First Look Media Racks Up Another Jewel for Its Crown

This time, it's Matt Taibbi, who is perhaps the only financial journalist in America who has not gone native with the financial services industry:

Matt Taibbi, who made a name as a fierce critic of Wall Street at Rolling Stone magazine, has joined First Look Media, the latest big-name journalist to leave an established brand to enter the thriving and well-financed world of news start-ups.

Mr. Taibbi will start his own publication focusing on financial and political corruption, he said in an interview on Wednesday. First Look is financed by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who is worth $8.5 billion, according to Forbes. Mr. Omidyar has pledged $250 million to the project.

“It’s obvious that we’re entering a new phase in the history of journalism,” Mr. Taibbi said. “This is clearly the future, and this was an opportunity for me to be part of helping to found something and create something that might carry us into the next generation.”

………

First Look began its first publication, The Intercept, with the national security reporters Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill. In recent weeks, the group has hired Lynn Oberlander, formerly of The New Yorker, as its general counsel, and the author and journalist Peter Maass, among others.

Taibbi, of course nailed Goldman Sachs, and enraged vampire squid aficionados everywhere, when he described them as, "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Also, we have seen Dan Froomkin and Jay Rosen.

This is beginning to look like an impressive team, if someone *cough* Jim Romenesko *cough* could update us on whether they are getting some utility infielders to go along with the stars, I would be more sanguine about its prospects.