Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger became the project’s best-known initial writers. Lee Fang, David Zweig, Alex Berenson, Paul Thacker and others contributed reporting under the Twitter Files label. Their articles address different episodes; a reader should identify the author and source for each claim. [1]
At the March 2023 hearing, Taibbi said the participants had not been paid to do the work and described paying reporting expenses. Shellenberger said Weiss had invited him. Those are attributed witness accounts, not a public audit of everyone’s finances, but they directly challenge the assumption that Musk simply employed the whole group as salaried investigators. [2]
Taibbi’s later account credits subscriptions with making the work possible and discusses a journalism prize. Audience growth, subscriptions, promotion and prizes can create incentives without proving a secret paycheck. Access itself is valuable. The fair question is how that dependence affected coverage, rather than assuming an undocumented financial relationship. [3]