Blind Item Guessing Game: Michael Wolff's Mystery Billionaire
In Vanity Fair, Michael Wolff pokes around for reasons to explain the surge of interest among rich folk for buying media (though he ignores the copious free tail factor). The article begins and ends with Wolff enjoying an "off-the-record visit" with an anonymous billionaire who fits the bill. A few details make their way into the prose, since Wolff doesn't really want to keep the guy's name secret; where's the Media Titan cachet in that? So let's examine the billionaire tidbits:
... this billionaire was interested ... in Newsday and The Boston Globe and the L.A. Times and The Wall Street Journal ...
... appropriately larger-than-life character, remarkably fit ...
... vast office filled with knickknacks and press coverage and separate seating areas ...
... he knew nothing whatsoever about the newspaper business, or news. Zip. Nada.
"He's probably the leading expert in buying businesses he knows nothing about."
Start your engines. Later in the article, Wolff name-checks David Geffen, Ron Burkle, Eli Broad, Jack Welch (technically only a 720-hundred-millionaire), and Hank Greenberg. Unless that's a diversionary tactic, you can thus probably eliminate them from consideration. Who's left? Bruce Wasserstein? Mort Zuckerman? Rupert Murdoch? Mike Bloomberg? Hardly a good fit, given even the scant details above. Send your guesses to the usual place.
