Jesse Kornbluth

Jesse Kornbluth is an American journalist, author, and collaborator who has worked across magazine writing, books, screenwriting, and the early commercial internet.

As a magazine journalist he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, New York, and Architectural Digest, and contributed to The New Yorker and the New York Times. His own books include Airborne: The Triumph and Struggle of Michael Jordan, Highly Confident: The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken, Pre-Pop Warhol, and Notes from the New Underground.

He is better known in publishing circles for his collaborations, and the list is unusually varied. He worked with Roger Enrico on The Other Guy Blinked, the Pepsi president's account of the cola wars written within a year of the New Coke episode. He collaborated with the choreographer Twyla Tharp on The Collaborative Habit, and with the Hearst executive Frank Bennack on Leave Something on the Table.

That range, from a soft drink executive to a choreographer to a media chairman, is the mark of a collaborator who can find a subject's voice instead of imposing one, which is the actual skill in the work and the hardest part of it to demonstrate.

He co-founded Bookreporter.com and served as editorial director of America Online from 1997 to 2003, a period when the service was the primary internet experience for a very large number of Americans. In 2004 he launched HeadButler.com, a cultural recommendation site focused on the best books, music, and film instead of the newest.

He has also written two novels, Married Sex and JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story, along with plays and film work. He describes himself as a recovering journalist.