CyberWire Daily - Encore: Geoff White: Suddenly all of the pieces start to line up. [Journalism] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: June 9, 2024

Investigative journalist and author Geoff White talks about tracing a line through the dots of his career covering technology. Geoff shares that he has always been "quite geeky," but came to covering technology after several roles in the journalism industry. Newspapers, magazines and television were all media Geoff worked in before covering technology. Geoff got into journalism not due to the glamour sometimes associated with it, but because he wanted to fight for the public to cover stories that helped those who didn't have massive amounts of money, power or a huge lobbying campaign in political circles. When writing his book, Crime Dot Com, Geoff reflected on the cybercrime and cybersecurity stories he's covered and saw how things started falling into place. Our thanks to Geoff for sharing his story with us.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyber Wire Network, powered by N2K. of you, I was concerned about my data being sold by data brokers. So I decided to try Delete.me. I have to say, Delete.me is a game changer. Within days of signing up, they started removing my personal information from hundreds of data brokers. I finally have peace of mind knowing my data privacy is protected. Delete.me's team does all the work for you with detailed reports so you know exactly what's been done. Take control of your data and keep your private life Thank you. JoinDeleteMe.com slash N2K and use promo code N2K at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com slash N2K and enter code N2K at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com slash N2K, code N2K. My name is Geoff White, and I'm an investigative journalist covering technology.

We're quite geeky, my brother and I. You know, we had a ZX Spectrum, which I've still got. I'm actually looking at the ZX Spectrum at the moment. So clearly we were a bit geeky as youngsters. I still got interested in journalism, I guess a little bit at university. I did work experience at a couple of newspapers and I'm not quite sure what it was. I think like a lot of people had the idea

that journalism was quite glamorous. It is and it isn't, you know, we'll maybe come on to that later. But yeah, there were some glamorous bits, I suppose, and some less glamorous bits. But the heart of it all is communication is basically taking stuff that's that's known about by a certain group of people and communicating it to the general public and just you know being able to use use words to craft a story to get something over to people and get

and get their attention and say look this is important you should read this i think that was what was the heart of my attraction to it. I started doing, I started on local newspapers, which, you know, is the classic. I don't know whether you have these in the US to the same extent, but the kind of local news, you know, cat stuck up tree kind of thing. Went on to magazines and then started doing bits of radio and then television. And I kind of stumbled into the technology beat. There was a reporter at the time who was doing technology, and he needed a producer to work with him. In television, you often have a reporter and a producer.

The reporter is on camera, and the producer works behind the scenes. And I'd actually worked for an internet advertising company before that. And I'd built my own website lovingly in HTML. I'd handcrafted my website in HTML. So I sort of knew which end of a computer was which. And so the bosses saw that. And so we paired up. And to be honest, since then, I haven't looked back. That's been my career really for the past 10 or 12 years. Honestly, the favorite part is being a real pain in the ass for people who believe that their power and their money exempts them from having people being a pain in their ass. I have to say, with some of the technology companies,

when you phone them up and you say, look, I've discovered this particular thing, their reaction sometimes is one of almost bewilderment that you're accusing them of anything other than saving the world. The problem is when you sort of point out the unpleasant truth, which is, well, hang on, you've got a massive problem with X, you know, with monopoly practices or with child protection or whatever, it sort of bursts their bubble a bit.

It's like, oh, we're not saving the world. We've got issues. So, you know, that's the bit that I really enjoy, almost just popping that bubble and saying, no, you're no better than anybody else, mate. You've got to, I've told you about a problem and now you have to fix it. There's a really interesting crossover between techies who are turning to journalism and journalists who are turning to tech, and that the stream is going both ways, a bit of a revolving door. I mean, I think for techies who are getting into journalism, the wonderful thing about now is that the old model of the sort of gatekeepers where you had to get a job as a journalist on a newspaper

because only newspapers could afford the printing presses and you had to get a job on the BBC because only they had the radio licenses. All that's gone. You know, you can start blogging and you can start making videos on YouTube and you can release your own podcast. This is the wonderful thing. If you're interested in getting into journalism, just start. You don't need any more somebody to give you, you know, the keys to the office.

And you can practice, you know, if you're blogging and if you're making your own podcast, you can make those early mistakes. You can screw it up. You can listen back to it and think, oh, that wasn't very good. You've got a little grace period online to sort of practice your skills. For journalists getting into tech, we really have a job of work of taking quite complicated and quite advanced but important things about tech and making them clear to the public. There's quite a lot of tech security journalists might read where you get to the end of it and you think, well, that sounds very worrying,

but what does it all amount to? A, what problem does this cause to me as a member of the public? And B, how can I fix it and make myself safe from it? So there's lessons on both sides. For journalists going into tech and techies going into journalism, there's, I think, different approaches. One of the things about writing a book, which has been really interesting, is looking in the rearview mirror, suddenly all the pieces start to line up. There's this great quote from this book called

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The guy says, you know, if you look ahead and forward in life, everything seems chaotic and you don't quite know where things are going. But if you look backwards, you can sort of trace a line through the dots. And if you extend that line forwards, that's probably where you're going to go. And I just found that really interesting that looking back over cybercrime and cybersecurity that I've covered, all these things that I sort of at the time covered and then kind of went on to other things have all started to fall into place, you know, as a timeline. The emergence of Bitcoin covered it, wasn't sure about it. It turned out to be big. The dark web, again, it emerged, covered it, and then covered it and covered it a few more times.

And then suddenly it turned out to be big. The personal data stories that we covered, you know, I covered them and then suddenly Cambridge Analytica comes out. And so suddenly in the book, all these pieces have lined up and I can tell a story that actually feels like a narrative. It feels like it was, you know, like a timeline. Whereas when I was going along covering as a journalist, it felt like individual stories, you know, popping out of the woodwork and me reacting desperately to them. One thing I really hope is that people think I was fighting for them. So for me,

my sort of employer, if you like, is the public. My audience is the public. I really hope that when all's said and done, they look back and think, well, yeah, actually,

he covered stories and broke stories that helped us, the public, you know, who didn't have massive amounts of money and massive amounts of power and a huge lobbying campaign in political circles. Because for me, that's what journalism is all about.

The people who buy our papers and read our stories and listen to our podcasts and stuff, they're the rank-and-file public. That's who you're working for. So as long as they feel I did a good job for them, that would be a good result for me. Your business needs AI solutions that are not only ambitious, but also practical and adaptable. That's where Domo's AI and data products platform comes in. With Domo, you can channel AI and data into innovative uses that deliver measurable impact. Secure AI agents connect, prepare, and automate your data workflows,

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