David Talbot

David Talbot

(L–R): former President Bill Clinton, White House adviser Mark Penn, David Talbot
Born September 22, 1951
Los Angeles, California
Occupation author, journalist, media entrepreneur
Spouse(s) Camille Peri (m. 1989)
Website
The Talbot Players

David Talbot (born September 22, 1951) is an American progressive journalist, author and media entrepreneur. He is the founder and former CEO and editor-in-chief[1] of one of the first web magazines, Salon.com.

Talbot founded Salon in 1995, when the web was still in its infancy, and is considered one of the pioneers of online journalism. Under Talbot's leadership, the magazine gained a large following and broke several major national stories. It was described by Entertainment Weekly as one of the Net's "few genuine must-reads".[2]

Since leaving Salon, Talbot has established a reputation as a revisionist historian, working on the Kennedy assassination and other areas of "hidden history."

Talbot has worked as a senior editor for Mother Jones magazine and a features editor for The San Francisco Examiner, and has written for Time magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other publications.

Early life and career

Talbot was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He attended Harvard Boys School, but did not graduate after falling afoul of the school's headmaster and ROTC program during the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, he returned to Los Angeles, where he wrote a history of the Hollywood Left, "Creative Differences", and freelanced for Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. He later was hired by Environmental Action Foundation in Washington, D.C. to write "Power and Light," a book about the politics of energy. After he returned to California, he was hired as an editor at Mother Jones magazine, and later, by San Francisco Examiner publisher Will Hearst to edit the newspaper's Sunday magazine, Image. It was at the Examiner where Talbot developed the idea for Salon, convincing several of his newspaper colleagues to join him and jump ship into the brave new world of web publishing.

Salon

Salon is a pioneering, award-winning web magazine based in San Francisco. Talbot has characterized Salon as aiming to be a "smart tabloid".[3] In 1996, Time magazine picked Salon as the web site of the year.[2] Originally created to cover books and popular culture, the web site became increasingly politicized during the Clinton impeachment drama in the late 1990s. Salon broke from the mainstream press by defending the Clinton presidency and investigating the right-wing prosecutorial apparatus headed by Kenneth Starr and Rep. Henry Hyde, whose own infidelity Salon exposed.[4]

Before stepping down as Salon's CEO and editor-in-chief in 2005, Talbot succeeded in stabilizing the financially rocky web enterprise.[5] Talbot returned briefly as Salon CEO in 2011, but has since left the company.

The Talbot Players

In 2008, Talbot launched a media production company with his siblings called The Talbot Players, named after their late father's theater troupe. The company is producing books, films and documentaries. In addition to the Pulp History series for Simon & Schuster, the company is developing a documentary TV series about global music for PBS called "Sound Tracks."

Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years

After leaving Salon, Talbot resumed his career as an author of popular history books. Talbot's book, The New York Times bestseller, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, offers a revisionist view of the Kennedy presidency and assassination, and explores Bobby Kennedy's search for the truth about his brother's murder. Talbot is now working on a feature documentary based on "Brothers."[6]

Devil Dog

Talbot's book Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America chronicles the dramatic life and exploits of the legendary antiwar U.S. Marine general, Smedley Darlington Butler. The book, which was part of an illustrated history series called “Pulp History,” is a collaboration with Zap Comix artist, Spain Rodriguez. “Devil Dog,” which was published by Simon & Schuster in fall 2010, won praise from The New Yorker, Slate and the New York Times, which called the Pulp History series "rip-roaring nonfiction tales with enough purple prose, gory illustrations and va-va-va-voom women to lure in even reluctant teenage male readers."[7]

Season of the Witch

Talbot's most recent book Season of the Witch, about the wild and bloody birth of "San Francisco values", was published in spring 2012.[8] "Season of the Witch" received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and was hailed as "enthralling, news-driven history" (San Francisco Chronicle), "energetic, highly entertaining storytelling" (Boston Globe), and "an enthralling – and harrowing – account of how the 1967 Summer of Love gave way to 20 or so winters of discontent" (Washington Post).

Personal life

Talbot is from a prominent media and entertainment family. He's the son of longtime character actor and founding member of the Screen Actors Guild, Lyle Talbot. He is also the brother of documentary producer and former child actor Stephen Talbot, doctor Cynthia Talbot of Portland, Oregon, and journalist Margaret Talbot, a staff writer at The New Yorker. Talbot is married to writer Camille Peri, co-editor of the national bestseller Mothers Who Think, with whom he has two children. His eldest son, Joe Talbot, is an aspiring musician and filmmaker. His youngest son, Nathaniel, is a recent graduate of the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, a San Francisco public high school devoted to arts education. Talbot lives with his family in San Francisco.

David's sister, Margaret, has written a biography of their father Lyle Talbot and a memoir of their family life, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century (Riverhead Books, 2012).

References

  1. ↑ "Salon Founder Talbot Steps in Once Again As Interim CEO – paidContent". Paidcontent.org. July 9, 2011. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Fresh Air: Terry Gross Interview with David Talbot". Ibiblio.org. June 14, 2000. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
  3. ↑ Lasica, J.D. (June 1998). "Salon: The best pure-play Web publication?". American Journalism Review.
  4. ↑ Talbot, David (1998-09-18). ""This hypocrite broke up my family"". Salon. Retrieved 2014-12-09.
  5. ↑ David Carr (February 10, 2005). "The Founder of Salon Is Passing the Mouse". The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
  6. ↑ ALAN BRINKLEY (May 20, 2007). "Conspiracy?". The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
  7. ↑ PATRICIA COHEN (November 24, 2010). "Selling History With ’50s Pulp Pow and Punch". The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
  8. ↑ Meredith May (January 7, 2011). "David, Stephen, Margaret Talbot – telling tales". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved May 23, 2012.

External links