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Pressing Matters
Pressing Matters
Annie Saunders, Editor, Tech Brew
Annie Saunders has been a tech journalist for several years now, but her diverse career background, local news, commodities, food, had her questioning why we'd even invite her on this show. No need to question yourself, Annie. Generalists make great tech journalists, as is evidenced by the reporting on AI, EV transportation, and climate tech for Morning Brew's Tech Brew, where Annie serves as editor.
She's a lifelong Pittsburgher – seriously, it's the only place she's ever lived or will live, she tells us. Annie told us that her Yinzer dowry, which is a great phrase, was getting Steelers season tickets from her dad after she got married. She grew up 30 miles outside Pittsburgh, ran the school paper at the University of Pittsburgh, and spent five years on the editing desk at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Yinzer, indeed.
Now, aside from Pittsburgh, Annie joined us to talk about the woeful state of local journalism, her vision for Morning Brew, and how her career is her way of fulfilling her late mother's legacy for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's media and influencers practice, and I'm your host.
Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Annie. Here's our chat with Annie. Enjoy. Annie, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate your time.
Annie Saunders has been a tech journalist for several years now, but her diverse career background, local news, commodities, food, had her questioning why we'd even invite her on this show. No need to question yourself, Annie. Generalists make great tech journalists, as is evidenced by the reporting on AI, EV transportation, and climate tech for Morning Brew's Tech Brew, where Annie serves as editor. A lifelong Pittsburgher, Seriously, it's the only place she's ever lived or will live, she tells us. Annie told us that her Yinzer dowry, which is a great phrase, was getting Steelers season tickets from her dad after she got married. She grew up 30 miles outside Pittsburgh, ran the school paper at the University of Pittsburgh, and spent five years on the editing desk at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Yinzer, indeed. Now, aside from Pittsburgh, Annie joined us to talk about the woeful state of local journalism, her vision for Morning Brew, and how her career is her way of fulfilling her late mother's legacy for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's media and influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, We've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Annie. Here's our chat with Annie. Enjoy. Annie, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate your time.
Annie Saunders:Hi, Dave. Thanks so much for having me.
Dave Reddy:Our pleasure. Our pleasure. So let's just jump right into it. So you grew up in Pittsburgh or near Pittsburgh, and you've been there your entire life.
Annie Saunders:Yes. That's right. I'm a lifer. I grew up about 30 minutes east of the city in a town called Irwin. And I moved within the city limits to go to the University of Pittsburgh the week after I graduated from high school. I was definitely done with a small town life. And I've been here ever since. I started my career at my hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. And I definitely can't leave now. My husband is a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which is not a job that can be done remotely. No, it can't. What does he play? He plays the bass.
Dave Reddy:Bass guitar or stand-up bass?
Annie Saunders:Stand-up, upright bass.
Dave Reddy:That's awesome. Yeah, no, you can't move. Now, unless, of course, he gets another symphony job, and then you'd have to leave Pittsburgh for the first time.
Annie Saunders:They're few and far between. I think we're here for the long haul.
Dave Reddy:Okay, good. What do mom and dad do? I presume they too are Pittsburghers.
Annie Saunders:Yes, indeed. They're both from Irwin, the town I grew up in. They are not journalists. My dad is actually a host at a restaurant after spending most of his career in the car business. My mother, she died pretty young. She was 42. I was 16. I'm sorry. That's all right. It's been a long enough time that I've got some distance from it. I can talk about it pretty comfortably. I don't know that she ever really got an opportunity to figure out what she wanted to do, but toward the end of her life, she did start taking classes at the local community college in writing and journalism and was writing for my even smaller, like the sub hometown paper, the, uh, the Norwin star. And so she started covering council meetings and writing a column. And that was sort of when I got the bug.
Dave Reddy:So your inspiration was your mom. That's nice.
Annie Saunders:Yeah, absolutely. I think to some extent I decided on this profession because I wanted to fulfill what she didn't necessarily get a chance to accomplish.
Dave Reddy:That's a, it's a wonderful legacy for you. When you started writing, um, How young were you? I remember when I started writing, I was writing fake sports stories after watching... Well, they weren't fake. I'd watch a Bruins game. I'm from Boston. And I'd write the story for myself just to read it to myself. Were you doing things like that? Were you writing short stories? What were you doing?
Annie Saunders:I mean, I did a little bit of writing in high school that I can remember, but I was... I was and still am sort of always interested in editing. My mom would write her stories from council meetings or she would write a column and she would hand it to me to edit before she gave it to her actual editor. No
Dave Reddy:kidding.
Annie Saunders:That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So I've always been more of an editor than a writer.
Dave Reddy:My wife was my first editor. Not that she was my wife, of course.
Annie Saunders:It's family.
Dave Reddy:Some of our greatest arguments were when we were first dating and over me, the writer and her, the editor. But we're still together. So to the point about editing, you didn't simply work for your school paper at the University of Pittsburgh. You ran the darn thing. Now, when I was in school, after I met my wife, the year after that, I became the sports editor. But we were weekly, and I had maybe five writers. And that was probably more than I could handle. I am trying to figure out how a college student... managed to run a staff of, it was a hundred, right? How did you pull that off?
