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About

Michael Sitrick

Michael Sitrick is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sitrick And Company. An internationally recognized expert in the strategic use of communications, Mr. Sitrick has been the subject of numerous articles focusing on the results he has achieved for clients.

 
  • Fortune magazine called him “one of the most accomplished practitioners of the dark arts of public relations” and “The Winston Wolf of Public Relations.” “Wolf,” Fortune explained, was the fixer in Pulp Fiction. Played by Harvey Keitel, he washed away assassins’ splatter and gore. Sitrick cleans up the messes of companies, celebrities and others and he’s a strategist who isn’t averse to treating PR as combat.”
  • The Los Angeles Times called him in a headline, “The Wizard of Spin.”
  • A Forbes’ headline referred to him as, “The Flack for When You’re Under Attack.”
  • The Financial Times called him “The spin doctor’s spin doctor.”
  • Gawker’s headline referred to him as: “Ninja Master of the Dark Art of Spin.”
  • Fast Company said, “Everyone understands the importance of shaping a story, but few are as shrewdly proficient at manipulating the media as L.A. crisis manager Mike Sitrick…”
  • Los Angeles Magazine wrote: “Sitrick is a pure product of the 24-hour news cycle, of a culture dominated and defined by newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, the Internet, of the never-ending noise streaming into our lives. Beyond his aggressiveness, beyond his toughness, what distinguishes Sitrick is his ability to play the media to his clients’ advantage.”
  • The Columbia Journalism Review wrote: “Michael Sitrick is a public relations puppet master who has pulled the strings behind some of the biggest stories in media. He specializes in crisis PR and has made a name for himself as the man you call when you have money and step in some shit… Sitrick hewed the contrarian take when Slate was just a twinkle in Michael Kinsley’s eye. Sitrick was using the internet and social networks to stoke distrust in the media when Donald Trump was still hosting WrestleMania. Seeing journalism through the eyes of someone so good at manipulating it might offer us a window into understanding what’s gone so wrong. Or maybe it offers us nothing; maybe he was just spinning me, too…”
Since founding Sitrick And Company 35 years ago, he has provided advice, counsel and developed and implemented strategic communications programs for more than 1,000 companies, including some of the world’s largest corporations, as well as scores of high profile individuals – both on routine and extremely sensitive matters. While his work has been largely concentrated in the world of business, clients also have included companies and individuals in sports, entertainment, academia, healthcare, religion and politics. In politics, he has provided counsel to two candidates running in the U.S. Presidential primaries, United States Senators and a big-city Mayor – among others. Matters with which he has been involved span the spectrum. Although many of Mr. Sitrick’s cases have dominated the headlines, the cases that are never heard about –where Mr. Sitrick and his firm have kept their clients out of the media and off the Internet – are equally if not more noteworthy.

Under his direction, Sitrick And Company grew to the 15th largest independent firm in the nation in its first year of business. It broke into the top 10 in its second year.

Prior to forming the firm, Mr. Sitrick served as Senior Vice President – Communications for Wickes Companies, Inc. A member of that company’s senior management team, he was the architect of Wickes’ Chapter 11 communications programs. He also directed the company’s communications efforts through a series of takeover attempts and defenses, litigation issues, major product liability problems and numerous other critical matters. At the time, Wickes was the largest non-railroad bankruptcy in history. The firm has done approximately 500 in-and-out of court restructurings since it’s founding.

Before joining Wickes, Mr. Sitrick headed Communications for National Can Corporation, was a Group Supervisor for the Chicago public relations firm Selz, Seabolt and Associates, and served as Assistant Director of Public Information in the Richard J. Daley administration in Chicago. He also did reporting for such publications as the Washington Star and the Baltimore News American, as well as WSID Radio in Baltimore.

Mr. Sitrick has lectured on public relations and crisis management before numerous professional groups and forums, as well as at the graduate schools of Columbia, Dartmouth, UCLA, USC and the Mike Wallace Journalism Fellows Program at the University of Michigan. His work, along with the work of other members of his firm, on the Food Lion litigation is a case study at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Mr. Sitrick is the author of the critically acclaimed book, “Spin– How to Turn the Power of the Press to Your Advantage,” which was published in April 1998 by Regnery Publishing Company and The Fixer, published by Regency in 2018. He is a contributing author to the books “Turnarounds and Workouts,” published by Dow Jones/Irwin, and “The Art Of Doing,” published by Penguin.

Mr. Sitrick has served on the Board of Directors of NASDAQ listed NantHealth, APP Pharmaceuticals Company and Abraxis BioScience, all founded by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, as well as NASDAQ listed Jakks Pacific. He currently serves on the Board of Directors the Center for Human Justice and Dignity, a not-for-profit prison reform organization as well as a Trustee of Saint John’s Health Center Foundation in Santa Monica, CA. Additionally, Mr. Sitrick served as a member of the boards of the Turnaround Management Association and the Jewish Television Network and as an advisor to the 1939 Club, the largest Holocaust Survivors organization in the United States. Both the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Los Angeles; the Los Angeles Business Journal has year-after-year included him in their listing of LA’s 500 Most Powerful people. In January 2022, he was named to Lawdragon’s Legal Consulting Hall of Fame.

He holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration with a major in Journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is married to the former Nancy Eiseman.