WSJ close to hiring Mims as tech columnist

The Wall Street Journal is close to hiring Quartz tech and science editor Christopher Mims as its newest tech columnist, reports Kara Swisher of Re/Code.

Swisher writes, “If completed, Mims will replace its last new tech columnist Farhad Manjoo, who decamped for the New York Times in January, just a few months after arriving from Slate.

“The Journal talked to a range of writers about the high-profile slot — no, I am not going to tell you who they are, but they are easy to guess.

“As described on Quartz — the online news magazine owned by Atlantic Media — Mims is a ‘former editor at Seed, Scientific American, Technology Review, Grist and Smithsonian, and in those roles launched blogs, redesigns, video series and other half-forgotten but otherwise influential experiments in new media.’

“Mims is also one sassy dude, it seems, with a recent column titled, ‘Tech Companies Are Liars: The Samsung Edition.’

“‘Unless something is made explicit in a forum in which there are legal consequences for getting it wrong, you simply can’t trust the numbers coming out of most tech companies,’ he wrote.”

Read more here.