Autumn of the moguls : my misadventures with the titans, poseurs, and money guys who mastered and messed up big media / Michael Wolff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wolff, Michael, 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mass media--United States.

Mass media.

United States.

Executives--United States.

Executives.

Wolff, Michael, 1953-.

Wolff, Michael.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 381 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : HarperBusiness, [2003]

Summary:

There is no more astute, brutally honest, and entertaining chronicler of assorted media-world implosions than New York magazine's National Magazine Award-winning columnist Michael Wolff. As once-mighty media empires -- and reputations -- have teetered and fallen over the past several years, Wolff has sorted through the wreckage (which he had often foretold) and fearlessly deconstructed the peculiar psychology behind the mess: the delusional ambitions of moguls -- and their yesmen -- whose outsized ambitions and empire-building ways have brought the media business to the brink of ruin. A former media entrepreneur himself (he told the story of the rise and fall of his own formidable Internet company in his best-selling memoir, Burn Rate), Wolff has had a ringside seat as the conglomeratized worlds of newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and the Internet have taken often bewildering turns.

In Autumn of the Moguls, a funny, frank, and incendiary account, Michael Wolff explains it all, taking on the great (and not-so-great) characters of the age, including AOL Time Warner's Gerald Levin, Steve Case, Bob Pittman, and Walter Isaacson; New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.; News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch; Viacom's Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin; media empress Martha Stewart; would-be media empress Tina Brown; legendary kahuna Barry Diller; media-mogul-turned-New-York-City mayor Michael Bloomberg; and Disney czar Michael Eisner. Also scrutinized is an outrageous cast of self-proclaimed creative geniuses, short-sighted (and often short) financiers, and shameless politicians who attempt and frequently succeed in manipulating the media. Autumn of the Moguls is the book that will forever change your perception of how the media works, plays, and perhaps even survives its own worst excesses.

Contents:

Book 1 Spring and Summer 2002

1 The Comedy 13

2 My Table 15

3 Lunch 19

4 The Powers That Be 28

5 The Partner 39

6 My Theory 48

7 The Ballad of Jean-Marie 58

8 In the Same Boat 74

9 Bob Pittman

a Digression 82

10 Not Getting It 92

11 Barry Buffett 97

12 And Then There Was Murdoch 106

Book 2 Autumn

1 The Life of the Party 113

2 Ailes and Truman 133

3 My Dinner with Rupert 151

4 The Rehearsal 159

5 The Other Panel 178

6 The First Day 182

7 The Missing (Mel and Sumner) 187

8 Charlie and Michael 197

9 More Michaels 211

10 Ken and Steve 225

11 More Michaels and More Dinner 237

12 Kurt and Harvey 250

13 Terry, Peter, and Jeff 253

14 The Man Up There 266

15 Unreal Property 275

16 The Big Evening 288

17 The Guest List 292

18 I Love Martha 295

19 Tina 301

20 And Still More Cocktails 311

21 Pinch 315

22 The Final Dinner 323

23 Barry Triumphant

Sort Of 328

24 Walter 337

Epilogue: Winter and Spring 349.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

0066621135 :

OCLC:

53342628