Michael Wolff Quotes

If a newspaper is to be of real service to the public, it must have a big circulation: first, because its news and its comments must reach the largest possible number of people; second, because circulation means advertising, and advertising means money, and money means independence.

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.

The thinner a newspaper or magazine is - due to reduced revenue from advertising dollars - the less editorial content because of the standard ad-to-editorial ratio, and the less money there is to support investigative journalism.

What concerns me is that the Independent is going, and there are job cuts at the Guardian, but the wretched Daily Mail is still rampant, making lots of money by millions of people clicking on pictures of cellulited women. I think that's sad.

I've been with the paper for almost 30 years.

I worry about every newspaper. I worry about the financial undertaking, and I worry that somehow the loss of the sale of the paper version will affect their ability to have journalists and editors and producers. We really need those.

In market research I did at Microsoft Corp. in the early 1990s, I estimated that the 'Wall Street Journal' took in about 75 cents per copy from subscribers, $1.25 at the newsstand and a whopping $5 per copy from ads. The ad revenue let them run a far bigger newsroom than subscribers were paying for.

It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic.

I grew up with 'The Denver Post' and the 'Golden Transcript.' There was never a moment that I thought I'd work at the 'New York Times.' My goal, starting out, was just to see if I could be a journalist.

Upfronts are all about ad sales.

I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.

Television is more of a business. You can't take as many risks, because there's so many channels now, and the advertising's dropping.

Obviously you have to make a profit to put out a newspaper. I'm not an idiot. But when the margins are in excess of 25 per cent you're talking about greed.

All media owners want to attract advertising revenue. Google is no different.

Television was supposed to be a national park. Instead it has become a money machine. It's a commodity now, just like pork bellies.

I've never wanted to get adjusted to my income, because I knew I wanted to go back to public service. And in comparison to what my mother earns and how I was raised, it's not modest at all. I have no right to complain.

I've devoted a lot of my time and effort during the past few years to developing my advertising copywriting business to the point of where I can support my family and don't have to depend on writing fiction for my income.

I'm definitely scared about newspapers. The problem is nobody wants to catch a falling knife, and nobody knows where things will stabilise. The value of newspapers has dropped significantly. I think we still have more pain to be felt.

American newspapers are dying mostly because they were so dull for so long, a whole generation gave up on them.

Newspapers with declining circulations can complain all they want about their readers and even say they have no taste. But you will still go out of business over time. A newspaper is not a public trust - it has a business model that either works or it doesn't.

Newspapers are not free and they never have been. They can appear to be so, but someone, somewhere is covering the costs whether that is through advertising, a patron's largesse or a license fee. Advertising is no longer subsidising the industry and so the cost must fall somewhere - why not on the people who use it?

You see movie stars advertising all sorts of things today for whatever reason. And it may be that it affords them the luxury to do smaller movies or to go and do a play. Because, otherwise, you have to keep doing movies where you get paid millions and millions of dollars to maintain a certain lifestyle.

We need to recognise that the whole edifice of our fifth estate, of our journalism, has been built on a foundation of newspaper journalism and that that foundation is crumbling. The management of the media companies will deny that the end is nigh. I hope they are right.

I could live very quietly, do advertising to earn money.

I was thinking of applying to the 'Guardian' for a job after university. Yeah, I wanted to be one of the people who writes stories in G2.