Chances are, you know Michael Rubino‘s work for Indianapolis Monthly. The award-winning longform articles. The watering-hole reports. The bygone Replay sports digests, which always found a fresh way to skewer Tom Brady. He has been a prolific writer and editor for Indianapolis Monthly for the last 10 years. Today, he takes the reins as editor-in-chief from four-year veteran Amanda Heckert, who has moved back home, to South Carolina, where she will serve as deputy editor of Garden and Gun magazine. What you need to know:
- Though he was born in New York City, Rubino is a lifelong Hoosier—from Jasper, which is near French Lick. The regional familiarity came in handy when he connected the dots on an obscure period of Larry Bird’s past in 2014.
- He graduated from Wabash College and had no problem publishing a photo of himself wearing the school’s dorky required hat.
- A craft-beer lover who wrote the early definitive Sun King story, he knows Zombie Dust’s local distribution schedule down to the hour.
- For every lighthearted piece on Indiana’s zipline craze or Andrew Luck’s beard, he has also written a deep, investigative article that took many months to report. “The Long Con” swindle is a favorite read around the office, while “The Boy With Half a Brain” tearjerker garnered attention from the Columbia Journalism Review.
- He would trade his kids for Fat Dan’s brisket.
Connect with Michael Rubino on Twitter.