NY Times’ Lorenz on the importance of covering internet culture

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.