Business Insider is creating a tech features team

Business Insider editor in chief Alyson Shontell sent out the following on Friday:

Team,

I come to you with some exciting news ahead of the weekend.

Alexei Oreskovic, our West Coast bureau chief, is stepping into a big new job where he’ll be running a brand-new initiative for our newsroom.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of working with Alexei, you know he is an exceptionally talented wordsmith who can take gibberish and turn it into a riveting read. His tech journalism has won awards, and he has interviewed top CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg.

He was the lead editor behind Julie Bort‘s enthralling play-by-play of how Travis Kalanick got booted from Uber. He stayed up all hours on a weekend to get Julie and Meghan Morris’ bombshell WeWork feature about sex, tequila and a tiger (!) out the door. He is who I personally beg to edit everything I write because I know he’ll make it sharper.

So! We are fortunate that he is becoming our first-ever tech features editor. Alexei’s new team has a single mission: to generate lots of impact in Silicon Valley. The team will have long-term goal incentives, but also produce short and longer-term assignments to meet this goal. It will produce work that propels the industry forward, answers unsolved mysteries in Silicon Valley, and wins awards.

As our newsroom grows, it is increasingly necessary for us all to become more focused. When I was coming up as a tech reporter, the team was small and our writers had to perform well in multiple areas. Each of us had to be slideshow geniuses to help generate page views and rush to breaking news. We had to do consistent beat reporting to establish ourselves in the industries we covered and to keep the site humming. On the side, we squeezed in some high-impact features and investigations.

When you’re able to focus on being great at just one job and in one industry, it’s much easier to excel. We now have the resources to do that, so we are launching this desk with just tech-industry impact in mind.

Naturally, a team like that needs incredible reporters. Alexei has recruited our very own Meghan Morris, whose reporting on Jeffrey Epstein and WeWork has made her feared by many moguls. Rob Price, who successfully broke into Facebook and has dropped bombshell reporting on Mark Zuckerberg’s private office, security team, and toxicity there, will also be on the desk. Becky Peterson, who has been owning the mystery that is Palantir, is coming on board too.

Alexei will be recruiting a few more reporters as well as a second-in-command editor to join his ranks. We will also be replacing his prior position with a global tech editor. In the meantime, Alexei’s current reports will report to me.

Please join me in sending Alexei, Meghan, Becky, and Rob a huge congrats. We can’t wait to read what you all unearth.

Alyson