Annie Saunders:I think it's largely just the hubris of youth. You think you can do anything at 22. I mean, this was like 2007, 2008. So a very different time in journalism, both on the college level and the national level. The Pitt News, the University of Pittsburgh's independent student newspaper. Now, I don't know that it publishes in print at all. If it does, it's just a few times a week. But back then we were, a tabloid that published five days a week. So it was very much a full-time job, but it absolutely solidified my love of journalism. I was working with my classmates and my peers, all of whom had the same passion for the work that I did. And it was just, I assumed that was how work was always going to be. And so when you love it that much, it's not that hard to do. Yeah.
Dave Reddy:And you went straight to the Post-Gazette. Now, when I was at American University, which is where I went in Washington, D.C., there was sort of a pipeline of sports editors to the Washington Post, the bottom of the barrel of the Washington Post covering high school sports. But many of us did that, many in a row. Was there sort of a pipeline from Pitt to the Post-Gazette, or were you unique in that?
Annie Saunders:I don't know that I was unique, but no, there wasn't really much of a pipeline. I think the Post-Gazette needed a copy editor, and I was one of the few 22-year-olds who was really itching to work on the Night City desk. Yeah, I started actually in February of my senior year while still running... the Pitt News because there were some concerns about a hiring freeze and they were looking to get me in the door. So I was taking a full course load and running the student newspaper and working a few nights a week at the Post Cassette. Good for it. I have to ask,
Dave Reddy:how were your grades that quarter?
Annie Saunders:Well, they were great. I think I graduated with honors. I mean, I'm a classic eldest daughter, gets the work done.
Dave Reddy:Right. You do your best when you're really busy. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about local news. I'm starting to get more reporters on this podcast who have local news backgrounds, which is interesting because these days it seems like no one has local news backgrounds, particularly folks of your generation. But it's dying, and I think that's a terrible thing. How concerned are you about the state of local news?
Annie Saunders:Oh, very. I would have loved to have stayed in local news for my whole career, but it's just becoming... a much less viable option for many journalists. I love local news and I think that the experience I got at the Post Gazette was critical to the journalist and particularly the editor I am today. You know, I started on the Night City desk. I was working from four to midnight and my mentor at the paper, a guy named John Schmitz, you know, he sort of taught me everything I know and really gave me a lot of really excellent pointers that I think a lot of journalists today might be missing out on because those local newspaper jobs aren't there as sort of a training ground.
Dave Reddy:One of the things that I think bugs me about journalism these days is the qualities going down. And we can blame that on AI. Maybe that's part of it. We can talk about that later. We can blame that on the culture. But I do think, to your point, that training ground, that natural training ground that some people stay in their entire careers isn't there anymore. And I think we're throwing young people to the wolves.
Annie Saunders:Yeah, I agree. And I think that there, you know, there used to just be papers all over the country from papers covering small towns to papers covering big cities to alt weeklies. And now a lot of those just don't exist anymore. And therefore a lot of journalists are coming out of, you know, maybe they're getting a master's in journalism from Columbia, but they're not getting the sort of on the ground experience you really need to be successful in the work.
Dave Reddy:Yeah. And, and then local folks aren't getting information from about their locality, which has obviously also had some impact. Let's just put it that way.
Annie Saunders:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Pennsylvania's government structure is interesting in that there are all these tiny boroughs, all of which have their own individual government. And it's a lot to cover. And you would need dozens of reporters just to cover every town in Allegheny County, which is where Pittsburgh is situated. And those people are Those jobs don't exist anymore.
Dave Reddy:Segwaying to you spent five years at the Post-Gazette and to your point, you already noticed that local news was kind of going away. So you moved to two very different things. Again, five years covering commodities for S&P and then five years working again as an editor, this time a managing editor for a research group focused on women in leadership.
Unknown:Yeah.
Dave Reddy:So first of all, five years, is that when you're ready for a change?
Annie Saunders:No, I wouldn't necessarily say that. I think it's just sort of how it panned out. I actually did two jobs while I was at the Post Gazette. I spent three years on the Night City desk working as a copy editor. And then because I knew I wanted to be an editor in the long term, I felt that reporters wouldn't take me seriously if I never did the work of being a reporter. So I did the work of a reporter for two years. I covered the city's eastern suburbs. suburbs. So school board meetings, council meetings, you know, the nuts and bolts local journalism. That was a really valuable experience, but it definitely solidified the fact that I wanted to be an editor. I've got nothing but respect for writers. It's very hard work, and I think that I'm better behind the scenes. And you're correct that I saw the writing on the wall when I left the Post-Gazette. It wasn't out of a lack of desire. It was about a need to secure my future. And the job at S&P Global Platts, I was again on a copy desk. I was on what they call the central editing desk. And so I was reading the work of reporters who covered oil, gas, petrochemicals, biofuels. So I know a lot about commodity markets, which is sort of a strange segue, but I did that for five years and it wasn't that Again, it wasn't that I disliked the job. I just was ready for a new challenge. So I took on a variety of freelance assignments over the course of the next couple of years. And that sort of segued right into the pandemic when it was fortuitous that I was a freelancer because I also had a two-year-old. And
Dave Reddy:what is the two-year-old's name?
