Covering Silicon Valley and Tech Business

Expert advice on making sense of a challenging beat

Reporters covering high-tech businesses face the challenge of figuring out what’s a breakthrough and what’s overhyped, unrealistic, and potentially fraudulent. This is especially important In the wake of the crash-and-burn stories of Silicon Valley Bank, Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos and Sam Bankman-Fried at FTX. This SABEW panel discussion will offer expert advice from leading practitioners. The session will be hosted by college students in the business journalism class at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Panelists:

• Amir Efrati, executive editor, The Information: Amir helped launch The Information in 2013. His reporting on Uber’s corporate missteps and on the dangers and limits of self-driving vehicle development at Tesla, Uber, Alphabet’s Waymo, and General Motors’ Cruise won consecutive Best in Business awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Before The Information, he spent the previous nine years at the Wall Street Journal reporting on technology, health, and criminal justice. He was first to report on Bernie Madoff’s arrest and broke major news about the epic fraud. Federal judges have cited his reporting on egregious criminal sentencing. His TV and radio appearances include CNBC, PBS, BBC, Fox, and NPR. He graduated from the University of Iowa, which is his home state.

• Brad Stone, senior, executive editor, Bloomberg News: Brad is senior executive editor for technology at Bloomberg News and the author of Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, published by Simon & Schuster in May 2021. At Bloomberg, Stone oversees a team of 50 reporters and editors that cover high-tech companies, startups and internet trends around the world. Over the last few years, as a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, he’s authored over two dozen cover stories on companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and the Chinese internet juggernauts Didi, Tencent and Baidu. Stone also co-hosts a weekly Bloomberg podcast, Decrypted and contributes to a morning email newsletter on technology, Fully Charged.

• Erin Woo, reporter, The Information: Erin Woo is a reporter covering Twitter, startups and venture capital for The Information. Previously, she was a reporting fellow on the technology desk at The New York Times, where she wrote about startups, the Elizabeth Holmes trial and general tech news. Erin started her career as an intern covering local and metro news at The Mercury News and WNYC. A graduate of Stanford University, she lives in San Francisco.