How to Write a Zeitgeisty Feature ft. Bridget Read

What was the tweet for the digital privacy feature, like, that you felt that they already tweeted out? Was it like, don't trust the cloud, change your password? One was from Elizabeth Holmes.

Elizabeth Holmes tweeted from prison, so it might have been her husband.

Like, everyone should delete everything in prison.

five years, there will be no privacy.

And we were like, she just tweeted it out.

And then Hunter Biden did the same thing.

He was like, you know, nothing is private, all that stuff.

And so those were both people we were like, well,

got

to send them the magazine.

Those are two interesting case studies.

I mean, Elizabeth Holmes, that was like through litigation that a lot of her texts were exposed.

And then Hunter Biden left his laptop at a computer repair shop, I believe, and that led to some leaks with his personal life.

But yeah, let's talk about that feature about digital privacy, because I was reading it.

And it was so terrifying, because what I thought was like really great about the piece is it rests upon the this conundrum we have right now where it's so easy to just like log into everything with your Gmail because Google has made it so easy, it's so easy to back up everything in the cloud.

And these are things that we're doing mindlessly, but I realized while reading it, it's like, well, I've been doing this for 15 years or more than a decade.

So yeah, can you talk about what inspired that digital privacy piece and what did you learn? Journalists should be always thinking about

it because we can be sued and it's happening more and more in this administration in particular and i just think in general there's a real antipathy towards journalism and journalists that kind of everyone should be aware of and so that was really where it came from my editor and i were kind of just talking about how you know our slacks are in could be in discovery if if somebody really wanted them to be and A bunch of cases just had kind of been in the air where the texture of their exchanges were so, so, so casual.

The Elon Musk and Sam Altman trial was another one happening at the time.

And that was a big one where we were, we were sort of stunned by the ease with which even the most powerful tech Titans in the world put all their crap onto their devices and didn't think about it.

And that was a big example for us.

And then it was almost like investigating a nightmare.

You know, the nightmare is that it all comes out.

The point of departure for the piece was really, could it all come out and why? And how scary is this nightmare? How real is it? And what can anybody do? You know, so that was really where it came from.

The case studies were so... like, harrowing, specifically the one about the guy who worked at Disney.

What was the tweet for the digital privacy feature, like, that you felt that they already tweeted out? Was it like, don't trust the cloud, change your password? One was from Elizabeth Holmes.

Elizabeth Holmes tweeted from prison, so it might have been her husband.

Like, everyone should delete everything in prison.

five years, there will be no privacy.

And we were like, she just tweeted it out.

And then Hunter Biden did the same thing.

He was like, you know, nothing is private, all that stuff.

And so those were both people we were like, well,

got

to send them the magazine.

Those are two interesting case studies.

I mean, Elizabeth Holmes, that was like through litigation that a lot of her texts were exposed.

And then Hunter Biden left his laptop at a computer repair shop, I believe, and that led to some leaks with his personal life.

But yeah, let's talk about that feature about digital privacy, because I was reading it.

And it was so terrifying, because what I thought was like really great about the piece is it rests upon the this conundrum we have right now where it's so easy to just like log into everything with your Gmail because Google has made it so easy, it's so easy to back up everything in the cloud.

And these are things that we're doing mindlessly, but I realized while reading it, it's like, well, I've been doing this for 15 years or more than a decade.

So yeah, can you talk about what inspired that digital privacy piece and what did you learn? Journalists should be always thinking about

it because we can be sued and it's happening more and more in this administration in particular and i just think in general there's a real antipathy towards journalism and journalists that kind of everyone should be aware of and so that was really where it came from my editor and i were kind of just talking about how you know our slacks are in could be in discovery if if somebody really wanted them to be and A bunch of cases just had kind of been in the air where the texture of their exchanges were so, so, so casual.

The Elon Musk and Sam Altman trial was another one happening at the time.

And that was a big one where we were, we were sort of stunned by the ease with which even the most powerful tech Titans in the world put all their crap onto their devices and didn't think about it.

And that was a big example for us.

And then it was almost like investigating a nightmare.

You know, the nightmare is that it all comes out.

The point of departure for the piece was really, could it all come out and why? And how scary is this nightmare? How real is it? And what can anybody do? You know, so that was really where it came from.

The case studies were so... like, harrowing, specifically the one about the guy who worked at Disney.