William Bastone

William Bastone is editor and a co-founder of The Smoking Gun, which was launched in April 1997. He began his journalism career at The Village Voice, working first as an intern, then a contributing writer, and finally a staff writer, the position he held until leaving the weekly newspaper in 2000 to run The Smoking Gun full time. During his tenure at the Voice, Bastone, 44, was a member of the paper's investigative reporting team, and covered City Hall, criminal justice issues, and, for more than a decade, wrote regularly about New York's five Mafia families. He has been widely described as one of the country's leading journalists covering organized crime. Bastone, a lifelong New Yorker, lives in Manhattan with his wife and six-year-old son.