Mossberg talks about why tech reporting need to be easy

Walt Mossberg

National Public Radio’s Robert Siegel interviewed legendary tech journalist Walt Mossberg about his career. Mossberg is retiring in June.

Here is an excerpt:

On getting his start in tech writing, before computers were popularized in personal use
What I did was, I took what had been my passion and my hobby privately, which was early computers and … two things occurred to me: one was it was very hard to learn how to get the most out of these early computers, and secondly, it was about to explode. …
There were a lot of computer columns. They were almost all written by geeks for geeks. I went to the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal … and I said I had this idea of a column, but I want to turn the formula on its head, I want to champion the nontechies.
On the complicated first models of personal computers
The first line of my first column was “personal computers are too hard to use and it’s not your fault.” And that was primarily Microsoft. I generally favored the Mac because Steve Jobs had the same idea that I did, not to compare myself to him, but I mean the idea was let’s make this accessible and easy for the average person.

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.