RICHARD LAWRENCE POE is a New York Times-bestselling author and journalist. He is a contributing editor to NewsMax Magazine and NewsMax.com.
Mr. Poe has has written ten books since 1993. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. Mr. Poe’’s previous book was Hillary’’s Secret War. His personal blog appears at Poe.com.
He was formerly editor of FrontPageMagazine.com; senior editor of Success magazine; reporter for the New York Post; and managing editor of the East Village Eye.
Mr. Poe’s books have sold over 750,000 copies in the USA. Several have been published abroad, in as many as fifteen foreign languages. Books by Mr. Poe have appeared on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and BusinessWeek bestseller lists.
A frequent guest on national TV and talk radio shows, Mr. Poe has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, C-SPAN’s Book TV, Tony Brown’s Journal and has been interviewed by such talk radio heavyweights as Bob Grant, Barry Farber, Mike Siegel and G. Gordon Liddy.
Working with David Horowitz
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Mr. Poe’’s latest book, The Shadow Party
Mr. Poe served as editor of FrontPageMagazine.com — David Horowitz‘’s popular news and commentary site — from June 1, 2000 to February 15, 2002. He later returned to Horowitz’’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now called the David Horowitz Freedom Center) to work as a staff writer, researcher and blogger, from August 1, 2004 to October 30, 2006.
A former Marxist radical, David Horowitz helped formulate the New Left ideology that energized and defined the Sixties youth rebellion. Mr. Horowitz played a key role in planning and instigating the protest movement against the Vietnam War. He worked closely with the Black Panther Party during the Sixties and Seventies. Mr. Horowitz and Peter Collier coedited Ramparts — the flagship magazine of Sixties radicalism– from 1969 to 1973.
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In his autobiography Radical Son
The publishing world never forgave Mr. Horowitz for embracing conservatism. Once a bestselling author whose books won praise on a regular basis from the New York Times Book Review and other elite journals, Horowitz suddenly found himself banished from mainstream literary life. It took him years to regain his standing as a public intellectual. In the meantime, only the Internet provided Horowitz with a voice.
Mr. Poe was instrumental in helping Mr. Horowitz access the power of the Net. Under Poe’’s editorship, traffic to Horowitz’’s Web site FrontPage grew more than 1,500 percent in terms of page views (400 percent in terms of unique visitors). In absolute terms, traffic grew during that time from about 84,000 unique visitors per month to approximately 330,000 unique visitors (or, from about 229,000 visits to 900,000 visits) per month. Average monthly page views increased from 120,000 to nearly 2 million. During Poe’’s tenure, revenues soared nearly 2000 percent.
Mr. Poe resigned from FrontPage on February 15, 2002, in order to embark on what turned out to be an unexpectedly dramatic publishing adventure (see below). Before leaving, Poe wrote a farewell column — linked herewith — under the headline, “Mission Accomplished: A Fond Farewell to FrontPage Readers.”
Spiked by Big Media
 Random House reneged on its contract to publish The New Underground, but Mr. Poe managed to find another publisher. It was released under the title, Hillary’’s Secret War |
Mr. Poe left FrontPage in order to write a book that was originally titled The New Underground: How Conservatives Conquered the Internet. The proposed book drew its theme from a June 1, 2000 column Poe had written bearing the same name, “The New Underground.”
Random House contracted with Mr. Poe to publish the book through its Prima Forum imprint. Unfortunately, for reasons which remain obscure, Random House refused to publish The New Underground after receiving the completed manuscript in March 2003.
Prima Forum was a conservative book imprint which had come into Random House’’s possession through its April 2001 acquisition of Prima Publishing. After the acquisition, Prima was merged with the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House.
During the time Mr. Poe was writing The New Underground, Crown underwent an organizational shake-up. It entirely dissolved its Prima Publishing division. The conservative book imprint Prima Forum was now officially replaced by a new entity called Crown Forum on June 1, 2003. The new imprint Crown Forum still published conservative books, but its operations now received closer scrutiny from Crown’’s left-leaning publisher Steve Ross. It was Mr. Ross who decided to cancel publication of The New Underground.
Web Underground
Mr. Poe has described the ensuing events in an essay posted at FreeRepublic.com. The New Underground was eventually published under the title, Hillary’’s Secret War
“What a strange time that was. The events that followed bore an eerie similarity to many of the stories recounted in Hillary’’s Secret War
“Thank God for them. Had it not been for the direct intervention of various giants of Web media, I daresay Hillary’’s Secret War would have faded into the very oblivion that Big Media had intended for it.
“Joseph Farah published my book through his WND Books division (though it is now published by Thomas Nelson). David Horowitz gave me a full-length author interview in FrontPage. Christopher Ruddy and his partner Richard Mellon Scaife published a ringing endorsement of the book.
“But perhaps the greatest honor of all came from Jim Robinson, who not only wrote the Foreword to Hillary’’s Secret War, but took the unprecedented step of posting an official call to, “Freep this Book,” asking all Freepers who were able to purchase a copy of Hillary’’s Secret War.”
