SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/842067
2 8 SXS W O R L D | M A R C H 2 0 1 7 I N T E R ACT I V E / F I L M | SXSW.COM Kara Swisher O n Tuesday, Kara Swisher will be inducted as the sixth member of the SXSW Interactive Hall of Fame. The Silicon Valley reporter, who currently runs Recode after stints with AllThings D, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, is known as a tough critic of the industry she covers, and a no-nonsense journalist capable of maintaining access to leading tech figures while not compromising the integrity of her work. As she prepares to attend her "six or seventh, I don't know, I've been a bunch of times" edition of SXSW, she talked about her career and the current state of tech journalism. What parts of your career are you most proud of? I think that I try to picture my career with doing fair and accurate journalism, but also giving insight to readers and having a point of view, so it's not just typing stuff down about what people say. We've been trying, on all our sites, to give people more insight. Second, I think that the interviews that I've done over the years are pretty fantastic. Everyone from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg to Sheryl Sandberg to—everybody, I've interviewed everybody. Elon Musk. I've really run the gamut of interviewing pretty much all the major figures since the beginning of the Internet. Tech journalism is really access-based, which leads some reporters to avoid viewpoint-driven work. How do you keep that at the center of what you do? I don't know why they talk to me, I'll be honest with you. Marc Andreessen said it's because they have Stockholm syndrome, which I think is actually pretty accurate. Let's be clear: I can call anybody anytime, and I talk to everybody, and they continue to talk to me just because I maintain that really smart people like smart questions, and they're not offended by disagreements, necessarily. Some Internet people, especially as they become wealthy, and nobody questions them, and they become famous, they think everything they say is a gem. And I've known them for a long time, so that helps. I don't think everything they say is a gem, and I seem to have a personality where I ask questions when they're doing things that I think are suspect or wrong or ill-conceived, and so I think most of them appreciate that in the end, even if they don't in the moment. I've had people come back to me after, like at Yahoo!, Jerry Yang ... I was pretty tough on him, and I think I was right. But he and I go to lunch all the time, and I don't know why. I think he appreci- ates the debate. I'm pretty well-informed, and pretty smart, and I've been following this industry for a while. And I think because I don't have an agenda, like people who work for them do, I think they know I really do have a viewpoint that's valuable to people, even if it's hard on them. And I think the smart ones listen to it. I'm not always right. I'm often right. But I have a perspective they don't. They talk only to their employees, or their friends, or their investors, and I talk to everyone, so I tend to have a wider range of opinions. What are the problems you see in the culture of tech journalism? First, it was fanboys. And it still is, you know, for gadgets "Oh my God! The iPhone! It has a sealed speaker system! You can drop in the toilet!" I mean, I don't like dropping my iPhone in the toilet either, but I don't gush over it, so to speak. So there's a fanboy part of it, which is somewhat irritating. Then you have the access people that just lick up anything they get, and I don't like that at all. I think as much access as we do get, we don't do that. A good example recently is there was speech by Peter Thiel at the National Press Club, and most people just wrote what he said and so much of what he said was so inane. They just didn't say anything about how inane it was, or pointing out a lot of things that he was saying that were untrue. And in our piece, I did a live blog of it that was very funny ... I thought it was very funny; he probably hated it. When he said "You should take Trump seriously, not literally" like, "I'm sorry he's saying to you to ban Muslims. I think he's going to." And of course he [Trump] did. A lot of things he [Thiel] said, was just—I don't know what to call it—a lot of bullshit. How has Silicon Valley and the tech world changed in your time covering it? I think people are tougher. You've still got that sort of Washington relationship—you know, the way people in D.C. are too close. But now they're not, and they've having a great time. Finally, they don't have to get along. I think I've always been like that. But it's getting better. It's getting tougher. I think there's more oppo- sitional writing, which I think is good. I don't mean to say "Be difficult," but questioning. Kara Swisher will be honored at the SXSW Interactive Innova- tion Awards, happening on Tuesday, March 14 at 6:30pm in the Grand Ballroom at the Hilton Austin Downtown (500 E 4th St). Kara Swisher: Keeping Silicon Valley on Its Toes By Dan Solomon