Michael started in journalism as a reporter at various East Coast newspapers, including The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey, and the Boston Herald American. He was the first staff writer and later became a senior editor for Science 80, a 600,000-circulation monthly covering science for a general audience that won three National Magazine Awards. Working on the launch of Science 80 gave him a taste for start-ups. In 1986, Michael co-founded Hippocrates, now a million-circulation magazine called Health, which won four National Magazine Awards while he served as managing editor and executive editor.
Michael’s consulting work has included the launches of Dwell, Afar, and University Business magazines, all of which won national awards soon after their debuts. He also was instrumental in the strategic planning and launch of Thrive, an online healthful lifestyle network produced by Time, Inc. and America Online. Other Web consulting projects include critiques of sites for five magazines of the American Chemical Society; a site-wide review of content and usability for Discovery.com; and a series of editing workshops for WebMD. For clients such as PC World, VIA, String Letter Publishing, the AARP Bulletin, and Hospitals & Health Networks, Michael has offered management advice, guided major renovations, evaluated potential acquisitions, and coached editorial staff.
Michael also has served as the editor of Strings magazine and edited several jazz arranging books for Berklee Press. He is the author of A Conspiracy of Cells—a popular, nonfiction account of a scandal in cancer research. From 2000 to 2008, Michael was an academic advisor and instructor for the Stanford Professional Publishing Courses. In a summer study-abroad program run by ieiMedia, he teaches magazine and multimedia journalism to American college students in Urbino, Italy. He has a B.S. in physics from Haverford College.
