Matt Taibbi has traveled the world, played professional basketball in Mongolia and started a newspaper in post-communist Russia. He is currently Rolling Stone’s politics reporter, a post once held by Hunter S. Thompson.

He has written for The Moscow Times, Playboy, The New York Press and has also written five books including “Spanking the Donkey: On the Campaign Trail with the Democrats,” a campaign diary of the 2004 presidential election.

       

Taibbi will speak at 7 p.m. Monday in Emerson Suites. The lecture is sponsored by the college’s Park Center for Independent Media and is free and open to the public.

 

Staff writer Sam Lowe spoke with Taibbi about his visit to the college, the role of the independent media and the highlights of his career.

 

Sam Lowe: What will you talk about when you come to the college?

 

Matt Taibbi: I am talking about alternative approaches to this business … [and] how young journalists have questions about how they can get into this business and how to make a name for themselves. There are a lot of ways of doing it that you don’t see in school. I have had one of the weirder careers out there in journalism, and I took a very unusual approach to getting to where I am right now.

 

SL: What is the role of independent media in today’s structure?

 

MT: The truly independent media is the Internet and the bloggers  [who] have a very interesting role in modern media. On the one hand, they are an amazingly positive influence because they are not printed. They don’t have any pressure from financial backers or advertisers that they have to worry about — they are given free reign. ... On the flip side, the Web has some negative aspects too. The material isn’t fact-checked, and there is a lot of stuff that is floating out there that is libelous and incorrect.

 

SL: How does it feel to be compared to Hunter S. Thompson?

 

MT: In a way it is flattering, but I think it is ridiculous. ... The kind of stuff that he did was more in the level of a great fiction writer. I think that what I do is more along the lines of a pundit or columnist — somebody who basically writes a few observations about politics. ... Thompson wrote these enormously complex, three-

dimensional stories.

 

SL: You don’t have any qualms about speaking your mind. How do you handle negative feedback?

 

MT: I get a lot of negative mail, and I make a point of it to read all of them because sometimes they are right. ... They often notice when you are repeating yourself or getting lazy about this or that. ... If you can’t take it, then you should not be in this business. It is part of the deal.

 

SL: Why do you feel journalists should immerse themselves in different cultures?

 

MT: I think it is important for any journalist to have the experience of living in the shoes of the person they are writing about. … One of the problems we have with modern journalism is that journalists don’t have the time or the freedom to immerse themselves in their topic. As a result, they don’t have the correct perspective.

 

SL: Why did you wear a gorilla costume during the 2004 election?

 

MT: The better question is why not wear a gorilla costume? It got to a point when aspects of covering the election were so ridiculous it seemed like the appropriate thing to wear.