Politico names Ives its deputy tech editor, Bordelon its tech influence reporter

Steve Heuser, global technology editor at Politico, sent out the following to the staff on Friday:

As POLITICO’s new global technology team takes shape on multiple fronts, we’re pleased to announce two exciting moves — the first of several you’ll see in the coming months as we build on our dominant standing in core tech policy coverage while also expanding our global ambitions.

The first note here is long overdue: Benton Ives has taken on a new role as deputy technology editor. Many of you know Benton from his time as a POLITICO Congress editor from 2015 to 2017, or from his part-time editing stints on the night desk after he returned to the U.S. after a few years traipsing through world capitals. With a deep, under-the-fingernails grasp of Hill dynamics, a truly collegial mindset and a driving intellectual curiosity about the new dynamics of power in America, Benton has already proven a big asset to our expanding coverage of tech and power. This fall he helped steer our Twitter coverage and crucially captained our nearly 24/7 tracking of how major tech policy issues fared through the madcap D.C. omnibus session.

Before joining POLITICO, Benton held various roles at CQ Roll Call, including editor-in-chief of the CQ Weekly magazine and director of legal and regulatory products. He worked his way up at CQ from editorial assistant to economics editor, interrupted by a stint at Dow Jones as a reporter covering the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. Benton lives in Carmel, Indiana (trivia question: who’s the other member of Politico’s two-person Carmel bureau?), with his wife and two teenagers. He spends a good bit of his time ferrying his kids to soccer and volleyball tournaments across the Midwest, and when he’s got time for himself, it’s a good bet you’ll find him on the golf course or down at Indy City Barbell, working on geriatric versions of the snatch and clean and jerk.

The second is an important beat change you’ll see in the coming weeks: Brendan Bordelon, author of our must-read Morning Tech newsletter, will take on a new role as our Tech Influence reporter, where he’ll spearhead POLITICO’s growing coverage of the industry’s wide and deep influence on American politics and policy.

In just a year authoring Morning Tech, Brendan has transformed the newsletter into the unquestioned must-read publication on the intersection of tech and Washington, bringing his relentless reporting metabolism and authoritative read of the policy landscape to influential inboxes day after day. Brendan came to POLITICO in January 2022 from National Journal, where he spent more than four years covering the interplay of tech policy, politics and power. Today his newsletters push the boundaries of the form, often rolling two or three fully conceived and scoopy storylines into a single edition.

His enterprise journalism has already smartly challenged the Washington consensus: Over the summer, as official D.C. crowed over passage of the CHIPS and Science Act this summer, he wrote an A1 site lede about how efforts to revive America’s tech-industrial base will fizzle without key immigration reforms, and why Capitol Hill is unlikely to get there anytime soon. Amid the autumn frenzy about Twitter and Washington, he wrote perhaps the most incisive story published anywhere on how little Elon Musk really has to fear from Congress.

In his new role, Brendan will be working with the tech team as well as across the newsroom, and across the Atlantic, to tell the biggest stories about how the power players in the tech industry are shaping policy and politics — and vice-versa. Global technology is one of POLITICO’s targeted growth areas for 2023, and Brendan will live in the center of the story. He’ll move into the new role as soon as we can fill his (large) shoes in the newsletter job (which has been posted here). Brendan lives with his wife in D.C., and — as anyone who reads MT can attest — is an avid dog dad to Rudy and a rotating cast of foster dogs.

These moves come as we’ve just launched a new POLITICO Tech limited podcast series – a deep dive into the darkest part of the internet, developed by our sharp audio team and reported and hosted by POLITICO fellow Mohar Chatterjee. (Check it out here or wherever you get your podcasts.) And this week, we’re providing a very different – and very POLITICO – take on the tech industry’s annual summit, CES, with special editions of Digital Future Daily, live from the scene.

We’ll have more announcements in the coming weeks, but for now please join us in congratulating Benton and Brendan on their new roles.