Sharon Waxman

Sharon I. Waxman (born c.1963) is an American author, journalist, and blogger who has been a correspondent for ''The Washington Post'' and ''The New York Times'', and founded the Hollywood and media business news site ''TheWrap'' in early 2009.

Biography

Sharon Waxman is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author and the founder and editor-in-chief of TheWrap. She is also the host of “TheWrap-Up” podcast, creator of TheGrill business conference on the convergence of entertainment and technology as well as the creator of the Power Women series focused on women’s leadership, including the Power Women Summit, the largest annual gathering of women in media and entertainment.

A leading authority on the entertainment business and media, Waxman was the Hollywood correspondent for ''The New York Times'' and a correspondent for eight years for ''The Washington Post''. She started out as a foreign correspondent, covering Europe and the Middle East for a decade. She is the author of two books, including, “Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System.”

Career

Journalism

In 2021 Sharon Waxman was named Online Journalist of the Year by the LA Press Club's SoCal Journalism Awards, with WaxWord named as the best blog that same year. Additionally, “TheWrap-Up” podcast has won several top awards as has the website under her editorial leadership. 

Waxman was a foreign correspondent in Europe and the Middle East from 1989 to 1995. During that time, she worked for ''Reuters'', as a Jerusalem correspondent, and a number of American newspapers.

In 1995, she moved to Los Angeles to cover Hollywood for ''The Washington Post''. In 1998, Waxman won the feature writing award for arts and entertainment from the University of Missouri. In 1999, she was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by ''The Washington Post'' for her work covering the Second Palestinian Intifada. In 2000, she won the Penney Award, the highest prize in feature writing. Between 2001 and 2003, Waxman covered stories in the Middle East for ''The Washington Post.''

In 2003, she began covering Hollywood for ''The New York Times''. In 2004, after being attacked repeatedly by gossip blogger Roger Friedman in his writing, she opined about Friedman: "If he spent half as much time checking his facts as he did complaining about people stealing from him, there wouldn’t be so many errors in his reporting!" She added, referring to Fox News, for whom he wrote as a freelancer: "Do they hold him to journalistic standards, or does he just get to slander people with impunity?"

In 2012, Waxman was named the best online columnist at the National Entertainment Journalism Awards. The following year, she won the Distinguished Journalist in New Media from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Authorship

In 2005, she published the LA Times best-seller "Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System." The book profiles six directors, including Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell. In 2008, Waxman published her second book, "Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World," which explores the global trade in antiquities and the battle by source countries to retrieve antiquities held in Western museums.

TheWrap

Waxman founded the Hollywood and media business news site TheWrap in early 2009. According to CBS Market Watch, Waxman raised $500,000 for TheWrap news, as a news portal site covering entertainment and media, which launched on January 26, 2009. A second round of financing was closed in 2010. By 2013, TheWrap.com had grown into a site with 30 employees. It also convenes an annual conference attended by leaders in entertainment, media, and technology called TheGrill.

TheWrap has won multiple awards for investigative reporting, columns, criticism and feature writing. In 2021 Waxman was honored as the Best Online Journalist at the L.A. Press Club SoCal Journalism Awards, as well for her blog, WaxWord. TheWrap was chosen as the best online news website at the SoCal Journalism Awards in 2018, 2012 and 2009, and best entertainment website at the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards in 2018. In 2019, the site won two National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards for the multimedia package “#AfterMeToo: 12 Accusers Share What Happened Next, From Firing to More Trauma.” In 2021, the L.A. Press Club’s SoCal Journalism Awards gave the site top prizes for feature photography as well as for its weekly podcast, “TheWrap-Up.”

She is also the creator of WrapWomen, a power base of influential women in media and entertainment, dedicated to promoting women’s leadership. WrapWomen convenes the largest annual event for women and underrepresented groups in entertainment, The Power Women Summit, which in 2021 drew 1 million streams over 3 days in a virtual format.

Toxic Workplace Allegations

In October 2021, The Daily Beast published a story about Waxman entitled "Hollywood Media Mogul Is ‘Degrading’ Boss From Hell, Her Staffers Say." 20 former employees of The Wrap spoke with The Daily Beast, detailing how Waxman's "toxic" actions in the workplace drove high turnover in her newsroom. One former staffer said that Waxman verbally berated him for slacking off when he took a few hours off one day "to bring his fiancée to the oncologist for a cancer check-up." They also "alleged that Waxman has often had screaming outbursts at employees, engaged in demeaning behavior, and berated employees for dealing with family emergencies during work hours, including threatening one staffer for working from home to care for their injured child."

References

External links

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Waxman's blog: WaxWord

TheWrap.com

{{DEFAULTSORT:Waxman, Sharon
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Place of birth missing (living people)
American bloggers
American women journalists
Barnard College alumni
Alumni of St Antony's College, Oxford
The New York Times writers
The Washington Post journalists
Writers from Los Angeles
21st-century American women writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American women bloggers
Writers from Cleveland
Journalists from Ohio