New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, who covers internet culture, was interviewed by The Caret about her career and her job.
Here is an excerpt:
A few years ago, your job didn’t exist and you had to fight to prove to your editors that internet culture was a valid beat. Now you’re a Harvard Nieman fellow and an (extremely popular) New York Times writer. What changed?
I think we’re just getting to the point in the past year, year and a half, where people have started to care. The New York Times created a job for me to cover this stuff because there’s an audience for it in a way that there wasn’t a few years ago I think.
And why’s that?
Well for one, there’s more money in it. When I started, the internet was much smaller, the platforms hadn’t scaled to the point that they have now. A lot of my stories are business stories and the businesses were still emerging.
I think there’s just more public awareness about the things I write about in general too like influencers, memes, etc. Also these tech platforms have scaled to unbelievable heights with unbelievable power. I think people are starting to realize the effect that has on our world.
Read more here.
