Melville House Books

Michael Wolff ponders his fate.

When Michael Wolff first set out to write his recently-released book about Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, he tried to contact Judith Regan to see if she would discuss her well-known suit against Murdoch over her firing from HarperCollins, which is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp. Wolff, who has written about Regan before (in his column for Vanity Fair), wrote to Regan: “Once again, I beseech you: Talk to me. Considering the dreadful things I write about you when you don’t talk to me, it really can’t get any worse by talking to me. … Come on, you know how this works. You’re now the News Corp. whipping girl — so at least put it back to them.” But he got no response from Regan. Now the book has come out, and according to a report in the Rush and Molloy column in The New York Daily News, Regan doesn’t like what Wolff had to say about her — that is, that she was “spectacularly” successful at coming up with bestsellers … but she was also “a nut,” “unemployable anywhere else” and “a reviled figure.” He also noted that a Murdoch lawyer had accussed her of making anti-Semitic remarks. “I’m going to sue him personally, so he’ll have to spend his own money,” says Regan. “Michael Wolff has been obsessed with me and my sex life for close to 30 years. I’m finally going to give him what he wants — he’s going to get [bleeped] by Judith Regan.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.