Matiur Rahman was born on 2 January 1946 in Calcutta to Mohammed Fazlur Rahman, a lawyer, and Lutfunessa Begum. For his secondary education, he attended Nawabpur Government High School and then Dhaka College. For his higher education, he attended the University of Dhaka and earned his master’s degree in statistics in 1967.
He entered journalism in 1970 when he became the editor of Ekota, a socialist weekly. For five years during the 1970s, he also published the Bangladesh edition of the journal World Marxist Review. He left that position after 21 years and after the fall of the East Bloc. After he left Ekota, he worked as a journalist for the newspaper Ajker Kagoj. In February 1992, he partnered with others to found Bhorer Kagoj, which he edited for the next six years
