My Year in Writing 2015
Stay for the cat photos
2015 was, personally, a huge year in writing for me. I moved from freelance work to a staff gig at the New York Observer, but I also did what journalists do and learned a lot about the world around me while communicating the most salient details to whatever readership I was working for (and probably a lot of not-so-salient ones).
Hands down the biggest story I covered at Technical.ly Brooklyn this year was the Etsy IPO. Etsy is a B Corp but not a benefit corporation. The distinction here is apples and oranges, but most reporters treat it as apples and apples (though there is an important way they are related, as well). I broke it down here. My coverage got me on the CBC one afternoon, live, in a bunch of markets, which was fun. Then I did the best I could on an explainer on the stock offering. By the way, the company maintains a “happiness index.”
News Corp’s Amplify Education’s effective demise (or something like it) turned out to be the biggest story I would break this year. I kept a close eye on the company as there were all sorts of bad signs. From weirdness between hardware and software to the company’s ridiculous rebuttal to a story in Bloomberg that ultimately proved to be 100% dead on. Some 500 people were let go, in the end.
The expansion of broadband across the country is an important tech meets policy issue. For example, a sliver of Cleveland set up a 100Gb network (which is like ludicrous speed fast). Later, I found a woman who had done at least some work in each of the first three Google Fiber cities. Then, one of my most thoroughly reported stories of the year was this feature about companies expanding access to real broadband for commercial customers in New York.
Stingrays and other ways that our mobiles tattle on us has caught on as a privacy/surveillance state narrative. A piece on ways in which your mobile could be more helpful in protecting you against privacy incursions earned me my first byline on Motherboard. I followed up on Stingray’s with a policy piece on the Department of Justice guidances later in the year (which get downright Orwellian).
While I don’t know how to do any kind of coding, I try to be a tech reporter that talks to developers about programming. This interview with InfluxDB’s founder helped me understand how platform companies can make big bucks building their fundamental product as open source (that is, giving it away, and letting others mess with it). Then this piece about Atavist’s software switch was a bit of analysis about what one company’s strategic decision might indicate about larger trends. Wordpress devs building a new API for the open source content management system sounded really powerful once I took time to understand it.
When I first started at the Observer, I was pretty hung up on the idea that tech could do a lot to advance podcasting. I wrote a few pieces about ways that existing technology could improve the user experience of podcasts (including one where I spoke to the producer of WTF with Marc Maron), but was surprised to find the scene a bit reluctant to pursue them. Then, I ran across Acast at a Swedish pitch event. This piece is the second time I wrote about them, but I think it showed that I had been looking in the right direction (here’s the first).
Similarly, ebooks have been a fiercely debated topic still. Print is having a bit of a resurgence, yet reporters seem reluctant to cover the simple explanation: major publishers jacked up the prices of ebooks 20–30%. So, obviously, ebook sales will suffer. That’s Econ 101. Before Oyster sold, comparing how it pays writers to Amazon’s approach proved instructive. Speaking of writers, as a group, scribes are better off in the ebook era, even if some successful writers just hate it. That said, you can’t really blame bestselling authors for hating the book summary business (at least a bit).
I did a huge series on the webcomics business, focused on its leaders. That kicked off here. It ultimately got noticed on BoingBoing, which was exciting. I got the idea for the series after interviewing webcomics star KC Green.
It’s a year before an election year which makes it another election year now, it seems. I wrote a lot about whether networks streamed debates for free online. When CNBC didn’t after CNN did, I got a load of interest in my piece about a cumbersome workaround that would have let users stream it online for free. I doubt anyone did it, but the point seemed to get through. Every channel that has aired debates has live streamed them free since.
Net Neutrality occupied enough of my attention that you could almost say I was advocating for it. Here’s the victory lap we asked local tech leaders to take. In Next City, I broke down the facet of the ruling that pertains to cities that might want to set up their own broadband network.
Square Enix’s new company, Shinra, is a pretty fascinating new videogame platform (even if you don’t play videogames, and I really don’t). There could be lots of new ways to experience one game. I did this piece for Fortune, but I have also been keeping an eye on the company since.
Speaking of videogames, I wrote my most popular piece of the year at the New York Observer shortly after starting, about journalism inside virtual worlds (specifically, Eve Online). I followed that up with a few related pieces, including this one about Richard Garriott’s new game, which follows up on the many faces of Ultima.
I spent the better part of a week wading through whatever I could glean about Patreon’s giant hack. This is probably the most useful entry in that series, where some hackers talk to me about what they could see in the released data, and it links back to several other related posts.
Imogen Heap convinced me that bitcoin’s block chain will end up making digital currency have a much broader impact than just a medium of value. I’ll be pursuing this much, much more.
I did a couple of pieces of cultural reporting, that got into the Observer’s print edition. One on an artist who gathers people to draw at Taco Bell and another on NYC’s first distillery since Prohibition.
Browsers have been fun to write about this year, such as this piece about extensions that bypass tracking blockers (this story resulted from a relationship I built up while covering the Patreon hack) and how Firefox’s updated private mode is better than Chrome’s.
Security has also been super hot this year, and I’ve been trying to help readers understand its implications, such as in this piece about the ethics of hacking people (even when it’s malicious), this one about coming up with memorable but strong passwords and this one about using PGP. In related news, NYC is going big on the surveillance state and calling it free wifi. In a way, I can’t blame the city, because I don’t think the public would have been down to pay for info kiosks. Still, it’s creepy. Roughly as creepy as browser fingerprinting.
After dabbling a bit in online dating myself this year, I (inevitably) wrote about it (you have to). This piece about a company called The Breakup Shop sums up where I got to on that whole topic. I did several stories about JDate and JSwipe’s battle, but here’s where I broke down the critical issues. JDate won. I also got curious about whether or not dating apps use location permissions to assess their own effectiveness. Long story short: I’m not using apps for dating any more (which isn’t to say you shouldn’t).
Wikis of the world unite! Both Wikileaks and Wikipedia have been a ton of fun to write about this year. Returning to my point about devs above, it was great to talk to one at Wikipedia about why making the site work faster really makes the world a more open place. This Wikileaks post let me work license plate readers in there, which is one of the less talked about pieces of surveillance tech that seems to be basically everywhere. Here’s a fun one about history manipulation as it relates to insider trading in the 80s.
2015 was the year I moved from being a real beat reporter to one with a somewhat broader viewpoint. The beat reporting work, at Technical.ly Brooklyn, started in late 2013 and lasted through May of this year. It’s fun to take a look at some of the stories that I was only able to do because I was so focused on Brooklyn. Here’s some examples: catching the importance of the fact that Nina Freeman and Chris Shiflett left NYC, obsessing on fiber in Sunset Park, Good Eggs layoffs (before closing), a company that hasn’t really needed much attention, ControlShift (because word of mouth has given it more than enough business), spotting this truly unique new video game before its critically acclaimed launch, Brownstoner’s acquisition by a local ad-tech firm and this civic hacking project that ended up becoming part of a data project that New York City only does every ten years and the coworking space Studiomates’ diaspora that formed following the closure of Dumbo tech mainstay, 10 Jay Street.
I also did a bunch of fun little roundups about Brooklyn. For example, this one about games, this one about music, this one about love.
Zucknesis, vadervite and other words I tried to add to our language.
Since you made it this long, I’ll give you my funniest headline of the year: Japan Prefers Small Breasts and Brazil Prefers Butts: Lessons From Tittygram.
