30 Most Important Facts About Michael Wolff You Probably Didn't Know

23 March 2019, 10:23 am EDT By Ruby Karnick

Michael Wolff, the co-founder of the news aggregation website Newser, has till date authored seven books, including the most famous book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," published in January 2018. Here are some really interesting facts about the American author:

He has two National Magazine Awards and a Mirror Award to his name, along with one other National Magazine Award nomination.
He is currently a columnist and contributor to USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and the UK edition of GQ magazine, and was a former editor of Adweek.
His book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" containing certain unflattering details related to the U.S. President Donald Trump's behavior, his family and also his staff at the White House, published on January 5, 2018, quickly became a New York Times number one bestseller.
Michael Wolff was born on August 27, 1953 to Lewis Allen Wolff and Marguerite Van Wolff, in Paterson, New Jersey.
His father was an advertising professional, who passed away on February 18, 1984, while his mother was a reported for the Paterson Evening News, who passed away on September 17, 2012.
He attended Montclair Academy, which is now known by the name Montclair Kimberley Academy. He was the student council president in his senior year at the Montclair Academy, before graduating in the year 1971.
He went on to study at the Columbia University in New York City, before joining the Vassar College. During his time at Columbia, he worked as a copy boy for The New York Times.
His first ever magazine article was published in the New York Times Magazine in the year 1974, which was reportedly a profile of Angela Atwood, who is said to have helped kidnap Patricia Hearst as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Following his first article, he left the Times and joined the New Times, as a contributing writer. The New Times was a bi-weekly news magazine started by Jon Larsen and George Hirsch.
He successfully started his own company - Michael Wolff & Company, Inc., that specializes in book-packaging, in the year 1991.

The company's first project was his second book "Where We Stand," a book with a companion PBS series. His first book was the 1979 "White Kids" which was collection of essays.
The company's second project was to create a guide to the Internet - titled "Net Guide," which is one of the first guides on how to use the Internet. The guide, albeit in the form of a book was published by Random House.
He founded the Wolff New Media, the Web information-packaging company in January 1996, with a US$3.5 million investment, which owns the successful NetBook review series.
He quit from his position of CEO of the Wolff New Media, in March 1997, and announced that the company was being torn apart, though it had two bidding investors.
During the Wolff New Media's implosion, he is said to have deferred his own salary, in an effort to keep the company afloat, and reportedly encouraged the employees also to do the same. But, when he collected his salary, he had exhausted the company’s remaining cash reserves, which led to employee’s inability to receive any salary back-pay.
He claims the reason for the closure of the company to be conflicts in interests between in him and the investors of the company, as he was focused on inventing media, while the investors were only focused on the rate of return.
He recounted the exact details of the financing, positioning and ultimate breakdown of Wolff New Media, in his third book "Burn Rate," published in the fall of 1998.
The book, full title - "Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet," became a bestseller, immediately after release.
His work in "Burn Rate," was criticized by Brill's Content, for "apparent factual errors," claiming that 13 people, also including subjects he had actually mentioned in the book, had complained that Wolff had "invented or changed quotes."
He was recruited as a columnist, in August 1998, by New York Magazine, writing for their weekly column. He had written over 300 columns over the next six years.

During his time at the New York Magazine, he is famous for certain columns including the criticism of the media banker Steven Rattner, the entrepreneur Steven Brill and the book publisher Judith Regan.
His fourth book "Autumn of the Moguls," published in the year 2004, was said to be based on many of his columns from the New York Magazine, which reportedly accurately predicted the mainstream media crisis that hit later in the decade.
His writing was called as "a whirlwind of flourishes and tangents and asides that often stray so far from the central point that you begin to wonder whether there is a central point," by Michelle Cottle, in a 2004 cover story for The New Republic.
She claimed Wolff's focus to be on "the power players—the moguls" and that it was always "fixated on culture, style, buzz, and money, money, money."
He, along with Caroline Miller, who was the former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, and Patrick Spain, who was the founder of Hoover's, founded the Newser, a news aggregator website, in the year 2007.
His fifth book was a biography of Rupert Murdoch, "The Man Who Owns the News," published in the year 2008. For the book, he is said to have had over 50 hours of conversation with Murdoch, and was also having extensive access to his business associates and his family.
He reported that he approached Donald Trump about writing a book on his presidency, and that the President agreed because he liked one of Wolff's articles about the presidency written in June 2016 for The Hollywood Reporter. However, the President claims to have never authorized access for Wolff and that he had never spoken to him for the book.
He had over 200 interviews with Trump and his associates, and even witnessed certain events at the White House, while working on the book with the title - "The Great Transition: The First 100 Days of the Trump Administration, " leading everyone to believe the book was favorable to Trump Administration.
In his seventh book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," he had depicted President Donald Trump as being held in a very low regard by the White House Staff and has also stated that "100% of the people around the President" believe him to be unfit for office. He also quoted Donald Trump Jr., as saying that his father President Donald Trump "looked as if he had seen a ghost" when he realized he had won, and Melania Trump was "in tears – and not of joy," as none of them expected a victory.
He announced that he had signed a deal with Henry Holt, the publisher of "Fire and Fury," in June 2018, to write a sequel, which is currently "untitled, unscheduled, unfocused," but reported to "deal with American politics at this point in time."