How Wired is like Wayne Gretzky

Wired staff writer Vittoria Elliott spoke with Micah Loewinger of “On the Media” about the publication’s coverage of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Here is an excerpt:

Micah Loewinger: You guys are beating the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, big newsrooms, Washington bureaus with deep sourcing throughout Capitol Hill. How is your team so far ahead of the competition?

Vittoria Elliott: I think we’re in the right place at the right time. WIRED is fundamentally a tech publication. These are people we have been covering for many years. We understand how they like to run their companies, what they value. We have been listening to their thoughts about government, about regulation for years and years and years. Now they are in a position to make the world run that way. Because we have done that work, we’re able to see, in the words of Wayne Gretzky, where the puck is moving next. Also, we know how to report inside tech companies. There is a level with political reporting that there’s going to parties and cozying up to people and building relationships and things like that. I will say that the tech industry, particularly since they’ve received more criticism post 2016, has not been friendly to that type of stuff.

For me personally, I covered Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 for WIRED. That was all I did, basically, from October, November of 2022 into 2023. I spoke to people on his trusted safety staff who he fired. I spoke to people who had to convince him to keep some of their programs on the rails, to stay within the legal bounds of other countries during their elections. Even the Fork in the Road email, which is the same title of the email that he sent out to Twitter employees. There’s so many parallels there. Having done that work has made our team really ready for this moment. I think we just have really brave leadership. There was never a doubt in how we would meet this moment.

To read more, go here.