Ken Auletta

Auletta's career got its footing in the 1970s, when he began contributing to major publications and building the kind of sourcing network that serious media criticism requires (Wikipedia). A long run at The New Yorker followed — and that's where the reputation solidified. His writing on the media industry wasn't just commentary; it was reported, documented, and often uncomfortable for the subjects involved. The book *The New Media* examined how digital technology was reshaping traditional media structures, and it established him as one of the more credible voices on a subject that a lot of journalists were still fumbling to understand. The move into film, or at least into appearing in films, came through *The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley*, the HBO documentary directed by Alex Gibney that traced the rise and spectacular collapse of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. Auletta's role wasn't that of an actor — he appeared as himself, a journalist with context and perspective on the Silicon Valley culture that made Holmes's fraud possible for as long as it was. That's a meaningful distinction. His contribution to the film drew on years of reporting on tech industry ethics, the gap between founder mythology and operational reality, and the way media coverage can both expose and enable bad actors. Since then, Auletta's work has continued across journalism and occasional media appearances, with his focus remaining on the intersection of technology, power, and institutional accountability. He's collaborated with filmmakers and industry figures who share that interest — not as a creative partner in the conventional sense, but as a critical voice that projects find useful when they're trying to say something true about how Silicon Valley actually operates. The throughline across his career, from the 1970s through his more recent work, is a refusal to let the story get sanitized.