SlapHillary.com
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Poe and his wife Marie — who is a television producer with extensive experience in animation — created and launched the humorous Web site SlapHillary.com, which debuted on September 25, 2000 under the auspices of Horowitz’’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture (since renamed the David Horowitz Freedom Center). SlapHillary enabled users to slap an animated version of Hillary, from the left or right, by pushing a button.
SlapHillary became an overnight sensation on the Internet, reaching its peak when Brit Hume of Fox News visited the site to administer an on-air slap to Hillary on national television on September 27.
Rumor has it that Hillary herself - then immersed in her senatorial run against Rick Lazio - may have been forced to take note. “The buzz among political Web surfers - and even those in Clinton headquarters - is a new Internet site, SlapHillary.com…,” reported The New York Post on September 29.
Education
Richard Lawrence Poe was born and raised in Syracuse, New York. His father Alfred was a semiconductor engineer for General Electric and his mother Lillian a research microbiologist for Upstate Medical Center. He has two brothers and three sisters.
Poe showed an early aptitude for the sciences and aspired to be a physician. By age 12, his mother had taught him to perform clinical blood tests such as differential white cell counts in his home laboratory. At age 15, he spent the summer of 1974 studying geology at Syracuse University on a National Science Foundation scholarship.
Poe subsequently enrolled in SU’’s College of Arts and Sciences. He began his freshman year at Syracuse University in September 1975, at age 16. Mr. Poe originally enrolled as a pre-med candidate. He worked parttime at Upstate Medical Center, first as a research assistant charting the results of chemotherapy regimens on leukemia patients, then as a lab technician running what was then an innovative new test for lead poisoning, which involved measuring levels of free erythrocyte porphyrins (FEPs) in the patient’’s blood.
In the end, however, Mr. Poe decided to pursue a writing career instead of medicine. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from SU, graduating with Honors in Creative Writing, in June 1979. For his senior thesis, Poe made a new translation of Anton Chekhov’’s 1892 short story “Ward Six” (Palata Nomer Shest) from Russian into English.
Poe completed a summer session at the State University of Leningrad in the USSR in 1978. Sponsored by the Center for International Educational Exchange (CIEE), the program required total immersion in the Russian language, with all lectures and course work done in Russian. For excellence in Russian studies, Poe was inducted into Dobro Slovo, the National Slavic Honor Society, in 1979.
In the summer of 1981, Poe completed a writing apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO. He thereupon made a pilgrimage to San Francisco, seeking communion with whatever fading remnants might remain of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture, whose rise and fall during the Sixties had become an absorbing interest of Mr. Poe’’s. He stayed in San Francisco for several months, working odd jobs, beginning work on his first novel, and hob-nobbing with various Beat Generation figures who congregated in the Cafe Trieste in North Beach. Mr. Poe completed his novel after returning to Syracuse, but never submitted it for publication.
Writing Career
Poe wrote and published his first professional freelance article in 1979 for The Syracuse New Times, a weekly news and entertainment tabloid serving Central New York. He began working fulltime for the New Times in 1984, as an editor and reporter.
At that time, Curtis Sliwa was just beginning to organize Guardian Angels chapters in upstate cities, including Syracuse. Sliwa had previously achieved something akin to folk-hero status in New York City by leading unarmed patrols of volunteer crime-fighters, whose trademark red berets made them visible in any crowd. Now Sliwa was expanding to other cities.
Poe rode the New York subways with Sliwa and his Guardian Angels, and accompanied them on their first patrol in Syracuse. His coverage of the Guardian Angels won Poe a Professional Recognition Award from the Syracuse Press Club for Best Newspaper Column of 1984.
In April 1985, Mr. Poe moved to New York City, where he served as managing editor of the East Village Eye, a monthly magazine covering the so-called “downtown art scene.” From April 1985 to May 1986, Poe helped chronicle the burgeoning counterculture of off-beat art galleries, underground clubs and housing militants squatting in derelict buildings throughout the East Village, Alphabet City and the Lower East Side. Mr. Poe’s tenure at the Eye coincided with “The Scene’’s” turbulent climax. The downtown subculture which The New York Times Magazine had dubbed “The New Bohemia” winked out of existence circa 1987 — along with its flagship publication the East Village Eye — succumbing to the combined pressures of rising rents and a glutted art market.
Following a stint of several months as a reporter for the New York Post, Mr. Poe made his living as a freelance journalist in New York City, eventually gravitating toward business writing for magazines such as Venture and Success.
Success Magazine
Mr. Poe served as senior editor of Success magazine from 1989 to 1992. The magazine sent Poe to Russia several times to cover the fall of Communism and the rise of free enterprise in the former Soviet states.
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Poe left Success in June 1992 to become editor of a monthly magazine called America, America — a joint venture between New York media entrepreneur Richard Karz and the Russian daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. The new magazine was to be published in the Russian language, as an insert in Komsomolskaya Pravda. The venture was announced with great fanfare, including a write-up in The New York Times of December 16, 1991. Unfortunately, Mr. Karz and his Russian partners disbanded the venture before the first issue went to press.
