- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Matt Bai
Matt Bai
Yahoo News National Political Columnist & Author
Winter 2017 Visiting Pritzker Fellow
“The Tabloidization of Political Journalism: Where Do We Go From Here?”
Biography
Matt Bai is the national political columnist for Yahoo News, where his “Political World” column appears every Thursday. Before joining Yahoo at the end of 2013, he was the chief political correspondent for the New York Times Magazine, where he covered three presidential campaigns, and a columnist for the Times.
Bai’s most recent book, All the Truth is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid looks back at the ruinous scandal involving the presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1987 and how it helped shape the political and media culture for decades after. It was selected as one of the year’s best books by NPR and Amazon and was one of 10 books long-listed for the PEN Faulkner Award in nonfiction. The New York Times Book Review called it a “miniclassic of political journalism.”
Bai is also the author of The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, which was a New York Times Notable Book for 2007. He also contributed a personal essay to the anthology I Married My Mother-in-Law: And Other Tales of In-Laws We Can’t Live With—And Can’t Live Without.
Bai often explores issues of generational change in American politics and society. His notable stories for the Times Magazine included a 10,000-word cover piece titled “Who Killed the Debt Deal?” in 2012 and the 2008 cover essay titled “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” He appears frequently on NBC's “Meet the Press” and other news shows. In 2013, he played himself in a recurring role on the second season of the Netflix drama “House of Cards.”
Bai is also a screenwriter and is currently developing a movie based on All the Truth Is Out, among other projects.
Bai spent part of 2013 in residence at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, where he was a public policy scholar. He has also been a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He serves on the board of the Jonathan M. Tisch College for Civic Life.
Seminars
“The Tabloidization of Political Journalism: Where Do We Go From Here?”
While on campus, Matt Bai will look at media in the Trump era, where they succeeded and failed on the campaign trail, and what challenges to expect covering the Trump presidency.
As the worlds of politics and celebrity have converged, the norms and values of political media have been tested and even altered. In this seminar we’ll look at both the medium and the message - how have technological change and digital media affected coverage? How is social media changing not only journalism but politics? What challenges will the White House press corps face covering the first Twitter presidency? What challenges face the public? How did this media landscape evolve and what changes are possible that will improve the state of political journalism?
IOP Visiting Fellow, author and Yahoo News National Political Correspondent Matt Bai will look at these questions and more in this students-only, off the record seminar.
This seminar is part of “America in the Trump Era,” the IOP’s look at the changes - cultural, policy, media and otherwise - coming under a Trump administration.
The American public’s trust in the media is at an all-time low. People of all parties and all persuasions blame media bias for election results and public response. What were the media successes and failures of the 2016 election? How do America’s top media executives rate their organization’s performance? What did they do well? What mistakes did they make? How has the media landscape changed? And, looking forward, what challenges do they face covering a Trump White House?
Moderated by IOP Visiting Fellow Matt Bai, national political columnist at Yahoo News.
This event is part of “America in the Trump Era,” the IOP’s look at the changes - cultural, policy, media and otherwise - coming under a Trump administration.