News Disrupters
Who needs a boss anymore? The latest vogue in journalism is to leave cushy jobs at established news organizations—or else establish an autonomous power center within one. In the spirit of Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher (No. 40 on this year’s New Establishment list), who created their own fiefdom at Re/code earlier this year, this new breed of journo-entrepreneurs strike out on their own, cutting to the chase and influencing the masses without (much of) a filter. Below, a collection of News Disrupters who have done it most successfully.
By Larry Busacca/Getty Images.
Andrew Ross Sorkin, 37
Once an intern at The New York Times, Sorkin founded the paper’s successful DealBook site. In 2011 he added TV star to his résumé,and is now up early every morning to co-host CNBC’s Squawk Box and makes his way to his desk at the Times in the afternoon. Sorkin offers the inside take on the world of finance that everyone loves to hate. The greatest proof yet of his cultural capital may have been a cameo mention during the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad.
By Leon Bennett/Getty Images.
Bill Simmons, 44
His Web site BostonSportsGuy.com caught the attention of ESPN.com way back in 2001, before it was cool to write there. Since then, Simmons has turned his unabashed sports-fandom and his keen sense of humor—he was once a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live!—into his own Web site, Grantland (which maintains a relationship with ESPN). Simmons has become the most important sportswriter in America largely because it seems more important to him to be a sports fan than a sportswriter.
by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images.
David Pogue, Yahoo Tech, 51
Lured by what he called Marissa Mayer’s “try stuff” atmosphere at Yahoo, Pogue left his well-read personal-technology column at The New York Times to start up Yahoo Tech last year. There, Pogue, always the friendly gadget geek who could explain tech to your grandmother, reviews new apps, Amazon’s Fire phone, and the latest earbuds.
By T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images.
Andrew Sullivan, The Dish, 51
This libertarian, openly gay, Catholic former New Republic editor started The Daily Dish in 2000, moved the blog to Time, The Atlantic, and the Daily Beast, before leaving all those name brands behind to launch The Dish as an independant $20-a-year subscription site, in 2013. The take-no-prisoners Sullivan offers his trenchant take on politics, foriegn policy, and pop culture. He is finally seeing his campaign for gay marriage go mainstream.
By Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Getty Images.
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, 36
Initially a baseball statistician, Silver became a mathematical rock star for his nearly infallible predictions for the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign on his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. After a stint at The New York Times, where Silver’s blog was one of the site’s top draws, he became convinced of the limits of traditional journalism and moved his blog to Disney’s ESPN, where it grew to a 20-person staff. He launched the site with this statement: “It’s time for us to start making the news a little nerdier.”
© Victoria Smith/Retna Ltd./Corbis.
Jessica Lessin, the Information, 31
A former Wall Street Journal tech reporter parlayed her days covering the Valley into a subscription-based Web site, the Information, which aims to go deep behind the headlines and offer highbrow technology news for people who are paying with their corporate credit card. A subscription to the Information: $399 a year.
By Chang W Lee/The New York Times/R.
Sam Biddle, Valleywag, 27
Biddle says he grew depressed and “angry” reviewing gadgets and social-media sites for Gawker Media’s Gizmodo. He relaunched its snarkier sister site, Valleywag, in April 2013. In doing so, he wrote, “The days of reckoning for the silicon wunderkind are near, and so here we are: to watch them stumble, catalog their hypocrisies, their excess, their layoffs, and the gradual abandonment of their dreams.”
From Left: by Jimi Celeste/patrickmcmullan.com, by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, by Eugene Mim/PatrickMcMullan.com.
Matt Taibbi, 44; Glenn Greenwald, 47; Laura Poitras, 50; First Look
Greenwald, a former lawyer and fiery columnist, joined with Poitras, a daring documentarian, to publicize Edward Snowden’s N.S.A. secrets. They are now the spiritual leaders of the Intercept, dedicated to uncovering egregious spying in the name of national security. Taibbi, of Goldman Sachs “vampire squid” fame, left Rolling Stone to start First Look’s satirical financial-and-political site, provisionally called the Racket.
By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.
Ezra Klein, Vox, 30
Klein’s geek status was cemented earlier this year when he name-dropped Vox.com’s publishing platform, Chorus, as his main reason for leaving The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, which he had created and edited. Vox.com publishes explainers on all manner of news—with its mission being the dismissal of an “eat-your-vegetables”-style, joyless journalism and Klein as its self-styled “head vegetable chef.”
