How 'Rolling Stone' Missed the Boat on Matt Taibbi

Did Jann Wenner's blog-ophobia drive one of his most popular writers to moonlight?

Among the brand-name journalists contributing to True/Slant, a new website that's part group blog, part social network, is Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone's National Magazine Award-winning political columnist and occasional Sean Penn boating buddy.

You might wonder why Wenner, the magazine's owner and editor in chief, would allow a marquee writer to peddle his talents elsewhere rather than on Rollingstone.com. I wondered that myself -- until I remembered hearing from a source that Tabbi had offered, during last summer's presidential campaign, to blog for the site, for free, only to be turned down by Wenner, who worried that it would detract from his work on the column.

Taibbi eventually prevailed, but not until the campaign was winding down, and his blog, Taibbi Unbound, lasted only until March 2, at which point it was announced that his future posts would appear in the site's National Affairs blog. Only there haven't been any more posts -- everything since then has been written by Tim Dickinson, RS's other lead political writer.

When I asked about the situation, the answers I got were confusing and contradictory. A Rolling Stone spokesman first initially said that Taibbi "actually still blogs for Rolling Stone, just not every day." Taibbi, however, replied, "Yes, I'm only blogging for True/Slant now."

Notified of Taibbi's response, the spokesman amended, "We have a new Executive Editor of Rolling Stone.com who had wanted Matt to blog everyday. Matt couldn't commit due to his schedule. They are still working out the frequency, I believe, but he hasn't blogged for a while." The spokesman denied that the blogging impasse had anything to do with the cost-cutting drive that resulted in a recent round of layoffs and noted that Taibbi recently began contributing to Men's Journal, another Wenner title. (As I noted here, there has been internal talk of combining the two titles' editorial operations.)

When I asked whether Tabbi's decision to blog for True/Slant instead of Rollingstone.com had anything to do with Wenner's resistance and whether he had run into any contractual barriers, he replied, "I think it is best if I conferred with my agent before I answered this question." I'll update if I hear back.

Also, I should note that Taibbi didn't tell me to screw off despite this post, so either he never read it or he's a remarkably nice guy with a thick skin.