Michael Rosenwald joins the Obituaries desk – The Washington Post

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We are thrilled to announce that Michael Rosenwald has joined the Obituaries desk as a reporter.

Michael has been on book leave for the past year, working on an ambitious project on the virality of human behavior for Riverhead (Penguin Random House). Michael joined The Post in 2004 as a business reporter and quickly became known for his stylish writing and quirky takes on technology, the business of culture, and the economy. He wrote a weekly column on behavioral economics called “The Financial Lobe.”

In 2009, Michael was among the inaugural staff of the Local Enterprise team, launched by Marc Fisher and now run by Lynda Robinson. His boundless curiosity and inventive storytelling produced a steady stream of memorable stories, including a tale about a twin accused of killing his brother, a first-person story about whether he was a hoarder or just a slob, the viral profile of a man dressed as Batman pulled over in a Batmobile (he visited terminally ill children in hospitals) and a series of a stories about the history and underlying causes of mass shootings.

Michael was instrumental in helping to launch the successful Retropolis blog, which he turned into “Retropod,” a daily history podcast he wrote and anchored for the Audio team that is still used in schools.

Before joining The Post, Michael was a metro reporter at the Boston Globe, where he helped cover breaking news off the Spotlight team’s investigation of the Catholic Church – including the extraordinary hearing in which a judge ordered Cardinal Bernard Law to be deposed immediately because she feared he could flee to Rome.

Michael has described his new post on Obits as his dream job. He has long admired the obituary. At the Globe, he wrote them whenever he could, including about a criminal whose letters to Norman Mailer persuaded the famous writer to petition for his release. The man killed a waiter shortly thereafter. Michael’s lede: “Jack Henry Abbott, whose eloquent and disquieting prison letters to Norman Mailer brought him literary fame and then brief freedom, died yesterday after writing one last composition: a suicide note.”

Michael lives with his wife, son and daughter in Olney, Md. When he isn’t typing, Michael coaches JV travel baseball, collects Japanese fountain pens and is an adjunct journalism professor at the University of Maryland. In addition to his book for Riverhead, Michael also collected and edited an anthology of Gay Talese’s sports writing, “The Silent Season of a Hero.” He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in feature writing in 2003.

Please join us in congratulating Michael on his new role.