David Talbot

David Talbot born September 22 1951 is an American journalist author activist and independent historian Talbot is known for his books about the hidden history of US power and the liberal movements to change America as well as his public advocacy He was also the founder and former editorinchief of the early web magazine Salon Talbot founded Salon in 1995 The magazine gained a large following and broke several major national stories Since leaving Salon Talbot has researched and written on the Kennedy assassination and other areas of what he calls 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 In addition to his work as an independent historian Talbot has been deeply engaged in political activism especially in his hometown San Francisco where he has campaigned for many progressive candidates and has been called a leader in the fight to keep San Francisco affordable On his blog Talbot offers frequent opinions on burning national and local topics Talbot was born and raised in Los Angeles California His father was actor Lyle Talbot He attended the Harvard School for Boys but did not graduate after falling afoul of the schools 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 cowrote with Barbara Zheutlin 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 DC to write Power and Light a book about the politics of energy After he returned to California he worked as an editor at Mother Jones magazine before San Francisco Examiner publisher Will Hearst hired him to edit the newspapers Sunday magazine Image It was at the Examiner where Talbot developed the idea for Salon convincing several of his newspaper colleagues to join him Salon is a web magazine based in San Francisco Talbot has characterized Salon as aiming to be a smart tabloid In 1996 Time magazine picked Salon as the web site of the year 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 rightwing prosecutorial apparatus headed by Kenneth Starr and Rep Henry Hyde whose own infidelity Salon exposed Before stepping down as Salons CEO and editorinchief in 2005 Talbot stabilized the financially rocky web enterprise Talbot returned briefly as Salon CEO in 2011 but has since left the company After leaving Salon Talbot resumed his career as an author of popular history books Talbots book The New York Times bestseller Brothers The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years offers a potentially controversial view of the Kennedy presidency and assassination and explores Bobby Kennedys search for the truth about his brothers murder Talbot is now working on a feature documentary based on Brothers Source Article David Talbot from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30