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Adrian Michaels (born 8th September, 1969) is a British national and international newspaper journalist who in 2014 founded the content marketing agency FirstWord Media Ltd.

Education
Michaels attended University College School, Hampstead, London (1977-87), and Trinity College, Oxford (1987-90) where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Life and career
In 1993, he started a 15-year career at the Financial Times including 9 years as a foreign correspondent in New York and Milan. While in New York he won (with colleague Peter Spiegel) Business and Finance Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards for 2002. . This was for his work on the downfall of accountancy firm Arthur Andersen and its role in the Enron scandal. He was also runner up in the same year as Business Journalist of the Year at the London Press Club Awards.

Michaels’ tenure in Milan for the Financial Times was occasionally marked by his provoking of lots of coverage in Italy’s media. In particular, a front cover FT magazine story he wrote in 2007 on the enduring and archaic use of the female form in Italian media and advertising, and linking that to a lack of female attainment in business and politics, created a media storm and was cited in calls for equality legislation in the Italian parliament.

After the Financial Times, Michaels became Group Foreign Editor at the Telegraph Media Group in 2008. and then in 2011 Editorial Director, Commercial, a role on the advertising side of the Telegraph that sought to capitalize on the growth in demand from advertisers to reach their audiences via more detailed content and expert journalism.

Michaels left the Telegraph in 2014 and founded FirstWord, an agency that continues his work in content for non-media organisations. He has been a defender of the growing alignment of company marketing and journalism against criticism that it is endangering the independence of journalists.

Personal Life
Michaels’ entry in Who’s Who says he is married with two daughters and he lists his hobbies as “golf, cheese”.