Camille Bromley of Columbia Journalism Review interviewed Steven Levy of Wired about the evolving relationship between the media and the tech industry.
Here is an excerpt:
CB: How would you say access to Silicon Valley folks as a whole has changed over the course of your career?
SL: I started in the PC era. The first story I wrote about the technology world was about computer hackers, for Rolling Stone in 1982. These were small companies. The first time I went to Microsoft’s office in Seattle, in 1984, I just called up and said, “I’m coming,” and they said, “Okay.” I went in and talked to Steve Ballmer, then they put me in Bill Gates’s office. There was never a PR person in the room; they wouldn’t tape your interviews. I think they picked that up later from Washington, DC, where talking to a politician was always on background. But in technology it was very casual, it was on the record, and there were very few barriers between you and the CEOs. The first time I interviewed Steve Jobs, we just went out to dinner. That doesn’t happen too much these days. Now even the CEO of a four-person startup might have a PR company that wants to sit in on the interview.
Read more here.
