Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures With the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The media business is collapsing..." (more)
Key Phrases: mogul class, other moguls, media business, Time Warner, New York, News Corp (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Michael Wolff. Harper Business, $25 (272p) ISBN 0-06-662113-5When the Internet boom began, Wolff set out to make a fortune and wound up with a bestselling memoir chronicling his failure (Burn Rate). Successfully reinventing himself as an industry pundit, most notably for New York magazine, he's reached the point where, as he boasts here, "[I]f there was a media party, I'd be invited to it." (He can even produce a guest list as proof.) This book centers on one such party: an industry conference where he's enlisted to interview Rupert Murdoch. Onto this foundation he piles digression after digression until he has offered up a catty remark about just about every major player in the media biz. Thus "gray and corpulent" Fox News head Roger Ailes is "one of the great creepy figures of the age," and even Walter Isaacson, acknowledged as the "fantasy life" figure for journalists of the author's generation, is eventually skewered as "the most self-important person in [his] class at Harvard." All this heel-nipping serves as anecdotal support for Wolff's contention that the industry is a chain of con games in which the last domino is about to fall and Wolff is the only one brave enough to say so. Eventually, every topic returns to the subject of the author as industry outsider, with other people existing so that he might have opinions of them. A thin veneer of self-effacement does nothing to blunt the tremendous display of ego slathered over this superficial analysis.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The source of this book is the column Wolff writes for New York magazine called "This Media Life." As a media journalist, he finds himself in the strange position of analyzing his own business, and the acerbic jabs he hurls at media kings such as Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Rupert Murdoch have probably not made him many friends at the top. The empire, according to Wolff, is crumbling before our very eyes. The AOL Time-Warner merger, the biggest deal in history to go south, allowed one of the largest and most respected news organizations to be gobbled up by an Internet upstart at the height of the bubble. The record industry is dying, and would have done so 20 years ago if CDs had not come along to revive it. The failed attempts to thwart online file sharing are merely the last gasp of a group who, by many accounts, is a bunch of thugs anyway. And then there's the sacrificial burning of Martha Stewart. A thoroughly enjoyable slap in the face to media culture. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Collins (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066621135
• ISBN-13: 978-0066621135
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 111 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #878,652 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Superficial Gossip as Background for a Conference, November 4, 2003

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

If you want to read a book of common gossip about the foibles of those who head media companies, Autumn of the Moguls is the book for you. Mr. Wolff sees himself as a critic of the media and its leaders, and the gossip takes mostly a negative slant. He's a talented writer, and he does succeed in lampooning those in power . . . while acknowledging that even he feels the power of the media moguls when in their presence.

The book is structured around telling the story of a conference of media executives that Mr. Wolff participated in as an interviewer. If you have ever attended such a conference, you know that the main purposes are to make money for the promoters, make contacts for the participants and feed the egos of the speakers. Mr. Wolff captured those parts well, but in far too much detail for my taste. I found myself losing interest, and found it hard to keep picking the book up again.

I rated the book at two stars for several reasons.

First, as a source of gossip the book is flawed. People in the media industry do like to gossip about each other. I'm hardly a media insider, but I knew dozens of better stories about the people Mr. Wolff writes about than he included in his book. It seems like he doesn't really know the juicy gossip. Even when he reveals something that could be titillating, he doesn't do much with it. For example, one of his subjects is gay, and Mr. Wolff makes much of that point without ever connecting the fact to any good stories (other than being told not to print the fact). One can only conclude that Mr. Wolff doesn't know any good stories about the person.

Second, his analysis of the industry and its leaders is very superficial. It won't tell you anything you don't know from watching television. Are you surprised to learn that newspapers are losing readers and the broadcast networks are losing viewers?

Third, there is almost no business perspective in the book. So this is not a book about business, but about people who work in businesses.

Fourth, Mr. Wolff seems to know journalists (from his Time Inc. days) better than he knows media moguls. I'm not really all that interested in what happens to journalists. So I found those sections uninteresting.

Fifth, Mr. Wolff doesn't like to point out anything good that someone has done. Although this book is a satire (like the fictional Bonfire of the Vanities), it lacks balance. Some of the people he writes about are fools, but some are pretty effective at what they do. From this book, the writer's perspective makes them all sound alike.

