Matt Taibbi is gathering no moss. The former Rolling Stone journalist is returning to the magazine, days after splitting from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media in tumultuous circumstances.

“I can confirm that he has a story with us in our forthcoming issue, which is out next week,” a spokeswoman for Wenner Media, Rolling Stone’s publisher, told the Guardian in response to an inquiry on Friday. “It’s a big piece.”



It was not immediately clear whether Taibbi would take up his old post of contributing editor to Rolling Stone, for which he began writing in 2004. “We’re thrilled to have him back in the fold,” spokeswoman Melissa Bruno said.



The split between Taibbi and First Look, where Taibbi was to create and run a new digital publication called Racket, was the result of months of acrimony, according to a description by former colleagues published on Thursday. “Taibbi and First Look disagreed over the functionality of the website, the timing of its launch, which designers and programmers they would use, Racket‘s organizational chart – even, at one point, over office seating assignments,” the report said.



The future of Racket, and of First Look Media, is unclear. Thursday’s recounting by First Look journalists in a blogpost of mismanagement at the company was an unusually scathing and public airing of newsroom turmoil. None in addition to Taibbi, however, has announced a resignation. After the blogpost was published, the dissection of First Look continued on Twitter, where Alex Pareene, hired as executive editor of Racket, called the publisher’s management philosophies “really dumb”.

Also I've never doubted Pierre's sincere commitment to independent journalism, I just think he has some really dumb management philosophies — alex pareene (@pareene) October 30, 2014

Taibbi, who has been called “the best polemical journalist in America”, is known for writing entertainingly and incisively about misdeeds in the world of banking and finance. The prosecutorial tone of his journalism has won him a wide following with readers who believe serial criminal activity in the financial sector has otherwise gone unprosecuted. When Taibbi in 2009 called Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”, it resonated.



Taibbi could not immediately be reached for comment.

