Matthew Hoy graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism and a concentration in News-Editorial. At Cal Poly he shared the California Intercollegiate Press Association's First Place prize in Investigative Reporting in 1990 for an article he wrote with Len Arends.
In two years at The Lompoc Record, Matthew covered Vandenberg Air Force Base, the environment, agriculture, two community services (water/sewer) districts and the three federal prison facilities adjacent to the town. Topics everything from standard government process stories to science and technology articles connected to regular missile and rocket launches from the base to military affairs.
At The Daily World, Matthew was the special sections editor for the paper and directed the creation of various advertorial sections year round. When not shepherding those projects, Matthew did general assignment reporting and also covered area schools. For an example of some of his writing, check out this Sunday feature article on longtime volunteer Bessie Hall.
Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Matthew joined the nascent blogging movement, writing about politics, national security and society. Matthew's writing was cited in the following publications:
In October 2012, Matthew was approached by The San Diego Union-Tribune to curate a new feature they were planning for their website called "Seeing Red." The page was to focus largely on "conservative" stories that were not appearing in much of the mainstream media. Matthew used his knowledge of the conservative blogs, publications and writers that was familiar with in his years writing his own blog to populate the site five days a week. Matthew selected stories, wrote headlines, selected and at times created art for the page.
In 2013, The San Diego Union-Tribune approached Matthew to help curate a website for a long-term editorial project they were undertaking focused on bipartisan solutions to the problems facing California. In addition to posting print editorials and guest columns to the webpage, Matthew also searched for and posted a variety of articles, YouTube videos and podcasts from third-party sources. Unlike the Seeing Red project, Matthew wrote headlines and summaries without the partisan tilt.
Matthew joined XYZ Textbooks when it was a small start-up in 2009. Over the next six years, Matthew worked on the design and composition of numerous textbooks, including custom textbooks. He supervised and trained designers on InDesign and the mt.editor custom math plug-in for InDesign. Matthew also did copywriting and editing for the company's marketing materials in both print and online.
From February 2016 to March 2017, Matthew was the conservative columnist for the Tribune. An archive of his semimonthly column can be found here. Unlike columns by his liberal counterpart, Matthew takes pride in doing reported-opinion columns like this one on the race to replace congresswoman Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara.