Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine
Greater New York City Area
- Current
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- Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine
- Past
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- Contributing Editor at Travel + Leisure
- Contributing Writer at Fortune
- Contributing Writer at Premiere
- Contributing Editor at Esquire
- Contributor at Rolling Stone
- Contributor at The Village Voice
- Education
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- Washington and Lee University
- Connections
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156
connections
- Industry
- Writing and Editing
- Websites
Frank Rose’s Summary
As a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, I write on the emerging digital landscape in media and entertainment. This covers a lot of territory, including advertising, cinema, mobile, music, television, and videogames. In the past couple of years I've written major stories on such topics as Trent Reznor's experiment with alternate reality games, Sony's gamble on the PlayStation 3, and Philip K. Dick in Hollywood. I also write frequently for Epicenter, the business blog at Wired.com.
Before joining Wired I wrote on the media business and pop culture for Esquire, Fortune, Premiere, and other major magazines. I've also written several books, most recently The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business, about the talent agency that's been a major force in Hollywood since movies were born.
Frank Rose’s Specialties:
I like to know how things work—not so much gadgets as organizations, subcultures, and humans in general. This has led me over the years to explore the rock scene, the film industry, the tech world, and most recently the emerging media landscape of the digital age.
Frank Rose’s Experience
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Contributing Editor
Wired Magazine
(Writing and Editing industry)
1999 — Present (10 years )
In 1999 I was invited to join the New York office of Wired Magazine. It was a welcome opportunity to pull together the various strands of my career—the tech coverage of the '80s, the Hollywood focus of the early '90s, and the media business coverage of the late '90s—at a unique and inimitable publication. At first I concentrated on the media conglomerates' often-hapless attempts to enter the digital world, but as the outline of that world started to become clearer I've broadened my focus to include the empowerment of individuals at the moguls' expense. I'm also now blogging at Epicenter, the tech business Web log at Wired News.
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Contributing Editor
Travel + Leisure
(Public Company; Writing and Editing industry)
1998 — 1999 (1 year )
By the late '90s, travel had become a major feature of my personal and professional life, so I was pleased to be offered a position at T+L. During this period I wrote feature articles and columns on various destinations in North America and Europe. My article on walking in the Loire Valley has been excerpted in Travel + Leisure's Unexpected France, available from DK Books.
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Contributing Writer
Fortune
(Public Company; Writing and Editing industry)
1997 — 1999 (2 years )
Following the 1995 publication of The Agency, I began to write for Fortune about the entertainment industry and the global media conglomerates (Walt Disney, Time Warner, Viacom...) that dominate it. The late 1990s was a time of outsized personalities—Michael Eisner, Gerry Levin, Edgar Bronfman Jr.—jockeying to control the media business, with, as it turns out, largely disastrous results. Much of the disaster had to do with the emergence of digital media, which few understood but all wished to master.
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Contributing Writer
Premiere
(Public Company; Writing and Editing industry)
1991 — 1996 (5 years )
After the publication of West of Eden in 1989, I became increasingly interested in Hollywood and the film industry. This led to my writing for Premiere magazine, then edited by Susan Lyne, on such subjects as Jeffrey Katzenberg (when he was still president of Walt Disney) and Tony Perkins (after his death from AIDS). One of these articles—"The Case of the Ankling Agents," about the collapse of the motion picture department at William Morris—led to my next book, The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business.
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Contributing Editor
Esquire
(Writing and Editing industry)
1982 — 1987 (5 years )
As a writer at Esquire in the early 1980s I focused on youth subcultures, from the downtown arts scene in lower Manhattan to Christian surfers in southern California. Along the way I became intrigued by the hacker phenomenon and by Silicon Valley, which was then emerging as a major force in the American economy. This led to my writing two books: Into the Heart of the Mind, a fly-on-the-wall observation of a group of artificial intelligence researchers at UC Berkeley, and West of Eden, a blow-by-blow account of the three-year relationship between Steve Jobs and John Sculley at Apple. West of Eden was reprinted in Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK. Both books were San Francisco Bay Area best-sellers.
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Contributor
Rolling Stone
(Writing and Editing industry)
1977 — 1981 (4 years )
In the late '70s I wrote record reviews and feature stories for Rolling Stone, including a 1977 cover story on the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever. I also contributed to several Rolling Stone Press books, including The Rolling Stone Record Guide and Rolling Stone Visits Saturday Night Live.
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Contributor
The Village Voice
(Writing and Editing industry)
1975 — 1981 (6 years )
On arriving in New York City from Virginia I began to write extensively for the Village Voice, contributing music reviews and cover stories under the direction of Robert Christgau and other editors. As a regular columnist for Riffs, the Voice's music section, I covered the scene at CBGB and other downtown clubs, chronicling the rise of punk and the emergence of such performers as Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, and the Ramones.
