Bloomberg hires two reporters for Big Tech team

Sarah Frier, Big Tech team leader at Bloomberg News, sent out the following on Monday:

I’m thrilled to announce two new reporters on the Big Tech team:

Julia Love is joining us, focusing on Google!

Julia comes from Reuters, where she covered labor for the past year, with several tech scoops, including on Truth Social. Before that she was a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University, studying antitrust and internet governance — topics highly relevant to her new role.

Julia is a native Californian and fourth-generation journalist; as a child, she was an occasional character in her dad’s newspaper columns. She started working in Silicon Valley as a bilingual first-grade teacher in San Jose. She worked for various publications, including the Chronicle of Higher Education and the San Jose Mercury News, before covering Apple and Google at Reuters. When she started generating frequent exclusives, Reuters sent her to Mexico City to dig deep into tech’s impact there, including by uncovering drug cartels’ abuse of local cell towers. After her Columbia fellowship, she returned to San Francisco, where she will remain when she starts with us July 6!

Alex Barinka is joining us, focusing on social media companies!

She’ll be a familiar face for many. Alex started her journalism career at Bloomberg, covering east coast tech, then IPOs and M&A. She became known for her frequent scoops, quick thinking and engaging interviews on Bloomberg Television, Radio and conference stages. For the past few years, she’s focused her efforts outside of journalism: on helping a startup, Verishop, grow from 10 to 100 employees, then leading engagement and partnerships at StitchFix. She’s constantly experimenting with new social media features — anyone catch her Instagram live cocktails-and-cooking shows at the beginning of the pandemic? — and is excited to apply all she’s learned about how businesses and consumers use the platforms to expand our coverage and accountability focus on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and TikTok.

Alex will be based in Los Angeles, home to much of the social media creator industry, as well as Snap’s and TikTok’s headquarters. She starts June 27!

Sarah Frier, Big Tech team leader