Seth Mnookin (born April 27, 1972) is an American writer and journalist.
As of 2017, he is a Professor of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT and the Director of Institute's Graduate Program in Science Writing. He is also the media reporter for Undark Magazine's podcast and contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
Early life and education
Mnookin grew up in a Jewish household in Newton, Massachusetts and is a graduate of Newton North High School. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in history and science in 1994 and was named a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in 2004.
Books
Mnookin is the author of three non-fiction books.
Hard News
His first book, Hard News: The Scandals at the New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media (Random House, 2004) grew out of reporting he did as a senior writer at Newsweek in 2002 and 2003. It uses the Jayson Blair plagiarism and fabrication scandal to conduct a broader examination of the troubles during the Howell Raines administration at the New York Times. It was named a Washington Post "Best Of" book for 2004 and was listed as one of the London Independents list of the Top 50 books ever written on the media. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews from New York magazine ("richly dramatic, hugely entertaining"), Entertainment Weekly ("vigorous, purposeful prose and a killer knack for building suspense"), the Los Angeles Times ("two terrific books in one: a riveting thriller...and a Shakespearean tragedy"), and the Washington Post ("hard to put down...reads like a thriller"), among other places, and the book prompted Hunter S. Thompson to say Mnookin was "one of the best and brightest journalists of this ominous, post-American century." A negative review was published by the New York Times itself, which called the book "tedious" and said it "elevates trivial details to novelistic significance."
Feeding the Monster
In the fall of 2004, Vanity Fair assigned Mnookin a story on the Boston Red Sox. He began covering the team right before they won the 2004 World Series, and ended up spending more than a year living with the team and was given a key to Fenway Park His book, "Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts and Nerve Took a Team to the Top" (Simon & Schuster), chronicled the history of the team from 2001 to 2006, the first half-decade of the John W. Henry-Tom Werner ownership, and includes details about Theo Epstein's abbreviated departure from the team in late 2005. It was published in the summer of 2006, and it entered the New York Times Hardcover Bestseller List for Nonfiction at #8. After Epstein left the Red Sox for the Chicago Cubs, he made an apparent reference to the book when he talked about the difficulty of dealing with "the monster" of fan and ownership expectations for a championship team every year.
The Panic Virus
In 2011, Simon & Schuster published Mnookin's The Panic Virus: The True Story of the Vaccine-Autism Controversy. The book examines the history of the controversy over vaccines and autism, going back to a retracted 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield through to the current day. It is heavily critical of several public figures, including Jenny McCarthy, Oprah Winfrey, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
In The Panic Virus, Mnookin tells the story of several parents who, after choosing to either skip or delay their children's vaccine schedule, saw their children contract easily avoidable diseases such as Haemophilus influenzae and Pertussis. He relays the accounts of parents who objected to or delay their children's vaccine schedules for various reasons such as ambivalence, religious objections, or even misguided information from external sources. He also highlights the Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, beginning on June 11, 2007, in which the Cedillo family's lawsuit made the claim that Thiomersal, a compound found in Hepatitis B, DPT, and Hib vaccines, weakened their daughter's immune system such that the live measles virus found within the MMR vaccine overwhelmed her system and thereby caused Autism. After a lengthy process, the courts ruled against the Cedillo family, citing questionable witnesses and a large quantity of circumstantial evidence. Mnookin additionally focuses on the now-discredited Andrew Wakefield and his work as a main player in the vaccines-cause-autism argument. Wakefield is repeatedly mentioned, as is celebrity advocate against vaccination Jenny McCarthy, often in the context of anecdotes by parents outraged by the often one-sided exposure given to these figures in the media.