Bob Sassone (born June 9, 1965) is an American writer. He was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to Italian and Portuguese parents. He is the youngest of seven children.
Sassone began his career in the 1980s writing a weekly music column for North Shore Magazine, a weekly magazine inserted into several newspapers in Massachusetts. At the same time he was a sales and promotion rep for Musician and Billboard.
In 1990 he started his own music magazine, RPM, which he published out of his apartment with the help of friends. The magazine garnered attention nationwide, and included interviews with such people as Frank Zappa, Andy Summers, Robyn Hitchcock, and Marshall Crenshaw.
RPM lasted for two years. In 1995, bored by the music industry, Sassone created another publication, Channel Surfer Journal, a monthly television newsletter. It lasted until 2000.
In 2002, Sassone started Professor Barnhardt's Journal, a web-only magazine that has been acclaimed for its varied and unpredictable blend of essays, humor and fiction. Contributors have included Roger Ebert, Jonathan Lethem, Steve Almond, Tod Goldberg, Keith Olbermann, Michael J. Nelson, Joe Bob Briggs, Paul Davidson, Marty Beckerman, Joel Stein, Daniel Radosh, Will Leitch, Shari Goldhagen, and Ned Vizzini.
In 2003, Sassone published a collection of humor essays titled Book, With Words and Pages. The book was critically praised for its use of a box to house the pages of the book.
Sassone started one of the first online journals, in 1995, and it still exists. He has written for several publications and sites, including Salon.com, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Esquire, The Boston Herald, The Black Table, Flak, and Tripod.com. He has been featured or profiled in several publications, including USA Today, and has been a guest on MSNBC, FX, and PBS.
Sassone is currently a staff writer for the number one blogging network in the world, Weblogs, Inc, now owned by AOL. He writes for several sites, including TV Squad(where he served as editor in 2005), Slashfood, and Adjab. He is working on his second book.