Matt Yglesias
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matt Yglesias (born May 18, 1981) is a popular American political blogger and a prominent voice on the liberal blogosphere.
Yglesias attended Harvard University where he studied philosophy. He graduated magna cum laude in 2003. He was editor-in-chief of The Harvard Independent, a weekly newsmagazine, and also wrote for several other campus publications. He is currently a staff writer at the American Prospect magazine.
Yglesias started blogging in early 2002, while still in college, focusing mainly on American politics and public policy issues. He was encouraged in his early efforts by fellow bloggers such as Matt Welch and Jeff Jarvis. His blog, initially on Blogspot and later on Typepad, was qualitatively different from other liberal blogs, and indeed different from most political blogs: his academic training in philosophy is often reflected in the density and abstruseness of his writing.
The quality of his blog writing and analysis caught the attention of the American Prospect magazine, and he joined the journal as a writing fellow upon his graduation in 2003, subsequently becoming a staff writer. His posts appeared regularly on the magazine's collaborative weblog TAPPED. He has also written for mainstream publications such as the New York Times Magazine, and has made occasional appearances on radio and television as a political commentator.
Yglesias supported the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, his position on the war has changed, and he now advocates an immediate troop pullout. [1] He remains a qualified supporter of the war on terror and democracy promotion in the Middle East. He is one of the few bloggers whose work is cited regularly (and respectfully) on both sides of the blogosphere, receiving frequent mentions from left-wingers such as Duncan Black and Kevin Drum but also from conservative writers like Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan. In fact, Sullivan takes nominations on his blog for the Yglesias Award, a tongue-in-cheek honor "for writers, politicians, columnists or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe." [2] Yglesias is often referred to in the blogosphere as Big Media Matt, a semi-affectionate nickname coined by Black after his recruitment by the American Prospect.
In May 2005, Yglesias found a new home at Josh Marshall's group blog, TPMCafe, leaving his earlier Typepad address to deal with material not about politics. In late August 2006, Yglesias announced his departure from both TPMCafe and the TAPPED blog, and revived his own domain name at www.matthewyglesias.com,[3] as part of a project to write a book on liberal foreign policy, presumably for release sometime in 2007.
Besides analytic philosophy, Yglesias has a passion for basketball and occasionally posts about the NBA. He is also an avowed lover of pandas. His father is screenwriter and novelist Rafael Yglesias.
