The best Apple reporter is 19 years old

Jay Yarow of Business Insider writes about Mark Gurman, a 19-year-old Michigan freshman who covers Apple for 9to5Mac.com.

Yarow writes, “This wasn’t the first time Gurman beat his better funded, more established  colleagues. He also broke the news of Siri  getting baked into the iPhone, he was one of the first people with iPhone  5 casings, had  an early look at Apple’s Maps, and had  the inside story of what Tim Cook told Apple’s employees in a recent all-hands  meeting, just to name a few of his big stories.

“A reporter breaking news isn’t particularly newsworthy in and of itself. For  a lot of reporters, it’s part of the job description.

“What makes Gurman unique is that he’s a 19-year-old freshman at Michigan,  currently studying a little bit of everything — economics, communications,  calculus, etc. He tells us that he’s in the process of applying to attend its  business school next year.

“Gurman has no formal journalism training. He learned on the job, which he  started doing when he was still in high school. Odds are he’s not going to be a  journalist when he’s done with school, though he told us, ‘I think no matter  what I do, I will always have journalism with me at least as a hobby.”

Read more here.