Sixth, the ultimate thesis is somewhat suspect . . . that the ego-driven need for attention by moguls has single-handedly corrupted the media. It's as though the audience plays no part in media corruption. If no one paid any attention to a new show, magazine or Internet format, that approach would soon be dropped.

I seldom feel like I've wasted my time when I read a book by a fine writer, but I did this time.

You may be wondering why I didn't rate this book at one star. I was impressed by the many occasions when Mr. Wolff acknowledged his own shortcomings in being awed by power. He isn't able to be critical to his subjects' faces like he is able to do in print. That was a nice touch. As for the rest of the book, I found his high opinion of himself as the sole voice of reason among those who write about the media to be annoying.
I would skip this book in favor of a current magazine, television show, or Web site offering the latest gossip on media moguls.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Overly Long and Wordy, December 26, 2003

By A Customer

Let's face it, Wolff is a writer and is paid to write. Therefore, he has to fill the covers of this tome with enough chapters to justify it's existence. In reality, the book could be boiled down to about 5 really good chapters and still get his point across nicely. But then, it wouldnt be very thick and thick books make for nice ego-feeders, they also feel "right" when you pick them up and pay for them. It's almost like you are getting something for your money, right? Wrong.

Bottom line: it should have been a 2-part article. I don't need to know nearly what I've been told to get the "point" (and I think he had one) of this dreary and politely mean diatribe.

Don't waste your money, just read his articles online instead. You get the same venom without wasting your time reading about large apartments, snobby luncheons and all the would-be, has-been, wanna-be's of the media world.

Also, be sure to note that nearly all the favorable reviews here are from the NYC area or the east coast. Draw your own conclusions.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Splenetic Humor and Sardonic Invective as Analysis, November 4, 2003

By	Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

What do you say about a book like this? The style and pose of the book is such that if you praise it you are derided as a fool and if you express dislike it you are vilified as a flack for the vast media conspiracy or at least a naive phoole. Maybe what can be safely said is that if you like your gossip bilious, splenetic, and snarky, well, this is the book for you. It is hard to look away when someone has a powerful figure in his headlights and is driving them down at a high rate of speed. The act is so fascinatingly horrible that we just watch it happen no matter the guilt we feel for even tangentially being a part of such violence.

What you will find interesting in this book depends on your threshold of what you count as analysis. My own view is that the book is actually very light on serious insight. When Wolff passes judgment there is never supporting evidence beyond an anecdote or light witticism. There is a lot of stating, after the fact, what "everyone new at the time" when in fact few if any did. To Wolff almost everyone is a fool, a crook, or worse. Even his compliments have to be left-handed and include at least a back handed slap and an anticipatory retraction. He congratulates himself too much for minor accomplishments. He seems to think that saying merely outrageous things that draw sporadic and spasmodic approval he is somehow a serious analyst rather than a blind squirrel gathering an occasional nut.

And for someone who postures as one of the true insiders (note how proud he is in being invited to the inner-sanctum of the Foursquare conference) he, finally, comes across as quite provincial. He seems to actually believe that the media industry is the most powerful industry in the world and that we, all of us mere bumpkins, simply bow and scrape and accept every one of its pronouncements, promotions, and products. The standard ploy, regurgitated here, is that the fearsome enemy has all power but is simultaneously a complete and ineffectual fool. I don't know why this ploy works, but it does and is never true. One only needs to note the endless failures of network TV shows, magazines, movies, and books to skewer that kabob. Just as the small time villager projects his values and manner of life on the world, so does the blinkered Mr. Wolff.

But that is his job, his gig, his sense of himself. And more power to him, I suppose. Wolff writes with style and if you like that style, acerbic lapels and all, you will like this book. It really is all about style being its substance. There is actually no serious analysis that will do the student of business much good. But nearly everyone likes to read the dirt on the rich, powerful and the formerly rich and powerful. That is what this book provides.

I am giving this book four stars because I think it succeeds at what it is trying to be, however, for my personal tastes I would give it two stars.