This Saturday, on March 2, 2024, Tech Reader turns 20. Originally founded by Peter Rojas — you can read more about those early days here — the site has had eight editors-in-chief and, to my count, seven parent organizations to answer to. What started as a truly influential tech blog has morphed into a media organization aiming to break news, give no-BS buying advice and highlight the stories in tech that matter. We have written millions of words, we’ve won awards and we’ve somehow survived several media apocalypses. It’s been a ride — and if you’ve been with us since the start, we salute you.
To mark the occasion, our team has been thinking about how the tech industry has changed over the past two decades. At the heart of our anniversary package is a collection of over a dozen retrospectives of seminal gadgets and apps that did not exist 20 years ago, illustrated by the brilliant Koren Shadmi.
Tech Reader, believe it or not, is older than YouTube, the iPhone, Uber, WhatsApp, Android, Tesla EVs and countless other things that are a huge part of our lives today.
We planned to open this month of celebration with a letter from the editor, but last Friday, Tech Reader’s parent company laid off several people from our small team, including our editor-in-chief, Dana Wollman, and our managing editor, Terrence O’Brien.
Though the site does not yet have an editor-in-chief, we do have a strong leadership team that has collectively been at the site for decades. There is no way for things to be “business as usual,” but we are committed to pushing Tech Reader forward.
While it’s a bittersweet time to be celebrating an anniversary, the show must go on. Having edited Dana’s letter before it was due to be published, I want to take the opportunity to borrow her main talking points, which are more important to the remaining team than ever before:
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People who love tech are still at the heart of this website. Though our masthead is smaller, this is no less true than it was at any point in the last 20 years — you just don’t get into tech journalism without caring about tech.
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All of the stories you see on Tech Reader are written by human beings. Like all humans, we make mistakes sometimes. If you see a typo or even a misstated fact, you can blame the person behind the keyboard, not a robot.
So, happy birthday to us. We’re kicking things off with a look back at how streaming video changed the fabric of the internet. In the coming days and weeks we’ll have many more articles, including a guest post from Tim Stevens, our editor-in-chief from 2011-2013, on the legacy of the Tesla Model S. Stick around through March for plenty more stories and a heavy dose of nostalgia.
