LARRY'S BIO
Larry Matthews is a journalist who worked in broadcast news for over three decades as a reporter, anchor,. editor, producer, news director.
He worked at major radio stations, networks, and a couple of TV outlets.
He is the author of 11 books, fiction and non-fiction, including the acclaimed I Used To Be In Radio.
Larry’s awards include a Peabody, National Headliner, DuPont/Columbia Citation, national UPI, and regional and local awards from The Associated Press, The Society of Professional Journalists and other organizations.
He taught Broadcasting and Writing for Radio and Television at The George Washington University.
LARRY'S Books
I USED TO BE IN RADIO
This is a must read for anyone who understands or needs to understand the need for a free press staffed not by bloggers but by professional journalists. Larry Matthews is the consummate professional who worked at journalism's highest calling - true investigative reporting, the kind that takes time and guts - in support of people caught in society's underbelly. Along the way, Larry made a mistake. He trusted the FBI and the price was a reporter's worst nightmare. Instead of reporting the story, he became the story. Full disclosure: I know Larry. He once worked for me (and he mentions that in his memoir). I knew Larry when he walked the streets of Washington, DC in order to tell the prostitutes' story. I knew him when he slept in a homeless shelter to better tell the story of the homeless. And I believe every word of his dreadful tale of entrapment. It is vintage Larry Matthews. What's most disturbing is not that Larry went to prison - his introspective nature served and preserved him, and that telling alone is a story of value. What's most disturbing is that the story Larry set out to report, the sex exploitation of children on the internet, that story was not told, and worse, Larry's imprisonment has had a measurable chilling effect on other reporters. That story remains untold.
Site Content
TAKE A RIFLE FROM A DEAD MAN
He was a small man now. His hair was thin and gray and wild on his head like some mad professor who had stuck his finger in a light socket. His face was sunken, and he hadn’t shaved in five days. In that moment he looked like a derelict on the street. Even so, he was still lean and muscular in a way that revealed a life of suffering and combat. He was a man who struggled with ghosts and the faces of those who had died at his hands. He had never meant to live that life. He was—in his heart—a poet and a scholar, a man who not only had read the classics but could recite entire passages. He was a student of history and the ancient Greeks.
He was also a recognized firearms expert, a black belt in Judo, a skilled knife fighter, and a man who knew precisely where and how to use a blackjack. He could pick virtually any lock in seconds. He could survive behind enemy lines. What he could not do was live an ordinary life, a challenge he had failed in the years since he took his retirement as a Command Sergeant Major of the United States Army.
This is his story.
BUTTERFLY KNIFE
A DAVE HAGGARD THRILLER
Welcome to the world of investigative street reporting. Washington, D.C., power capital of the world, is also home to bums, killers, cops who bend the rules, F.B.I. agents who dole out leaks to reporters like so many dimes to the poor, and layers of lies and misinformation. Dave Haggard thought it was the worst idea he had ever had for a story. He was living in a homeless shelter, sickened by the smells, and feeling sorry for himself when a scuffle in the stairwell and a scream brought him into a terrifying hunt for the serial killer of priests. A sick, sadistic murderer was using a butterfly knife as a Rosary in grisly killings that would bring Dave into the hunt not as a reporter but as bait. The head of Homicide has a plan to trap the killer and it involves Dave and his girlfriend. A hit man for a group of religious fanatics is on the loose and has an agenda of his own. The killer is lost in his lunatic visions, and he knows who Dave is and where to find him. What are his plans for Elena? Who to trust? Who to fear? Dave Haggard is a reporter in hiding from his own story.
