Paul Muolo, former NMN executive editor, author, dies

Paul Muolo, an award-winning journalist, author and former National Mortgage News executive editor, died from cancer on Sept. 13.

"He was a bestselling writer, yes, but I think he would want people to know that he was fiercely loyal to his friends, and was a devoted father who put family first," his wife, Ann, wrote in an email. "Paul would work hard at his 'day job' as a reporter, come home, often make dinner and then sit at the computer to write another book or short story. He coached his kids' softball and soccer teams, a role he cherished because he was with his kids."

As a coach, he valued fairness and good sportsmanship and demonstrated those as a role model, Ann noted.

While at what was then called National Thrift News, he co-authored the New York Times best seller Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, with Stephen Pizzo and Mary Fricker, about the thrift crisis of the 1980s.

He also was part of the team of National Thrift News journalists that received the 1988 George Polk Award for financial reporting on the savings and loan scandal.

National Thrift News became National Thrift and Mortgage News in 1989 before the final rebrand to National Mortgage News the following year.

In 2009, with Matthew Padilla, Muolo would write Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis, regarding the Great Financial Crisis.

While at NMN, Muolo authored the What We're Hearing column and also headed up the publication's data unit.

In 2012, he joined Inside Mortgage Finance, where he became editor-in-chief until he retired this past December.

Ann also shared comments from Pizzo, who recalled first meeting Muolo in 1985 or 1986, when founding NMN editor-in-chief Stan Strachan was looking for a West Coast correspondent for what was then called National Thrift News.

Pizzo recalled working with Muolo and Fricker, who was his colleague on the Russian River News in Guerneville, California, during the three years it took to write Inside Job, referring to it as "the most enjoyable, productive and enjoyable partnership I ever had in my entire professional life.

"So how does one process the loss of a friend and colleague like Paul? Poorly. But his accomplishments live on in Inside Job, which now sits on the shelves of the Library of Congress in Washington and testimony before the U.S. Congress," Pizzo said.

(On a personal note, when I started at NMN in 1990, I sat next to Paul in the New York office, where he promptly greeted me by handing me a pile of press releases. He was a great resource to me for learning the mortgage business and finding people to comment for stories in my early days here. Later, he would relocate to our Washington bureau.)

Besides Ann and their children, Muolo is survived by two sisters, Jeanne and Wendy, and his brother, David.