Matt Jancer
There I was, looking miserable. I’d caught sight of myself in the mirror down the hallway. Having just been welcomed into the final interview round for a major firm, I should’ve been an awfully pleased graduating senior, especially since the headlines were thick with policy wonks declaring 2010 the worst year for graduating college students since the Great Depression. But I saw myself in the mirror, miserable at the prospect of a job in an industry I didn’t care for, in an office that cut me off from the wide, wild world of untapped stories waiting to be plucked ripe off the branches.
So I called the perplexed interviewer and withdrew my name from consideration for the job. That day, I decided to jump into the deep end of the pool and become a magazine journalist. The most impactful college professor I had was Shirley Matthews, a hard-boiled newspaper editor who worked the news rooms of 1980s Chicago, and I’d always remembered her advice when it came to dreams: if you had a backup plan, you’d always fall back to it because it was comfortable, safe, and certain. So ditch the backup plan, commit to one path. Reasoning that if I’d failed out—and the numbers weren’t on my side—that at least I wouldn’t grow old knowing that I never gave it shot. But in the meantime I’d give it one hell of a try. And what do you know, it grew into a career that’s gave me a living every day since. Sure, I drove an old car and couldn’t take the fun vacations overseas that everybody else seemed to be taking. But I woke up every day knowing that I was looking forward to 9 a.m., not 5 p.m.
Ever since that day, I’ve been a full-time, working magazine writer and journalist. My work has run in Outside, Men’s Journal, Popular Mechanics, Car and Driver, Smithsonian, The History Channel Magazine, and I’ve served on staff at Wired and Vice. I’ve written about the auto industry and motorcycles, the outdoors, mental health, tech, politics, history, travel, and DIY. At Popular Mechanics I built the “Smart Your Engine” automotive section as we shifted from print-first to digital-first in the 2010s, and later spent years road testing EVs as a staff writer for Wired. Joining Vice afterward in 2024, I helped rebuild Vice’s reviews section as a tech expert. On weekends I co-host the Open Book Podcast, a literary show based out of New York City, and I’ve wrapped up co-authoring my first book, Haydon 160: Bolts on Unity Street, with Steven Ujifusa, due out from Tradewinds History in late 2026.