Matthew Sheffield is the publisher of Flux and host of “Theory of Change,” a video podcast airing on the site. He is also a national correspondent with The Young Turks where he covers national and California politics. Previously, Matthew worked at The Hill where he created and analyzed public opinion polls on a variety of policy areas and news topics. His surveys and analyses have been cited by many major news outlets, candidates, and political groups.

Earlier, Matthew was a staff reporter at Salon where he wrote about numerous topics, including technology policy, elections, the media industry, and the rise of extremist movements in the United States. In his reporting, he exposed a secret network of salacious blogs set up for Fox News founder Roger Ailes that targeted women who worked for the network. He also exposed a security vulnerability in Google’s AMP framework.

Before joining Salon, Matthew ran a marketing and technology company which catered to Republican campaigns, conservative organizations, and publications. During this time, he served as the first online managing editor of the Washington Examiner and as the co-founder and executive editor of NewsBusters. He also produced two television shows and provided web development and hosting services to numerous clients.

His initial right-leaning project was RatherBiased.com, a blog launched in 2000 that was critical of the former CBS anchor Dan Rather which the Pew Research Center said was most responsible for the explosion of the 2004 “Memogate” scandal that ended Rather’s CBS tenure.

Matthew left right-wing media in 2015 after working on a manuscript for a book to help conservatives better understand politics. In researching the topic, he realized that right-wing elites were not interested in religious pluralism, and that they often used cultural complaints to distract from unpopular policies.

His introduction to far-right politics grew out of his childhood in a prophetic Mormon family. During his youth, Matthew and his 7 siblings lived in cars, tents, trailer parks, and a few regular houses in several U.S. states. He is currently working on a memoir of these years, the first chapter of which is available at Flux.

Matthew and his work have been profiled and cited by many media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, NBC, and CNN.