Michael Wolff reconciles with the internet

You know the internet has achieved final victory when the medium's most prominent skeptic makes his peace. Michael Wolff, whose last venture was so painful he wrote a scathing book about the experience and then fled to magazines, is in discussions with Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp about a new project. The Burn Rate author, now a columnist at Vanity Fair, is planning an internet news business.

Wolff, in an email to Valleywag, confirmed he was talking with Michael Jackson, head of IAC's content efforts: "I'm too old for social media. I've been talking to MJ and others about a news idea." Presumably, if Wolff gets funding from IAC, he'll have to give up his Vanity Fair job. Wolff had a weekly column in New York Magazine for many years, and had seemed grumpy, more so than usual, at the Conde Nast monthly, in which he appeared only sporadically. (Wolff says, nevertheless, he appears more than any other contributor.)

IAC's main activity is e-commerce, with units such as Ticketmaster and Expedia, the latter now hived off. But Diller's professional roots are in Hollywood and television, and he has ventured back into content with acquisitions such as that of College Humor, the popular entertainment site.

People say that senators have a hard time running for president, because their votes come back to haunt them; writers, when they move into any position of power, contend with their earlier words. Michael Wolff, a particularly prolific writer, has more to eat than most.

For a start, it's easy to forget that Wolff, first in mainstream media, outed Diller, who is married to Diane von Furstenberg, but now widely known to be gay. He called Diller a gay megagorilla — a reference to his business heft, rather than physique — despite a death threat

In addition to his expose of the internet business, back in 1998, Wolff more recently wrote an obituary of the media industry, Autumn of the Moguls. Among the moguls, yes, Barry Diller, Wolff's prospective employer. Wolff, a typically acidic writer, has, truth be told, been relatively mild with Diller over the years. But if one wanted to be mischievous, one could dig out this interview he did with CNN when the book came out.

KURTZ: Sumner Redstone, Barry Diller, Michael Eisner. Why are you down on all these big, powerful media moguls?

WOLFF: Well, because they've ruined the media business. They've ruined the business that I work in, that I've grown up in.

KURTZ: What did they do that was so terrible?

WOLFF: Well, they took literally thousands of companies and they reduced them to five. And five companies that are fundamentally dysfunctional from a business point of view and also from the other point, that produce media that no one is interested in.

LAZY VALLEYWAG: I looked around for the killer quote, in which Wolff disparages the internet business. The line he'd be most embarrassed by. I don't have Burn Rate handy. Anyone feel like doing some research?

"Burn Rate : How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet" (Michael Wolff)

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