This is Matt Stroud 👋

I'm an investigative reporter, author, and host of Narrative Control with Matt Stroud — a podcast and newsletter built around unlearning the cliches and shortcuts in storytelling that flatten power, history, and responsibility into reassuring meaninglessness.

Here's me:

I’ve spent the last twenty-plus years reporting for places like The New York Times, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Esquire, The Verge, and a long list of other outlets—many of them based in or connected to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where I’m from and where I still seem to end up.

Narrative Control is a podcast (and newsletter) about journalism, storytelling, and the narratives we build around ourselves and the world—how they’re constructed, why they persist, and what they make easier to believe. Some episodes draw directly on my reporting. Others are conversations with people who think carefully about story for a living: reporters, editors, network news veterans, authors, musicians, songwriters, poets, and people working in more unexpected corners of the internet and culture. If you’re shaping a persona, performing an identity, or navigating an audience—intentionally or not—you’re part of the conversation.

And it isn’t just me! This semester, I’m working alongside Gavin Petrone, who’s reporting for this project while also helming The Globe, Point Park University’s student newspaper.

Here's Gavin:

Over time, I hope to bring in other reporters and storytellers—people doing serious work who are trying to figure out what comes next, and who don’t fit neatly into the formats we’re told still matter.

Have something to say? Get in touch: matt AT amphibian DOT media