Grossberger, Lewis 1941–

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Grossberger, Lewis 1941–

(Media Person)

PERSONAL: Born 1941.

ADDRESSES: Home—92 Horatio St., New York, NY 10014. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Baltimore Evening Sun, Baltimore, MD, copy editor, 1964–66; Newsday, New York, NY, reporter and editor, 1966–71; New York Post, New York, NY, reporter, 1973–75; freelance journalist, 1971–.

WRITINGS:

(With Vic Ziegel) The Non-Runner's Book, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1978.

Read My Clips: Media Person Cuts Up, Random House (New York, NY), 1991.

Turn That Down!: A Hysterical History of Rock, Roll, Pop, Soul, Punk, Funk, Rap, Grunge, Motown, Metal, Disco, Techno, and Other Forms of Musical Aggression over the Ages, Emmis Books (Cincinnati, OH), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Rolling Stone, Village Voice, New York, Time, Inside Sports, Playboy, and TV Guide. Columnist for 7 Days, 1989–91, and for Media Week, 1993–, sometimes under pseudonym Media Person.

SIDELIGHTS: Although he has worked as a journalist for many years, Lewis Grossberger is probably best known for his works of humor. His collaborative project The Non-Runner's Book, a spoof of the jogging craze, extols the virtues of a stationary life; it is dedicated to the non-running president Calvin Coolidge. Grossberger's longest-running piece of humor, penned under the pseudonym Media Person, is also a spoof, this time of Grossberger's own news industry. Media Person, Grossberger's jaded alter-ego, exists entirely in a world created by the media. He never leaves his New York apartment, and his only news of the outside world comes from watching television, listening to the radio, and reading the newspapers and magazines that are delivered to his home. Media Person originally appeared in Grossberger's column in 7 Days magazine, but after the magazine folded, Media Person resurfaced in the writer's syndicated columns and in his column in Media Week. The best of the early Media Person columns are also collected in Grossberger's second book, Read My Clips: Media Person Cuts Up. It is an "outstanding collection," a reviewer commented in Publishers Weekly; "beneath [Media Person's] saturnine smile lurks a devastating critic."

Turn That Down!: A Hysterical History of Rock, Roll, Pop, Soul, Punk, Funk, Rap, Grunge, Motown, Metal, Disco, Techno, and Other Forms of Musical Aggression over the Ages is Grossberger's satirical history of rock and pop and includes comments on celebrities from Elvis to Britney Spears.

Grossberger told CA: "Throughout my career, I have always endeavored to surpass the greatest writers in the history of literature, Shakespeare, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Dante, Joyce, Proust, Melville. So far, I have not once come even remotely close."