Matthew Reiss broke into radio spinning discs at an upstate radio station when there was no one awake for three hundred miles. He broke into politics getting elected to a community board seat in Washington, DC and nominated Jesse Jackson delegate to the 1988 Democratic Convention. He worked for America’s most prolific investigative reporter: Jack Anderson; and Ralph Nader’s telecommunications think tank. He stared down Soviet negotiators at East-West youth summits before the Berlin Wall fell and made his bones writing investigative pieces for LeMonde, MotherJones, AsahiShimbun, IhTheseTimes, Hankyoreh, Counterpunch.org and the New York Times; humor pieces for Playboy and Esquire publications and the New Yorker's Talk of the Town.

Elected Director of WBAI’s Board of Directors two years ago by de-emphasizing Zoom/inviting board members to in-person meetings to inspire camaraderie and inspiration and introduced brain storming solutions to intractable problems.

We cannot underestimate ‘inspiration” and must remember that WBAI is the living history of US journalism that brought “People Power” to bear to end the Vietnam War over bi-partite politics.

It was Reiss’s Village Voice exposé of party/plutocrat’s attempt to build the world's largest incinerator in Brooklyn, which vied unsuccessfully for a Pulitzer Prize and won runner up for Washington Monthly's Article of the Month. Unable to burn garbage, Gotham had to sell it, compelling passage of our first recycling law — which still stands. During the
lifespan of the burn plant -- an old fashioned Tammany Hall “done deal” -- the region would have ingested 10,000 tons of residue daily for 30 years. To neighbors beneath its proposed -regional- plume with no festering tumor, we say, “you’re welcome.

This led to cover stories on the nuclear weapons racket, concrete/capital market manipulation, deep coverage of Wall Street/US Treasury; drug war excesses, health, education, philanthropy, foreign policy. He won a Davidoff Journalism Award for his Times business columns on NY’s black market and on prison slavery inside city limits.

Reiss began at WBAI doing interviews with Bernard White and on air with Utrice Leid. He regularly breaks stories on Washington/Wall Street coupling and US/China decoupling for publishing houses worldwide. His findings on deaths resulting from overwork, on housing, economics, labor, organized crime and organized capital are cited in books, PhD theses and scholarly journals worldwide. He’s taught investigative journalism at the privates, CUNY and Rutgers.

He covered wars in Guatemala, Kosovo, Yugoslavia and sharpened his coverage of nuclear proliferation/profiteering reporting from North Korea for the Baltimore Sun.

A UN press officer/UN Correspondent and InterPressService editor, Reiss was recruited out of the Voice to do investigations for Millberg, Weiss (the premier US class action firm) and specializing in global import sourcing. Serial entrepreneur, documentarian, award-winning photographer, his editorship of a book on the neoconservative era sold out two reprintings. His comedic sense won the title “the Funniest Guy in New York" from the head writer of the Village Voice. A longball hitter, he writes scripts and performs lyrics in his spare time.