Scott Shackford is a policy research editor at Reason Foundation. He was formerly an associate editor at Reason.
Shackford came to Reason in 2012 after nearly a decade of serving in various editing positions for Freedom Communications, a now-defunct libertarian-leaning media chain. He was formerly editor in chief of the Desert Dispatch in Barstow, California, where he wrote editorials focusing on libertarian issues like wasteful municipal spending, school choice, the drug war, and abuse of police authority. He also editorialized about state and federal transportation and energy spending. Living in the midst of heavily subsidized solar developments in the Mojave Desert, he warned about potential problems with the Department of Energy’s guaranteed loan program months before Solyndra actually filed for bankruptcy. He was one of the few newspaper editors in California to endorse Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana.
Shackford's writing has appeared in Newsweek, The Orange County Register, The American Spectator, the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, and elsewhere.
He has moderated panels at South by Southwest on federal tech surveillance and criminal justice reform.
Shackford once weighed in on much more important matters as a show recapper at the now-defunct Television Without Pity. There, his dislike of Clay Aiken and his disappointment with the writing on Firefly earned him the enmity of the entire internet long before the days of Twitter and cancel culture.
Shackford lives in Los Angeles.
