Ken Auletta

Ken Auletta has written Annals of Communications columns and profiles for The New Yorker magazine since 1992. He is the author of eleven books, including five national bestsellers: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed And Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled, The End of the World As We Know It, which was published in November of 2009. His other books include: Backstory: Inside the Business of News; Media Man: Ted Turner’s Improbable Empire; The Streets Were Paved with Gold; and The Underclass.

Auletta was among the first to popularize the so-called information superhighway with his February, 1993, profile of Barry Diller's search for something new. He has profiled the leading figures and companies of the Information Age, including Google, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, AOL Time Warner, John Malone, Harvey Weinstein, and the New York Times; he has dissected media meteors that fell to earth like "push" technology and inter-active TV, probed media violence, the PAC giving of communication giants, the fat lecture fees earned by journalist/pundits, and explored what "synergy" may mean to journalism. His 2001 profile of Ted Turner won a National Magazine Award as the best profile of the year. He covered the Microsoft antitrust trial for the magazine. In ranking him as America's premier media critic, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded, "no other reporter has covered the new communications revolution as thoroughly as has Auletta." New York Magazine described him as the "media Boswell." In another life, Auletta taught and trained Peace Corps volunteers; served as Special Assistant to the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce; worked in Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 campaign for the Presidency; and was Executive Editor of the weekly Manhattan Tribune.