Business Insider hires two reporters to cover AI, emerging tech

Stephen Council and Rya Jetha

Business Insider chief news editor Steve Russolillo and executive editor for U.S. tech coverage Leena Rao sent out the following:

We’re investing in the kind of reporting that makes Business Insider essential, especially in AI and emerging tech. To help drive that coverage, we’re welcoming two new reporters to our team in San Francisco.
Stephen Council is joining Business Insider as a senior tech reporter covering AI with a focus on LLM companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic. He comes to Business Insider from SFGATE, where he covered AI, labor, and a wide range of Bay Area companies as the outlet’s tech reporter. He’s also written for The Information, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and CalMatters, covering cryptocurrency, tech giants, pandemic crises, and other national topics. His awards include a 2025 recognition for tech reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California, and a 2021 recognition for investigative reporting from the San Francisco Press Club.
Stephen grew up in Virginia and studied journalism and economics at Northwestern University. An avid reader, movie-goer, and pool player, he now calls San Francisco home.
Rya Jetha is joining Business Insider as a senior tech reporter covering physical AI and robotics. She previously covered tech culture and autonomous vehicles at The San Francisco Standard. Some highlights of her coverage there included reporting on a billionaire-run secret society atop Salesforce Tower and defining the anatomy of Tech Bro 2.0.
Rya has a bachelor’s degree in history and politics from Pomona College and a master’s in history from the University of Cambridge. She lives in San Francisco.
They both start on May 4.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.