{"id":17695,"date":"2017-04-11T15:25:31","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T19:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=17695"},"modified":"2017-04-11T15:25:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T19:25:31","slug":"the-walt-mossberg-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/11\/the-walt-mossberg-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"The Walt Mossberg Brand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walt Mossberg<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I stepped into the Detroit Bureau of the Wall Street Journal and started on what would be a long, varied, rewarding career. I was 23 years old, and the year was 1970. That’s not a typo.<\/p>\n

So it seems fitting to me that I’ll be retiring this coming June, almost exactly 47 years later.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

And, in the best professional decision of my life, I converted myself into a tech columnist in 1991. As a result, I got to bear witness to a historic parade of exciting, revolutionary innovation — from slow, clumsy ancient PCs to sleek, speedy smartphones; from CompuServe and early AOL to the mobile web, apps and social media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Ben Thompson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Mossberg undersells himself: a necessary prerequisite to “convert[ing him]self into a tech columnist” was inventing the very concept. That I had to make such an observation — was there really a time in recent history in which major publications did not have someone focused on technology? — is itself a testament to Mossberg’s vision.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Mossberg was Steve Jobs’ favorite columnist — and Mossberg a frequent admirer of Apple’s products — because both had the same vision: bringing these geeky, impenetrable, and rather ugly boxes of wires and chips and disks called personal computers to normal people, convinced said computers could, if only made accessible, fundamentally transform a user’s life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Before Mossberg, tech writing was for tech enthusiasts. Mossberg is<\/em> a tech enthusiast, but what he did at The Wall Street Journal is bring enthusiasm for tech — particularly the personal computer industry — to a truly mainstream audience. His influence — especially during his years at the Journal — is impossible to overstate.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walt Mossberg: I stepped into the Detroit Bureau of the Wall Street Journal and started on what would be a long, varied, rewarding career. I was 23 years old, and the year was 1970. That’s not a typo. So it seems fitting to me that I’ll be retiring this coming June, almost exactly 47 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[295,31,30,994],"class_list":["post-17695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-history","tag-ios","tag-mac","tag-media"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17696,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17695\/revisions\/17696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}