Michael Hiltzik

Michael A. Hiltzik (born November 9, 1952) is an American columnist, reporter and author who has written extensively for the Los Angeles Times. In 1999, he won a beat reporting Pulitzer Prize for co-writing a series of articles about corruption in the music industry with Chuck Philips. He won two Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. He won Silver Gavel award from the American Bar Association and the Overseas Press Club cited his reporting on East African issues. In 1996 he was a finalist for two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting on health care issues in California and his reporting on a major entertainment merger between Disney and ABC. The year-long series exposed corruption in the music business in three different areas: The Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences raised money for an ostensible charity that netted only pennies on the dollar for its charity; radio station "payola", for airplay of new recordings; and the proliferation of exploitive and poorly conceived medical detox programs for celebrities. Mark Saylor, then entertainment editor of the business section of the paper, said it was gratifying because it recognized "aggressive reporting on the hometown industry . . . where The LA Times has long labored under a cloud, the misperception that ...[they]... were soft on the entertainment industry". The series led to the removal of C. Michael Green, then Grammy chief.

In 2004, Hiltzik won a Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary.

In 2006, Hiltzik was suspended without pay from the LA Times for sockpuppeting on his blog "The Golden State". Hiltzik admitted to posting under false names on multiple sites, using the pseudonym "Mikekoshi" to criticize commentators Hugh Hewitt and Patrick Frey. In December 2009, the LA Times announced that Hiltzik would be returning to the paper as a business columnist.

In January 2022, Hiltzik was criticized for a column where he encouraged public humiliation of unvaccinated people who died from COVID-19. He said, "mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encourage others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled".

Books

Golden State: The Making of California. New York: HarperCollins, 2025. ISBN 978-0-358-53934-6.

Radio interviews Hiltzik has been interviewed about internet privacy matters on talk radio shows such as the Norman Goldman Show.