In her memoirs, Katharine Graham, then the newspaper's publisher, wrote of him: "My life would have been a lot simpler had Nicholas von Hoffman not appeared in the paper."

Subjects of von Hoffman's audio op-eds included the 1984 Democratic primary candidates, the Reagan administration's foreign policy in Central America and the Middle East, and the cynical, self-serving misuse of language by politicians.

Von Hoffman also wrote a libretto for Deborah Drattell's Nicholas and Alexandra for the Los Angeles Opera which was performed in the 2003–2004 season under the direction of Plácido Domingo.

Between April 2007 and February 2008,[7] starting with an article about soaking the rich to pay for George W. Bush's Iraq War,[8] he was a columnist for the New York Observer.

[9] Von Hoffman was fired by Don Hewitt for referring to President Richard Nixon, at the height of the Watergate scandal, as "the dead mouse on the kitchen floor of America, and the only question now is who's going to pick him up by his tail and throw him in the garbage."