Matthew C. "Matt" Taibbi (pronounced /taɪˈiːbi/; born March 2, 1970) is an American author and journalist reporting on politics, media, finance, and sports for Rolling Stone and Men's Journal, often in a polemical style. He has also edited and written for The eXile, the New York Press, and The Beast.

Taibbi grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburbs. He attended Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, and Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, then spent a year abroad at Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University in Russia. His father is Mike Taibbi, an NBC television reporter.

Taibbi joined Mark Ames in 1997 to co-edit the controversial English-language Moscow-based, bi-weekly free newspaper, The eXile. Of Exile, Taibbi said, "We were out of the reach of American libel law, and we had a situation where we weren’t really accountable to our advertisers. We had total freedom."^{[citation needed]} In the U.S. media, Playboy magazine published pieces on Russia both by Taibbi and by Taibbi and Ames together during this time.

Chrystia Freeland (born 1968) has been the Global Editor-at-Large of Reuters news since March 1, 2010, having formerly been the United States managing editor at the Financial Times, based in New York City. Freeland received her undergraduate education from Harvard University, going onto St Antony's at University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She attended the United World College of the Adriatic, Italy, 1984-86.

Freeland, a Ukrainian-Canadian, was born in Alberta, Canada. Freeland has worked in Kiev, Moscow, London, Toronto and currently in New York. She is the author of Sale of the Century, a 2000 book about Russia's journey from communism to capitalism.

She lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.

She has appeared five times as a panelist on Real Time With Bill Maher, on February 26, 2010, January 14, 2011, May 27, 2011, July 15, 2011 and April 20, 2012. She has also appeared on The McLaughlin Group, The Dylan Ratigan Show, Imus in the Morning and The Colbert Report. Currently, she is periodically standing in for Arianna Huffington as a panelist on public radio's political debate program, "Left, Right & Center", produced by KCRW. (After Huffington was named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, a newly created unit of AOL, she stopped appearing every week.)

Megan McArdle (born January 29, 1973) is a Washington, D.C.-based blogger and journalist. She writes mostly about economics, finance and government policy from a moderate libertarian or classical liberal perspective. She currently serves as the business and economics editor, as well as a blogger, for The Atlantic. She is a Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at The New America Foundation. She has had book reviews and opinion pieces published in the New York Post, The New York Sun, Reason, The Guardian and Salon.com.

McArdle was born and raised in New York City. She has an undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Chicago Booth.

McArdle began blogging in November 2001; her blog was originally called "Live From The WTC", because she was working at the time for a construction firm doing cleanup at the World Trade Center site following the September 11 attacks. She wrote under the pen name "Jane Galt". The name was a play on "John Galt", the name of a central character in Ayn Rand's Objectivist novel Atlas Shrugged; though her political perspective could best be described not as Objectivist but as moderate libertarian or classical liberal. In November 2002 she renamed the site "Asymmetrical Information", a reference to the economics term of the same name. That blog had two other occasional contributors, Zimran Ahmed (writing under the pen name "Winterspeak") and the pseudonymous "Mindles H. Dreck".

Samuel Lincoln "Sam" Seder (born November 28, 1966) is a comedian, writer, actor, film director, television producer-director, and talk radio host. Seder was born in New York City, New York into a Jewish family, and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts.

His works include the film Who’s the Caboose (1997) as well as the television shows Beat Cops (2001) and Pilot Season (2004). He also appeared in Next Stop Wonderland (1998). Seder also made guest appearances on Spin City (1997), Sex and the City (2000) and America Undercover (2005).

In March 2004, Seder became co-host along with Janeane Garofalo on Air America Radio's The Majority Report. In July 2006 Garofalo departed the show, offering positive comments about working with Seder. Seder was later offered a new contract with Air America Radio, and his show moved from the 7-10PM (Eastern) spot to a 9AM-Noon spot, retitled The Sam Seder Show.

On September 1, 2004, Sam Seder was briefly detained by the United States Secret Service during his live, on-site coverage of the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden. Shortly after Zell Miller gave his speech, Seder began searching (with a sign in hand) on the convention floor for a willing homosexual Republican to interview live on radio. It was not long before he was physically removed from the floor and after brief questioning, was asked (or according to some, "strongly encouraged") to leave the convention. Seder later commented that his wearing of a lapel pin that he had been given by a Secret Service agent at the Democratic National Convention earlier that year had kept him from being ejected from the convention completely.

Salon is a progressive online magazine, with content updated each weekday. Part of Salon Media Group (OTCBB: SLNM), it was launched in 1995. It was founded by David Talbot, who first served as CEO of Salon Media Group from 1995 to 1999, and serves as its current CEO. It focuses on U.S. politics and current affairs, and on reviews and articles about music, books and films.

Salon's headquarters is located west of downtown San Francisco, California. As of November 2010, its editor-in-chief is Kerry Lauerman. His predecessor Joan Walsh stepped down from that position in November 2010 but remained as editor at large.

Salon magazine covers a variety of topics. It has reviews and articles about music, books, and films. It also has articles about "modern life", including relationships, friendships and human sexual behavior. It covers technology, with a particular focus on the free software/open source movement.

In 2008, Salon launched the interactive initiative Open Salon, a social content site/blog network for its readers.