave us a sneak peek at the new front page, which is expected to go live in the next few days.

Truth is, if the basic conceit of Newser—that people need gatekeepers to protect them from...

Wolff: The Enemy of Murdoch's Enemy Is His Friend

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:49:18 -0400

When Michael Wolff started shopping his biography of Rupert Murdoch, he opted to go with a "high six-figure" offer from Doubleday instead of taking the risk of having his previous publisher, Harper Collins, put out the book. (Mr. Murdoch's News Corp. owns Harper Collins.)

But these days Mr. Wolff has emerged as something of a sympathizer—at least with Mr. Murdoch's ambition to own The Wall Street Journal.

In The Times:

In a 3,600-word column in the September...

The Shame of No Shame: Fawning, Sniping in Media Land

Sun, 26 Oct 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media , by Michael Wolff. HarperCollins, 381 pages, $25.95.

In 1980, George W.S. Trow, a veteran New Yorker staff writer and one of the founding editors of The National Lampoon, published a 25,000-word jeremiad decrying the evils of television. "No good has come of it" was his conclusion, arrived at a scant six paragraphs in,...

Magazine Jurors Find 9/11 Coverage Just Insufficient

Sun, 07 Apr 2002 20:00:00 -0400

Despite all the speculation that Sept. 11 would awaken today's

magazine editors from their dreamy haze of celebrity puffery and smiley service writing, when the industry convenes at the Waldorf-Astoria on May 1 to present the National Magazine Awards, the winners will be drawn from a list of finalists in which reporting on terrorism or war is conspicuously absent. Excluding nominees for fiction and "leisure interests," out of 81 finalists in 16 different N.M.A. categories, by our count, just...