Arguing for the importance of tech coverage

David Folkenflik of National Public Radio interviewed Kara Swisher of Re/code about the creation of the tech news site and the difficulty in getting newspaper editors to understand the importance of tech stories when she was at The Wall Street Journal.

Here is an excerpt:

FOLKENFLIK: Swisher chronicled the birth, the struggles and then the explosion of digital media, often to the seeming indifference of editors, even as she left The Post for The Wall Street Journal.

SWISHER: And even at The Journal there was a lot of doubt over this Internet thing. They thought – they treated it like it was a fad – I was covering a fad. Someone called it CB radio to me. They said oh, you’re covering CB radio. And I was like, no, I’m covering massive change in worldwide communications. But you’ll see.

FOLKENFLIK: Along with The Journal’s influential tech columnist Walt Mossberg, Swisher wanted to create a standalone blog with an identity apart from the paper. But they got nowhere. So instead, in 2003, the high-octane reporter and the high-profile columnist created a conference; called it D – All Things Digital, recruited heavyweights to take questions and charged each attendee thousands of dollars.

SWISHER: We do live journalism at the conferences. We break news. We create historic interview moments like Gates and Jobs, of course, everybody remembers that.

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