5 Questions with Kevin Roose, senior editor & co-executive producer at Fusion
by Sharon Kane, @SharonTully
Eastwick hosts a monthly “Media Meet & Greet” session with top journalists in the tech media scene. Last month, we launched our “5 Questions with…” media series with Lauren Furniss, associate producer at Bloomberg West.
This month’s “5 Questions with…” blog features Kevin Roose, senior editor and co-executive producer at Fusion, the ABC-Univision joint venture. Kevin writes, edits, and produces a TV show for Fusion’s “Real Future” section, a multi-platform storytelling effort about technology and the future, which launched this past winter.
He’s also the author of “Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits.” Previously, Kevin was the tech columnist at New York magazine, and a reporter at The New York Times, where he covered finance and Wall Street culture for the business section and DealBook.
We invited Kevin to stop by our San Francisco office recently so we could hear more about the launch of Real Future, trends he’s seeing, what makes a good story, and how best to work together.
Read more below and follow Kevin on Twitter @kevinroose and @ThisIsFusion & @TheRealFuture
Interested in joining our next Media Meet & Greet (in San Francisco or New York), or is there someone you’d like to see profiled? Email sharonk@eastwick.com.
1. What are some of the big tech trends you’re seeing? What’s been overdone?
I’m really into robotics these days, and all of the subcategories that encompasses — AI, drones, Twitter bots, workplace automation. I think maybe 75 percent of what we hear about robots these days is either PR hype or sci-fi scaremongering, but if you can cut through all of that, there are some really interesting stories there.
2. In your opinion, what makes a good story?
As a general rule, few good stories in tech journalism are about tech — in most of my favorite stories, the real focus is on a person, a community, or an idea that is going through some kind of transformation that happens to involve technology. Maybe it’s a farmer who is using drone agriculture to save his family’s homestead. Maybe it’s an insane, larger-than-life Silicon Valley CEO who thinks he’s going to save the world. Maybe it’s a bunch of weirdos on Reddit who are really into some crazy body-hacking scheme. I don’t know. I guess those would all be tech stories? But I’m so much more interested in those hypothetical people and their motivations and struggles and quirks than I am in what technology they’re using.
3. What do you find most valuable in a source (both a PR source and a CEO/executive spokesperson)?
Candor. Minimal buzzwords. A sense of humor.
4. What’s your best piece of advice for PR/communications pros who want to build relationships with media?
Don’t look at it like “building relationships with media!” Just be a nice person! Say hi at conferences and events and tell us stuff we want to know, and sometimes tell us you like our work — we’re all horribly insecure.
5. On journalism and Fusion:
a. What got you interested in working in journalism? Why Fusion?
I wrote a book when I was in college — which was a freakish, unhealthy thing to do, but also made me fall in love with the process of putting words in the right order on a page. I’ve never really looked back. And Fusion is amazing — it’s this quirky, experimental R&D lab for journalism, packed with some of the smartest and most diverse colleagues I’ve ever had.
b. What story/series for Fusion are you most proud of writing?
I really feel great about our “Tech Behind Bars” series, which looked at all of the intersections between the modern prison complex and the digital age, and all of the injustice that’s happening in prisons on account of technological change.
c. What’s the most interesting thing about your job?
I mean, none of it is uninteresting. Getting paid to ask questions and go on adventures is a pretty sweet gig.
