Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bill Gates to guest edit The Verge in February

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will be the guest editor of tech news site The Verge in February, writes editor in chief Nilay Patel.

Patel writes, “‘The Verge audience is an amazing group that thinks about technology, that knows the rapid progress that’s being made,’ Gates told me. ‘We can go far if we get all those great thinkers helping to invent, helping to support, and imagining what’s possible. We feel lucky to get to talk to this audience about what we’re seeing, and sharing that optimism.’

“Throughout February, Bill will be narrating episodes of our animated series The Big Future to explain and illustrate his vision. We’ll also be publishing in-depth features examining how rapid change in health, farming, banking, and education might improve the lives of impoverished communities around the world. Gates is our guest editor, but we have promised his team that we’ll do serious independent journalism against these themes; we will present a complete picture of this future to you. It’s going to be exciting.

“So what exactly are we going to be talking about?

“We’ve spent some time with Bill over the past few weeks, talking through his ideas about the future — and pressing him on the boundaries of that vision. It’s funny: Bill is difficult to engage in small talk, but he’s eager and willing to engage in difficult issues like income inequality and regulatory challenges in developing countries. Throughout our meetings first in his private office outside of Seattle and then in New York, Gates offered a compelling, focused, and coherent argument for his vision of the next 15 years — a vision that is surprisingly as reliant on the development of stable governments and infrastructure as it is on technology.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.