Matt Taibbi

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Matt Taibbi (b. 1970) is an American journalist. Currently he works at Rolling Stone where he authors a column called "Road Rage" for the print version, and an additional weekly online-only column called "The Low Post". He is best known for his recent coverage of the 2004 US presidential election, and for his former editorial positions at newspapers the eXile, the New York Press, and the Beast.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Bibliography 3 See also 4 External links 4.1 Articles by Taibbi 4.2 Articles about Taibbi 4.3 Interviews 4.4 Newspapers formerly edited and run by Taibbi

[edit] Biography

Taibbi spent his childhood in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Bard College, spending his senior year abroad at Leningrad State Technical University. His father is Mike Taibbi, an NBC television reporter.

In 1992 Taibbi moved to Uzbekistan, but was forced to leave six months later after writing critically about the country's president. Afterwards, Taibbi worked for The Moscow Times as a sports editor, before moving on to work as a professional athlete in Russia and Mongolia, and as a correspondent for Montsame, the Mongolian National News Agency.

While playing professional basketball in Ulan-Bator, Mongolia, Taibbi contracted a serious case of pneumonia and was medivaced to Boston. After recovering with his family, he returned to Russia and be came editor of the expat paper Living Here. He then joined Mark Ames in 1997 to co-edit the controversial English-language Moscow-based, bi-weekly free newspaper, The eXile. Taibbi said about that experience, "We were out of the reach of American libel law, and we had a situation where we weren’t really accountable to our advertisers. We had total freedom." [1]

In 2002, he returned to the U.S. to start the satirical bi-weekly The Beast in Buffalo, New York. Ultimately, however, he left the paper, which continued without him: "Running a business and writing is too much," Taibbi later declared. He continued as a freelancer, writing for The Nation, Playboy, New York Press (where he wrote a regular political column for over 2 years), Rolling Stone, New York Sports Express (where he was Editor at Large), and other publications, but with reservations. "For me, it’s a career failure. I wanted to be a novelist," he announced at an NYU lecture. [2]

In March 2005, Taibbi wrote a column for NY Press, entitled "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope". The column was criticized by Senator Hillary Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Matt Drudge, among others, including Congressman Anthony Weiner, who suggested that New Yorkers take copies of that issue out of their news boxes and destroy them.^{[citation needed]} In a subsequent column entitled "Keep Pope Alive", Taibbi defended the controversial piece as "an off-the-cuff burlesque of Truly Tasteless Jokes", which he said was designed to give readers a break from a long run of "fulminating political essays" in his column space. Taibbi claimed his parody had been a protest against "the agonizing marathon of mechanized media grief and adulation we so inevitably go through after the passing of each and every hallowed leader or celebrity."

Taibbi left the NY Press in August 2005, shortly after his editor Jeff Koyen was forced to quit over issues raised by Taibbi's article. [3][4][5] "I have since learned that there would not have been an opportunity for me to stay anyway," Taibbi later wrote. [6]

Taibbi now serves as a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, penning feature-length articles on both domestic and international affairs and a weekly political column titled "The Low Post" for the magazine's Web site. He is also a sports columnist for the Boston Phoenix.

[edit] Bibliography

• The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia (ISBN 0-8021-3652-4). Co-authored with Mark Ames, and published in 2000 with a foreword by Edward Limonov. A movie based on the book is under development by producers Ted Hope and James Schamus of Good Machine. [7]

• Spanking the Donkey: On the Campaign Trail with the Democrats, (ISBN 1-56584-891-8). A campaign diary from the 2004 US presidential election, published by New Press in 2005.

[edit] See also

• The eXile
• The Beast
• Mark Ames
• John Dolan
• Jeff Koyen
• Gonzo Journalism

[edit] External links

[edit] Articles by Taibbi

• Archive of articles by Taibbi in The Nation
• Archive of AlterNet articles by Taibbi
• Archive of articles by Taibbi published in Rolling Stone as "The Low Post"

Other Rolling stone articles:

• "The Nation In the Mirror" (Rolling Stone)
• "Jacko On Trial" (Rolling Stone)
• "Four Amendments and a Funeral" (Rolling Stone)
• "Bush Vs. The Mother" (Rolling Stone)
• "Darwinian Warfare" (Rolling Stone)
• "Ms. America" (Rolling Stone)
• "How to Steal a Coastline" (Rolling Stone)
• "How to Be a Lobbyist Without Trying" (Rolling Stone)
• "Meet Mr. Republican: Jack Abramoff" (Rolling Stone)
• "Fort Apache, Iraq" (Rolling Stone)
• "Lieberman: Bush's Favorite Democrat" (Rolling Stone)

• "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope" (NY Press)
• "Keep Pope Alive" (NY Press)
• "Flathead: The Peculiar Genius of Thomas Friedman (NY Press)
• "Blame for Iraq Extends Far Beyond the GOP (Rolling Stone)

[edit] Articles about Taibbi

• Lloyd Grove column featuring denouncements (New York Daily News)
• Background: Matt Taibbi in Bullpen, a publication of the New York University (NYU) school of journalism.
• "Fed Time for Gonzo at Rolling Stone: Political Reporter Matt Taibbi Surrounds Capitol Hill With Barbed Ire" (Washington Post)

[edit] Interviews

• Mother Jones interview
• Salon.com interview
• Interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
• Interview with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.

[edit] Newspapers formerly edited and run by Taibbi

• The eXile
• The Beast