Michael Hiltzik

Michael Hiltzik is an American columnist and reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In 1999, he and colleague Chuck Philips won a Pulitzer Prize for their articles about corruption in the music industry. In 2004, he won a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. His numerous books include Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (1999), Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century (2010), and The New Deal: A Modern History (2011). His next book, Titans at War: How the Railroad Battles of J.P. Morgan, E.H. Harriman, and Jay Gould Made America Modern, will be published in 2019.

Michael was a journalist and Albany bureau chief at the Buffalo Courier-Express in (Buffalo, New York) in 1974–1978. He was a staff writer at the Providence Journal-Bulletin (Providence, Rhode Island) 1979–1981. He joined The Los Angeles Times as a financial writer 1981–1983, and was its financial correspondent in New York City 1982–1988, Nairobi bureau chief 1988–1993, and Moscow correspondent 1993–1994. He has been a financial staff writer, editor, and business columnist at the Times since 1994. He won Silver Gavel award from the American Bar Association and an Overseas Press Club citation foe his reporting from East Africa. In 1996 he was a finalist for two Pulitzer Prizes, for his reporting on health care issues in California and on a major entertainment merger between Disney and ABC.

Along with Times staff writer Chuck Philips, Hiltzik won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for their series on corruption and bribes in the music industry.  The year-long series exposed corruption in the music business in three different areas: The Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences raised money for an ostensible charity that netted only pennies on the dollar for its charity; radio station "payola," for airplay of new recordings; and the proliferation of exploitive and poorly conceived medical detox programs for celebrities.  The series led to the removal of C. Michael Green, then the Grammy chief.

Business Columnist, The Los Angeles Times