The U.S. and Russian partners did manage to put their differences aside long enough to collaborate on a successful, one-time television venture, airing a three-hour series of documentaries about America on the Russian State Television network (Obshchestvennoye Rossiiskoye Televideniye - ORT) in July 1992. Poe’’s wife Marie co-produced the series, which was sponsored by GE and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Though mainly a presentation of pre-existing documentaries, the series also included an original 30-minute segment on U.S. business ventures in Russia, scripted by Mr. Poe and produced and directed by Marie.
Russian Boom
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Returning from Russia after the breakup of Mr. Karz’’s consortium, Mr. Poe wrote and published his first non-fiction book, How to Profit from the Coming Russian Boom
“It captures the excitement of working in Russia these days (what Poe calls `the honky-tonk air of a boomtown in the Klondike”) without minimising the danger and difficulty…” wrote Linda Bilmes in the Financial Times of September 28, 1993. “[H]e explains the privatisation process in plain English… While his optimism may be premature, there is no doubt that the new commodity and stock exchanges trading in vouchers offer an unprecedented opportunity for western investors — which this book is the first to mention.” Publishers Weekly of May 24, 1993 chonicled Poe’’s and Karz’’s Russian escapades in a blurb titled, “Poor Richard’’s Almanac.” It said:
When Richard Karz, who is presented as a case history in Richard Poe’’s How to Profit from the Coming Russian Boom
Russian Boom provided an early glimpse of George Soros, a billionaire global investor little known to the general public at that time. Poe described Soros’ investment in San Francisco-Moscow Teleport (SFMT), a telecom service then providing slow-scan video links between Russia and the USA.
At the time, Mr. Poe admired Soros as a business man, and portrayed him in a positive light. Years later, however, as Mr. Soros” interventions in US politics grew increasingly brazen and destructive, Poe felt duty-bound to write critically of the man, as he did in such articles as “George Soros” Coup” (NewsMax Magazine, May 2004) and “The Shadow Party” (FrontPageMagazine.com, October 6-11, 2005).
Ultimately, Poe joined forces with David Horowitz to co-write the New York Times bestseller The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party
Full-Time Author
Poe’’s second book, Wave 3 (Prima, 1994) turned out to be a surprise bestseller — the first in a series of books on network marketing that together sold more than half a million copies in the USA and countless more abroad.
The many successful titles Poe wrote for Prima Publishing enabled him to work independently for seven years as a fulltime author, writing books that varied in subject matter from self-help business tomes to speculative works on ancient history, such as Black Spark, White Fire
But Prima’’s days were numbered. Random House acquired Prima in April 2001 and dismantled the company entirely on June 1, 2003 — a development which Poe lamented in a June 3, 2003 article titled, “Can Liberals Publish Conservative Books?”
Poe’’s better-known books include Wave 3
Blogger and Web Journalist
Nowadays most of Poe’’s journalism appears on the Internet, either on his blog Poe.com or on webzines such as NewsMax.com.
Poe developed an early interest in Web journalism, at a time when the Internet’’s future as a news medium still seemed uncertain. His first cybercolumn — “We”re 42 Million Strong: We”re the Mega-Boom Generation” — appeared on January 8, 1996, on a now-defunct Web site called NewHavenMag.com. Poe launched his own Web site on February 9, 1996 — one of the free home pages AOL was then offering new members. He rolled out RichardPoe.com on March 16, 1999 and added a blog to the site on August 21, 2002. Mr. Poe’’s current home page is located at Poe.com.
Poe has been a regular contributor to NewsMax.com since 1999. The site was founded on September 16, 1998 by Christopher Ruddy, a former reporter for the New York Post and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Ruddy decided to strike out on his own after the mainstream media vilified and blacklisted him for pursuing in-depth investigations of the suspicious deaths of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. NewsMax quickly became one of the most popular and respected news sources on the Internet.
Lord William Rees-Mogg is now chairman of its parent company NewsMax Media. Rees-Mogg served fourteen years as editor of The Times of London and subsequently became vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). When he joined NewsMax in January 2000, Rees-Mogg stated, “I have worked with Chris Ruddy over the years and regard him as both a brilliant reporter and a man of vision. NewsMax has, in its first fifteen months, become the leading news site on the Web.”
Other luminaries on the NewsMax team include former United Press International president and CEO Arnaud de Borchgrave, who joined NewsMax’’s Board of Directors on July 5, 1999, and General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., who has served on the NewsMax Board of Advisors since June 5, 2001.
Even Newsweek paid grudging homage to NewsMax in a January 18, 1999 feature which numbered Ruddy among the “Stars of the New News,” calling him one of the “Titans of `Tude”” who were “changing the way Americans get their news.”
Poe began writing for NewsMax on March 30, 1999, just six months after its launch. His debut column was titled, “Nero and Clinton: Teflon Emperors.” In May 2004, Poe became a contributing editor to NewsMax.
Last updated December 14, 2006
