Backgrounder: Matt Bai

By Rachel Goldman

Matt Bai
Rack 'Em Up: Matt Bai shoots some pool with Ed Thompson (brother of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson) at the Sports Page tavern in downtown Elkhorn, Wisconsin in 2002. Thompson was campaigning on the libertarian ticket for the Wisconsin governorship; Bai was on assignment for The New York Times Magazine. Photo courtesy EdThompson.com. © EdThompson.com, 2004.

Every Sunday, readers of The New York Times Magazine look to campaign reporter Matt Bai to give them the latest political news. 

Bai took his Masters degree from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1994. Upon graduation, he received one of four Pulitzer Traveling Fellowships, awards given in recognition of outstanding journalism to graduate students nominated by the faculty.

Bai’s first job out of graduate school was at The Boston Globe, where he worked from 1995-1996 as a Globe staff member. In 2001, the Harvard Institute of Politics appointed him one of its Resident Fellows.

As a national correspondent for Newsweek from 1997-2002, Bai covered lightning-rod topics such as the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School and the related story of Natalie Brooks, a victim of the Jonesboro High School shooting. Bai’s April 13, 1998 article, “Targeting Gun Makers,” was one of the first stories about Brooks’s parents’ litigation against gun manufacturers whom they believed were complicit in their daughter’s murder.

As well, Bai spent six months chronicling Senator John Glenn’s return to space, making the seven-time astronaut the oldest spacefarer in American history. Bai wrote four articles on Glenn’s adventures aboard the ship and his return to Earth.

While working for Newsweek, Bai has covered politics nationwide, from his April 22, 2002 article, “Mayor Mike, Inc.,” about Michael Bloomberg’s pursuit of the New York mayoralty, to Bai’s September 3, 2001 story, “Mission: Take Back the Hills,” about Mark Warner, the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia.

After a brief stint at Rolling Stone magazine in 2002, as a national affairs correspondent, Bai began working for The New York Times Magazine in 2002, where he remains today as a contributing writer and campaign reporter. Bai is interested in the way politics has become more intertwined with popular culture, and in how this affects the political process. In his January 8, 2004 New York Times article on the challenges facing Ed Reilly, who was then working as a pollster for presidential candidate Richard Gephardt, Bai writes, “The Scientific Theory known as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle holds, in its popular interpretation, that to observe something is to affect its course. The same principle might be applied, in a cumulative sense, to the business of pollsters and consultants. Decades of trying to dissect and interpret the desires of the American voter—for the purpose, ultimately, of undermining opponents and manipulating public opinion—have changed the character of the voter himself. The popularizing of political strategy, on TV and in newspapers, has created a class of voter who sees politics more as a tactical pursuit than as a means to an end. And the more these voters are polled, focus-grouped, and then subjected to sophisticated marketing techniques, the harder it becomes for a guy like Ed Reilly to figure out what’s truly important to them.”

Bai’s in-depth knowledge of the American political landscape, together with his deft skill as a writer, make him a compelling journalistic storyteller, whether he’s writing about mayors, governors, presidents, or presidential hopefuls.

Rachel Goldman is a junior at NYU, where she is double-majoring in broadcast journalism and French language and culture. She hopes to cover medical news for a foreign news outlet.

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