Autumn of the Moguls: My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media. Michael Wolff

       Autumn of the Moguls

       My Misadventures with the Titans, Poseurs, and Money Guys Who Mastered and Messed Up Big Media

       Michael Wolff

      HARPER PERENNIAL

       for Alison

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Prologue

Book ONE: Spring and Summer 2002

1 THE COMEDY

2 MY TABLE

3 LUNCH

4 THE POWERS THAT BE

5 THE PARTNER

6 MY THEORY

7 THE BALLAD OF JEAN-MARIE

8 IN THE SAME BOAT

9 BOB PITTMAN—A DIGRESSION

10 NOT GETTING IT

       11 BARRY BUFFETT

       12 AND THEN THERE WAS MURDOCH

       Book TWO: Autumn

       1 THE LIFE OF THE PARTY

       2 AILES AND TRUMAN

       3 MY DINNER WITH RUPERT

       4 THE REHEARSAL

       5 THE OTHER PANEL

       6 THE FIRST DAY

       7 THE MISSING (MEL AND SUMNER)

       8 CHARLIE AND MICHAEL

       9 MORE MICHAELS

       10 KEN AND STEVE

       11 MORE MICHAELS AND MORE DINNER

       12 KURT AND HARVEY

       13 TERRY, PETER, AND JEFF

       14 THE MAN UP THERE

       15 UNREAL PROPERTY

       16 THE BIG EVENING

       17 THE GUEST LIST

       18

Martha

       19 TINA

       20 AND STILL MORE COCKTAILS

       21 PINCH

       22 THE FINAL DINNER

       23 BARRY TRIUMPHANT—SORT OF

       24 WALTER

       EPILOGUE: WINTER AND SPRING

       INDEX

       Notes And Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       By the same author

       P. S. Ideas interviews & features …

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

       A flashback, already

      On the tenth day of the new millennium, Bruce Judson, a former Time Inc.-er, left a long message on my machine. Judson, who had formerly been an assistant to various high-ranking Time Inc. ministers, was making a joke, which I only half listened to, about some meeting we had been at together.

      Judson and I—with Time managing editor and future CNN chairman Walter Isaacson—had sat on a committee at Time Warner that had decided to recommend that the company not buy AOL in 1994. But why