Joseph Michael Jahn (born August 4, 1943) is an American journalist, author and memoirist. He was born in

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state lin ...

, Ohio, and raised in

Sayville, New York Sayville is a hamlet and census-designated place in Suffolk County, New York, United States. Located on the South Shore of Long Island in the Township of Islip, the population of the CDP was 16,853 at the time of the 2010 census. History The e ...

. He moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

in 1966 and was educated at

Dowling College Dowling College was a private college on Long Island, New York. It was established in 1968 and had its main campus located in Oakdale, New York on the site of William K. Vanderbilt's mansion Idle Hour. Dowling also included a campus in Shirl ...

Adelphi University Adelphi University is a private university in Garden City, New York. Adelphi also has centers in Manhattan, Hudson Valley, and Suffolk County. There is also a virtual, online campus for remote students. It is the oldest institution of higher edu ...

, and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

. He spent the first decade of his career covering cultural issues, mainly by becoming, in 1968, the first full-time rock journalist of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and the first full-time rock writer for any major daily newspaper.Gelb, Arthur. "City Room." New York: Putnam, 2003; p. 519 According to the Times metropolitan editor

Arthur Gelb Arthur Gelb (February 3, 1924 – May 20, 2014) was an American editor, author and executive and was the managing editor of ''The New York Times'' from 1986 to 1989. Career Gelb began working the night shift at ''The Times'' as a c ...

, he hired Jahn specifically to inaugurate the newspaper's coverage of rock music. One of his first assignments was to cover the

Woodstock Festival Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquari ...

. Jahn wrote more than 200 reviews of performances by rock bands and individual folk and blues artists for the ''New York Times'' between 1968 and 1971. He also wrote a column syndicated by

North American Newspaper Alliance The North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) was a large newspaper syndicate that flourished between 1922 and 1980. NANA employed some of the most noted writing talents of its time, including Grantland Rice, Joseph Alsop, Michael Stern, Lothrop ...

, 1967-1970, and ''The New York Times'', 1970-1973. Jahn wrote several works of nonfiction before the mid-1970s, when he switched to writing mystery/suspense fiction, eventually publishing about 50 novels and movie/TV adaptations, under his own name and several pen names. His first mystery novel, ''The Quark Maneuver'', published by Ballantine in 1977, won an Edgar Award in 1978. In 1982 and using the byline Michael Jahn he began the series "The Bill Donovan Mysteries" with ''Night Rituals''. Michael Jahn, ''Night Rituals.'' New York: Norton; 1982. By 2008 he had published 10 novels in the series, the last being ''Donovan and Son,'' published by Five Star (Gale Centage) in 2008. "The Bill Donovan Mysteries" were highly acclaimed, and in 2011 he began reformatting them for publication in ebook edition (Kindle). By the end of 2012, six of the 10 had been published in digital format. With the conclusion of the Donovan series he stopped writing fiction in order to concentrate on a memoir of the last century and a half of American history as reflected in the lives of his recent ancestors. They came from all over Western Europe and had adventures that included being part of the opening of Japan to Western civilization, the great sea battles of the Civil War, arctic exploration, the Roosevelts, the Lindberg baby trial, the Hindenberg Disaster, the American Communist Party, and brushes with Dutch Schultz, Harry Truman, and, in his words, "a passel of currently deceased rock stars." Jahn's original manuscripts and papers are in the Michael Jahn Collection at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of

. The collection was established in 1984.

References

External links

Mike Jahn's blogFinding aid to the Mike Jahn papers at Columbia University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jahn, Michael Adelphi University alumni Columbia University alumni American male writers People from Long Island 1943 births Living people Writers from Cincinnati People from Sayville, New York