The 17-year-old tech reporter

Jeremy Barr of Capital New York writes about William Turton, the 17-year-old technology reporter for The Daily Dot.

Barr writes, “Turton has been with the site for just over seven months, and has quickly become a reliable source of scoops on the somewhat mysterious world of competitive video game-playing, or esports (shorthand for ‘electronic sports’).

“He’s also covered cybersecurity, and broke four stories about the hacker collective known as ‘Lizard Squad’ in late December. The hacker group briefly took down the PlayStation and Xbox Live networks, and Turton reported that it was part of a marketing scheme. One of his stories garnered nearly 7,000 social shares, and further solidified Turton’s reputation on the beat.

“Turton’s coverage of Lizard Squad was widely celebrated, and it’s clear that he’s impressed far older colleagues in the world of tech journalism. He’s also been able to establish himself as a must-read in some corners of the Internet by covering his beat aggresively, and in a way that belies his relative inexperience.

“Longtime tech writer Steven Levy, formerly of Wired and now of Medium, agreed that the barrier to entry for young tech reporters—like Turton—has been lowered, but said: ‘This means that if you aren’t really talented you will have difficulty finding a place in such an open competition.'”

Read more here.