Matt Welch is editor-at-large of Reason, the libertarian magazine of "Free Minds and Free Markets." He is the author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick (2007) and co-author with Nick Gillespie of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America (2011). Under Welch's leadership Reason has won five first-place Maggie awards and 18 first-place notices from the Greater Los Angeles Press Club. Welch himself has won eight first-place L.A. Press Club awards over the years, for work on subjects ranging from Jackie Robinson to Cuba to the "banal authoritarianism" of Thomas L. Friedman and David Brooks. Welch worked as an assistant editorial pages editor for the Los Angeles Times, as a media columnist for Reason, California correspondent for The National Post, political columnist for WorkingForChange.com, regular contributor to the Online Journalism Review and co-host of the nightly Fox Business Network program The Independents. He lived for eight years in Central Europe, where he co-founded the region's first post-communist English-language newspaper, Prognosis, worked as UPI's Slovakia correspondent and managed the Budapest Business Journal. His work has appeared in scores of national publications.