Meeting Speaker for August 15, 2011 - Joe Mathews

Joe Mathews writes about California and the West as the Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He is co-author, with Mark Paul, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (University of California, 2010). His previous book was The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy (PublicAffairs, 2006).

Joe is a contributing writer at the LA Times, California editor at Zocalo Public Square, and lead blogger at NBC’s California site Prop Zero. His work appears in The Daily Beast, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Los Angeles magazine, the American Prospect, Scientific American, Politico, and Fox & Hounds Daily. He also served as co-president of 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, the world’s largest gathering of experts and participants on initiative and referendum.

Before joining New America, he was a reporter at the LA Times, Wall Street Journal and Baltimore Sun. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons.