Matt Rosenberg
– Journalist
Rosenberg lived in Chicago for 30 years and returned to live there again in 2020 to do field work for his book, “What Next, Chicago?” He worked on the Better Government Association-Chicago Sun-Times Pulitzer-finalist Mirage tavern undercover investigation in 1977; and helped elect reform alderman Marion Volini of Edgewater to the Chicago City Council in 1978. He drove a Yellow Cab in Chicago, and cut his teeth as a suburban reporter for the late Lerner Newspapers in suburban Chicago – covering crime, government, and regional airport issues.
He worked as communications and organizing chief for suburban Chicago mayors battling Daley II on regional airport planning, and did airport-related work in Seattle for communities around Sea-Tac Airport. He also served as a Senior Fellow at a Gates-funded surface transportation think tank in Seattle which successfully advocated construction of multi-billion-dollar deep-bored tunnel to replace a seismically-vulnerable elevated highway, and advanced new road-charging policies.
Matt was a Seattle Times op-ed columnist, a political blogger at sites including Red State, and founded and ran an originally-reported public records-driven 501(c)3 news database site called Public Data Ferret. He was later recruited as senior editor of a Mozilla-backed online daily news site The Open Standard, promoting open systems and open government. His writing has been in City Journal, Imprimis, National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, New English Review, Jewish World Review, and American Greatness. Matt has worked in public policy, advocacy, journalism, and communications for more than three decades.