The Hidden Wealth in Journalism
The News is Full of Old Money
Why Are Your Parent’s Names Blue on Wikipedia
It’s a well-known phenomenon at this point that many influential celebrities had a wealthy upbringing. Actors like Jake Gyllenhaal, singers like Taylor Swift, and the Kardashians (too obvious to leave out) all came from serious wealth. Many prominent journalists, especially in the mainstream media, also come from money. Chris Cuomo and Anderson Cooper, just to name a few, are very well-connected and had wealthy upbringings. If mainstream journalists aren’t well-connected, they make their money through their contracts and deals with broadcasting corporations.
I’m here to look at a different class of journalists — the ones you didn’t know were wealthy.
Carlos Maza
Judging by Maza’s online presence, you’d assume he’s just another internet socialist/communist. He retweets unions and their efforts and makes videos attacking billionaires. He used to work at Vox, but now only makes YouTube videos. Ironic seeing as how he caused a second “adpocalypse” on YouTube. For those unaware, an adpocaplyse is when a YouTube ad policy ends up going overboard and affecting the ad revenue of almost everyone on the site. Advertisers withdraw, videos get falsely demonetized, creators and their income suffer, meanwhile YouTube seemingly does nothing to fix their original policy.
Carlos Maza had wealthy parents. Not upper middle class wealthy, not six-figure wealthy, but several mansions in Florida wealthy. One mansion his family owned being worth $7.1 million. His stepfather, Scott Scherr was the founder of Ultimate Software, a multimillion-dollar software company that merged with a company called Kronos in 2020.
This was all exposed in a New York Post article. I’m going to state that this is some grand conspiracy by the World Economic Forum to indoctrinate us into communism; it’s a rich kid getting his dreams funded by obscenely wealthy parents. A classic example for my article on communism. It still took a New York Post article and confrontation to admit that he had privilege most people in the US could only dream of.
It makes his attack on Steven Crowder and the cause of a disastrous change in YouTube’s ad policy more sinister. Sure, humans aren’t known for their long-term thinking and consequences, but he affected millions of people’s income, all the while having a shield from the consequences. If his ad revenue takes a hit, he has a silken safety net to fall back on.
Taylor Lorenz
A note before I start on Miss Lorenz. The evidence I am going off of for this is dubious at best. The absence of evidence is not evidence. But the deeper I dig, the more I believe in what I’ve found.
Some people have brought up the accusation that Taylor Lorenz is the child of a wealthy developer named Walter R. Lorenz. I can’t find him anywhere on the internet. His name does not raise any flags on any Google search. Her internet presence, aside from the one she’s curated, is nonexistent.
If you search Carlos Maza’s Twitter on the Wayback Machine, you’ll find an archive. If you search your own small, personal account, the Wayback Machine will apologize and say, “That hasn’t been archived yet.” But Taylor Lorenz’s Twitter is outright excluded. Any deleted tweet vanishes permanently.
Any data about her parentage, upbringing, or even her date of birth is difficult to track down. Wikipedia gives her date of birth a range of four years. Her personal life section on Wikipedia is bare bones; it talks about her engagement and veganism. Try to look up anything more personal, and she hardly exists.
Whereas Maza’s adpocaplypse is a case of unintended consequences, Lorenz’s is far more sinister.
In 2022, Lorenz released the personal information of Chaya Raichik, the deeply controversial figure behind the Libs of TikTok Twitter account. This is doxing and is always used as a form of harassment on the internet. Lorenz later claimed she and her family got doxed, but she later deleted the tweet.
With Taylor Lorenz, it can’t be argued that she lacks long-term thinking or that she’s just very private. In the age of anything and everything being recorded and put online, Taylor Lorenz has the money and connections to stay private. She doesn’t need a pseudonym, a VPN, or a convoluted scheme to keep her identity private. She has a rich family and connections.
The nature of Libs of TikTok aside, it’s concerning that someone with a ghost of an internet presence can harass people online with zero repercussions. The tweeter who exposed Taylor Lorenz received a suspension from Twitter with dubious reasons given, and this is the only archive I know of.
The absence of evidence is not evidence, but in this case, the reason behind the absence might be.
This pattern of news people without a background continues. Carl Azus the man behind CNN Student News and a contributor at CNN Newsroom, does not have a Wikipedia page. The best information about his background I can find is in his bare-bones CNN profile. Journalism is chock-full of private wealth.
I don’t like to jump to conspiracies. It’s generally a bad look. In this case, it’s a pretty logical step. At one point, news anchor Amy Robach lined up a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Her broadcasting employer, ABC, killed the interview. ABC cited Prince Andrew and the royal family of England. But Disney owns ABC and definitely had some executives on Epstein’s plane.
This is one verifiably true case of wealth and corporate power twisting and stopping a serious news story. What more stories, views, and ideas are being quashed?
I’m not going to argue that rich people are specifically putting their kids in journalism to manipulate people. This isn’t a WEF conspiracy; it’s more a happy coincidence. Half a million people follow Taylor Lorenz and Carlos Maza. That’s some serious reach and influence on regular people, and that’s just Twitter.
This article was originally about wealth in academia and journalism and the disconnect it creates. Journalism, academia, politics, and many other fields are rife with rich kids and generational wealth. It’s slowly starting to creep into every place of influence. Rich parents make their kids influencers, musicians, and journalists. They send them to the best schools and universities and give them cushy jobs when they are out.
For me personally, the jury is still out on whether this is intentionally malicious or not. As much fun as a conspiracy is, Occam’s razor is still in play. This is probably just another case of rich kids being coddled and helped by their parents. Instead of being a junior executive at some firm, having a cushy job at some family company, or blowing a trust fund on a yacht, these kids are in journalism and places of impact. That is worrying.
Hi, I’m Michael Vincent Hawthorne. This article went through about three drafts and rewrites before I finally sent it out the door. If you’re new to my work, then feel free to follow and check out my other posts. I write about a variety of subjects, and you might find something else that will catch your eye.
