The Washington Post is powering up its coverage of the online world by hiring Taylor Lorenz, The New York Times tech reporter whose stories on influencer culture and social media trends helped usher the Gray Lady into the 21st century. “I think that people do not understand my beat. They don’t take it seriously,” Lorenz said in an interview with Vanity Fair, reflecting on the coverage area that’s made her, at least to a certain generation, the must-read staffer at the Times. The reporter, who will join the Post as a columnist on the Features staff, said that in her role at the Times, she felt like she had to “prove to people” through her reporting that stories about the creator economy and emerging platforms were worth covering. “There’s not room for the commentary aspect,” she said of her current gig. But at the Post, she hopes to take her beat and “blow it up bigger.”
Lorenz speaks highly of the Post’s embrace of social platforms, calling it “the first brand I ever really saw on TikTok” and noting it was “doing Reddit AMAs before anyone else in media.” This willingness to experiment with new formats makes the outlet particularly attractive given Lorenz’s interest in “building out this universe of my content and the different products I deliver to someone,” whether that’s through podcasts or streaming. “I think that other legacy news organizations might share a different view where it’s always about service of the bigger brand and of course I’m on board with that,” she said, noting, “I’m not trying to be a YouTuber here.” But, she added, “I think there’s a balance, and I just felt like I kind of hit a ceiling” at the Times. “Like, okay, this is great, but what can I do to really expand?”
This isn’t the first time Lorenz has been poached, having come to the Times in 2019 from The Atlantic, where she was a technology and culture writer; the Times initially hired her to be a reporter on the Styles desk, but Lorenz has increasingly ventured outside the section. Lorenz’s massive following on social media has helped her build her brand alongside—and independent of—the Times: She has more than 500,000 TikTok followers and a loyal Twitter fanbase with whom she actively communicates. Her public profile has made her one of the paper’s most visible reporters, but—as with other highly online writers grappling with slower-moving publishers—her constant engagement and occasional social media pitfalls have been an alleged source of frustration for management. Lorenz insists any internal drama “wasn’t a factor” in her decision to leave. “I think the Times is an incredible institution but mainstream media organizations have kind of struggled to figure out how they deal with talent,” said Lorenz. “I think I use the internet as a modern internet person,” she added. “These are tensions that are going to play out in any legacy newsroom in different ways.” The Times will “hopefully, you know, evolve in their ways.”
Lorenz leaves a newsroom fraught with internal tension—from union clashes to outrage over management’s handling of various controversies—but the Post is not without its own problems, and has been criticized by some current and former staffers for not doing enough to nurture people of color and women of all races. (Reporter Felicia Sonmez, for one, is suing the Post and its top editors for allegedly discriminating against her after she publicly said she had been the victim of sexual assault; the paper said in its motion to dismiss Sonmez’s lawsuit that her claims were “nothing more” than a campaign against the Post’s “journalistic and editorial policies.”) All of which raises the question of how, if at all, the Post’s own newsroom strains—including high-profile disputes over social media policy—factored into Lorenz’s decision to jump ship. When asked about how Lorenz, who has spoken publicly about the online harassment and abuse she has faced, weighed these issues, she offered a more general assessment that “the whole media landscape is learning these lessons and learning them very publicly,” and that she can’t speak to what the Post was like under previous leadership but that executive editor “Sally [Buzbee] really seems to get it.” If the Post told her she couldn’t have a TikTok or was worried about her meme page, she notes, this hire wouldn’t be happening. “I’m the most online reporter that you can find.”
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