Senior writer of Wired and technology journalist Steven Levy spoke about journalism in the age of the Internet and new technology at the Walter Cronkite School’s Must See Monday speaker series.
Levy has written for publications such as Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Harper’s Magazine, Macworld and The New Yorker. He also has written several books on hacker culture, the Macintosh computer, the iPod and, in his most recent book, Google.
Andrew Leckey, president of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at the Cronkite School, asked Levy a series of questions about his career and his views on journalism and the tech industry.
Levy’s inside access to the tech industry is remarkable because he interviewed industry leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, before their careers ever took off while “they were becoming what they became eventually,” Leckey said.
Proving his longstanding relationships with Jobs and Gates, Levy recalled instances during interviews when Jobs grumpily complained about stories he had written for Rolling Stone and Gates threw a pen at him during an argument regarding anti-trust law.
Sara Smith, a journalism and English literature junior, said she found Levy’s knowledge of the industry and close ties with tech insiders to be very impressive.
“It was interesting to hear from someone who wasn’t on the fringe of the technology boom, he was inside it when it was happening,” Smith said. “It was kind of funny to hear him talk about people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who are such gods among technology people, to hear him speak of them as though they were friends of his, or just buddies.”
By covering the computer industry from the beginning, Levy said has seen journalism coverage of technology strongly evolve to the point where many jobs are being created and journalists are hired to stay tapped in to the tech industry.
“Computers were evolving from a hobbyist pursuit, but journalism was still catching up on it,” Levy said. “Now, technology’s one of the few real boom fields in journalism. There’s a lot of hiring going on there.”
Offering advice for young business journalists, Levy emphasized the importance of knowing everything there is to know about a company, including its unique culture and how it operates.
For Levy’s recent book about Google, “In The Plex,” he was given unprecedented access to the internal operations of the typically guarded company for nearly three years. In that time, he discovered that Google employees in China bribed government officials with iPods, leading to employee termination and a further investigation.
“If you are able to get across what they do and not misrepresent what they’re doing, that’s a way that you’ll win the trust of those companies and they’ll tap you when they have something to announce,” he said.
Jessica Conditt, a digital media senior, said she admired Levy’s expertise in reporting on the computer and Internet industries.
“He knows the industry in-and-out,” Conditt said. “He’s been there, he knows it, he has the cool stories.”
Contact the reporter at bkutzler@asu.edu
Editor’s note: Downtown Devil managing editor Salvador Rodriguez was part of the Must See Monday speaker series with Steven Levy and Andrew Leckey regarding business journalism coverage of the technology industry.
