Burn Rate

"Of all the journalists I met in New York when I was working at Vanity Fair , the one who came closest to living up to my ideal – fearless, funny, provocative, profound – was Michael Wolff. When I met him in 1998 he was writing a weekly media column for New York magazine and it was so good, such a must-read, that he was the toast of the city. I introduced myself via email after reading Burn Rate and he was kind enough to invite me to lunch. We didn’t hit it off right away, but a few years later, after I had been sacked by Vanity Fair and he was now writing a media column for the magazine, we became good friends. Burn Rate is Wolff’s hilarious, self-deprecating account of his unhappy career as a dot com entrepreneur. For a while it looked as though he might hit the big time and cash out with billions of dollars – which was definitely his aim – but he missed it by a whisker and his business ended up going down the tubes. The book is terrifically informative – he has an extraordinary depth of knowledge about the space where technology, business and media intersect – but what makes it so compelling is the comic juxtaposition of his conviction that he’s always the smartest person in the room, no matter what, and his inability to hit the big time. The book might as well be subtitled “If I’m so smart, how come I’m not rich?” and while that sounds like it could be whiny and bitter, it’s actually very funny. Wolff and I fell out after he insulted my wife at a dinner party in 2008 and we haven’t spoken since. He’s a prickly, irascible character with a Sicilian capacity for feuding, but if you’re on the right side of him he’s wonderfully entertaining company. I wrote an article for The Observer in August 2009 saying I wanted to set up a “comprehensive grammar” in west London, and it snowballed from there. Getting involved in a campaign and using my platform in the national media to promote a cause has been a new departure for me, but a good one. I have a serious side that, before I started campaigning for free schools, didn’t come out much in my journalism. I spent three years at various universities after leaving Oxford, pursuing a career as an academic, but I left all that by the wayside when my journalism career took off. It’s been good to pick it back up again. One of the biggest differences it’s made to my professional life is that I find myself writing much longer pieces, often targeted at quite specialised audiences. For instance, I’ve just written a 3,000 word essay about Sweden’s public service reforms. That’s quite a departure from writing about gatecrashing the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Another departure that’s flowed from my involvement with free schools is that I’ve become more overtly political. I’ve always been a libertarian Tory, but before 2009 I didn’t write much about politics. Now I write – or, rather, blog – about little else, taking up the cudgels on behalf of the coalition, particularly Michael Gove. Does that make me a Tom Baldwin figure? I don’t think so, because my regard for Michael is based on a shared belief in classical liberal education rather than obeisance to power – but I suppose Baldwin might make the same defence. I occupy a slightly odd position as a journalist in that I’m not simply a commentator, I’m also a minor protagonist in the political drama I’m writing about. There’s nothing new about being a campaigning journalist, but it’s unusual for someone waging a campaign to cross over into the political arena – and when they do, they often stop being a journalist. I haven’t stopped. I guess you’d describe me as a journalist and activist rather than a journalist and campaigner, which is a subtle difference. But I’m sure journalist/activists will become more common. It’s something that goes hand in hand with blogging. It’s a combination of roles that seems to be more and more popular with young journalists just entering the profession."