Matt Taibbi

Matthew Colin Taibbi (/taɪˈiːbi/; born March 2, 1970) is an American author, journalist and podcaster. A former contributing editor for Rolling Stone, he is the author of several books and publisher of Racket News (formerly TK News). He has reported on finance, media, politics and sports.

Taibbi began as a freelance reporter working in Russia. He later worked as a sports journalist for the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times. In 1997, Taibbi and Mark Ames co-edited the tabloid newspaper The eXile. In 2002, Taibbi returned to the United States and founded the Buffalo-based newspaper The Beast. He left a year later to work as a columnist for the New York Press.

In 2004, Taibbi began covering politics for Rolling Stone. In 2008, Taibbi won a National Magazine Award for three columns he wrote for Rolling Stone. Taibbi became known for his brazen style, having branded Goldman Sachs a "vampire squid" in a 2009 article about the Wall Street firm's outsized role in the 2008 financial crisis. His work often has drawn comparisons to the gonzo journalism of writer Hunter S. Thompson, who also covered politics for Rolling Stone. In 2019, he launched the podcast Useful Idiots, co-hosted by Katie Halper, before leaving in 2022, where he was succeeded by Aaron Maté. In 2020, he announced that he would no longer release his writing through Rolling Stone and had begun self-publishing his online writing. In recent years, Taibbi's writing has focused on culture war issues and cancel culture. He has criticized mainstream media including its coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Between 2022 and 2023, Taibbi released several installments of the Twitter Files.

Taibbi has authored several books, including The Great Derangement (2009); Griftopia (2010); The Divide (2014); Insane Clown President (2017); I Can't Breathe (2017); and Hate Inc. (2019).

Matt Taibbi was born in 1970 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Taibbi's father, Mike Taibbi, is an NBC television reporter whose biological mother was of mixed Filipino and Native Hawaiian descent, while his father was likely an American serviceman. Mike Taibbi was adopted by an Italian-American couple in New York. According to Taibbi, his surname is a Sicilian name of Lebanese origin; however, he is of neither Sicilian nor Lebanese descent because his father was adopted. He has also claimed Irish descent through his mother.

Taibbi grew up in the Boston suburbs. His parents separated when he was young and he was largely raised by his mother. Because Taibbi was troubled with behavioral and academic problems, his parents sent him to Concord Academy. He first attended New York University but was "unable to deal with being just one of thousands of faces in a city of millions" and transferred after his freshman year to Bard College, where he graduated in 1992. He spent a year abroad studying at Leningrad Polytechnic University, where he finished his credits for graduation from Bard.

After completing his college work midsemester, Taibbi moved to New York City where he spent two months working as a waiter to save money for a plane ticket to Russia. In 1992, missing his college graduation, Taibbi moved to Saint Petersburg. Seven months later, Taibbi moved to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he began selling news articles more regularly. He returned to Saint Petersburg five months later, after being deported by the Uzbek secret police for writing an article for the Associated Press that was critical of President Islam Karimov. At the time of his deportation, Taibbi was the starting left fielder for the Uzbekistan national baseball team. Six months later, Taibbi moved to Moscow to take a job at the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times, where he worked as a sports editor for five months.

Taibbi moved back to the U.S. doing part-time landscaping work before suffering a nervous breakdown and moving north, where he had an affair with a married woman. He then moved back to Russia to play pro baseball for two Russian clubs, Spartak, and the Red Army, in 1995. After five months in Russia, Taibbi moved back to the East Coast, where he worked as an investigator at a Boston-based private detective agency. After seven months as a private detective, Taibbi moved to Russia to "write a book about serial murder" and began working for The Moscow Times again, as a news reporter. He returned to the U.S. again after five months to resume his relationship with the divorcée but they broke up and Taibbi returned to Russia to work for The Moscow Times for the third time. He initially planned to return to America in the summer of 1996 to rekindle their relationship, but found himself too busy covering the 1996 Russian presidential election.