Tue, 2015-04-28 10:27
Sam Whitmore
Profile: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet/Computerworld
If you're a PR pro under 30, know that Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols was writing about technology before you were born. That doesn't make Steven unpitchable -- but it does make him impervious to clerk-y PR razzle-dazzle. We'll spare you the full measure of his PR laments, except that "it's kind of frightening" to him that "even the big PR firms... throw the "recent [college] graduates" into the deep end, pitching stories they don't fully understand.
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"OMG, I'm a millennial," 
(Editor's note: Moments after we posted this profile, 
Just as the Andreessen Horowitz SxSW party was winding down, Carmel DeAmicis walked into the room, spotted Re/code co-founder Kara Swisher, walked up to her and introduced herself. Kara pounced. "I know who you are," she said. "I can't talk now... but have you ever considered Re/code?" Recalls Carmel: "I was in final negotiations with Business Insider... but Kara stole me away at the last minute with her Kara power."
Eight-year-old Farhad Manjoo left South Africa with his sister and parents in 1987, bound for a new life in southern California. He spent his college years among the gorges of New York's Finger Lakes, studying economics and editing Cornell's student newspaper. Upon graduation, Wired gave him his first tech edit job just as the (first) tech bubble burst. Farhad rode it out, eventually freelancing for top-tier titles and authoring a book about truth.
Interested in visual storytelling? Take a trip inside the mind of CNET senior news producer Mariel Myers. Mariel represents the kind of influencer you'll encounter more and more. More than that, it's the way she thinks. "I can use words, sounds and pictures to tell a story, which is a really powerful thing," Mariel says. "I work to make stories visual. First, is the story worth telling? Then, it's how do you tell it visually?"
Staff writer Issie Lapowsky carries a big load at Wired; she typically writes more than once a day and when a big Facebook or Google story breaks, it's often Issie who has to chase it. That said, she's always on the hunt for constructive stories to tell. Her work often gravitates to doing-well-by-doing-good stories. She also writes quite about education, as she did at Inc.
Forbes staff writer Aaron Tilley, whose beat is hardware and chipmakers, is one of those reporters that PR is lucky to pitch: smart, sincere and hungry to learn. It's a shame, so far, that much of PR mishandles him. "It becomes a little exhausting being pitched all the time," Aaron says, "when in fact you just want to have a conversation with another human being." 
We profile Re/code culture reporter Nellie Bowles on a day when the woman who hired her, Kara Swisher, is to interview the President of the United States. That's something Nellie could pull off, too. She's just as erudite, charismatic and good on camera. Like Kara, Nellie can write books: she's writing one now, for Hachette, about Silicon Valley culture. And she writes as colorfully as anyone at Re/code or anywhere else. 
For PR, Ron Miller is a godsend -- an earnest, competent enterprise reporter for TechCrunch, a publication that every client covets. "TechCrunch gets pigeonholed in a way that's not necessarily accurate or fair," Ron told us this week. "In some ways it might be because they think of it as the TechCrunch of 2008, 2009 or 2010. It is still that, but it's more than that."
It's been years since Fortune senior writer Michal Lev-Ram was paid to walk trade show floors, head back to the hotel room and click the keys. She still writes and remains pitchable. But it's best to think of modern Michal as a businesswoman and a brand unto herself. She's fresh off co-chairing last month's Fortune Most Powerful Women, Next Gen conference; there will be another this year and she's recruiting speakers for it. 