Annie Saunders:His name is Arthur and he's now seven. But at the beginning of the pandemic, he turned two on March 10th, 2020. Oh, dear. Yeah, so my ability to substantially scale down my workload was pretty beneficial at that time.
Dave Reddy:One thing I'm noticing, and obviously, part of that might have been, you know, having to pull back because of the pandemic. But one thing I'm noticing that's is that there is no pattern. which is very interesting in its way that you have tried so many different things. You obviously succeeded at many of these. You wrote for Start Now, which is a Pittsburgh outlet focused on startup. You edited for Mark Bittman, who's a food writer. You seem to have just a desire to try anything. Is that a fair
Annie Saunders:statement? It absolutely is. I actually was telling a friend of mine about this podcast and I said, this is really weird because I'm not a tech journalist. And he said, Annie, you've I've been in tech for five years. You're a tech journalist. You know, it's still weird for me to consider myself a tech journalist, which I suppose, arguably, I am now, editing a publication called Tech Brew. But for the longest time, I really considered myself to be a generalist.
Dave Reddy:But I, too, because I remember I was a sports writer. And then, like, everybody who gets into PR, I live in Silicon Valley. Everybody who gets into PR on Silicon Valley, I got into tech. So I sometimes still feel like an outsider. But I'm curious if you see it as I do. As a benefit. So here's the way I look at it. If you can't explain your story to me, and I don't know as much about tech as the average guy, then we've got problems because you need to get a dummy like me to understand what's going on. Not calling you a dummy. I'm sure you're far smarter than I am. But you get my point that sometimes that generalist perspective helps, particularly with the gobbledygook that we get in tech.
Annie Saunders:Yeah, absolutely. And that's the argument that I've made for years in maintaining a sort of generalist bent to my work. I read a ton of journalism and I'm not just reading about tech all day. I read about a lot of different things. And so it's my hope to keep that generalist spirit so that if something happens in the tech industry, I've got other options. I think that there's a lot of value to being a generalist in today's day and age.
Dave Reddy:Well, one thing I can guarantee, having been in the tech industry for a little longer than you, is something's going to happen, because it does. It seems to happen every three or four years. So you arrived on the tech scene more than 10 years into your career, which I think is pretty unique for this show, and we're nearing the end of our third season. You took an editor job at TechCrunch. So again, you just told us you considered yourself a generalist. Were you... nervous about taking this job in the world of tech or is it just the job that was in front of you
Annie Saunders:it was the job that was in front of me i you know i was coming out of the pandemic it was sort of a tumultuous time in my life and i was looking for something stable and TechCrunch, it was a contract position, but it was a good contract position. It was enough to pay the bills and enough work to keep me occupied. And candidly, I didn't know a whole lot about venture capital when I started at TechCrunch. I started reading about it and I was like, oh, the learning curve here is steep. I've got a lot to catch up on. But that was what made me love the job. I came into a circumstance where I didn't really have a good handle on all the subject matter. And you know, sometimes being an editor is like being in school forever. You're just, you're presented with constant opportunities to learn. And that's what I enjoy most about the work. So yeah, when I got to TechCrunch, I did feel a little bit like a fish out of water, but everybody I worked with there was really amazing. And I got up to speed pretty quickly.
Dave Reddy:Speaking of tumultuous, TechCrunch has had a tumultuous few years and you're not there anymore, but how do you feel about their future? And that may be a broader question. How do you feel about the future of tech journalism, particularly with not only at TechCrunch, but at TechBrew and around the world?
Annie Saunders:I mean, I would say that TechCrunch and Morning Brew are two very different organizations that are operated very differently. But I do feel like what happened with TechCrunch is kind of a shame because there are a ton of super talented people there. And I do just hope that they're able to right the ship and keep being the excellent publication they've been covering startups and venture capital. So tell
Dave Reddy:me
Annie Saunders:about tech brew and morning
Dave Reddy:brew. How did, how did that job come about?
Annie Saunders:Honestly, I, it was simply that I was still in a contract role with tech crunch and I needed a job that had health insurance. I'm pretty, you know, yeah. Classic American tale. Make sure
Dave Reddy:Arthur goes to the doctor, right?
Annie Saunders:Yeah, yes, indeed. So I wound up at Morning Brew just for that reason. And I just, I got really lucky. Morning Brew has a different model than a lot of other tech outlets. When I tell people about tech brew and the sort of things that we cover, I always say that we don't cover local or breaking news, which is true. We're not looking to compete with The Verge or Wired or The New York Times or any of the outlets like that. We're looking at three subject areas. I have three reporters on my team. They cover artificial intelligence, transportation, so EVs and AVs, and climate tech. And beyond that, we're not really getting too in the weeds. So by being able to be really specific about the subject areas that we cover, I think we're able to do work that is different than what a lot of other tech outlets are doing.
Dave Reddy:And it's, you know, having read the publication, it's back to our earlier talk about, you know, keeping the stories interesting and not too complex. You guys don't go overly techie. It's very well written. It's very clear. And I presume that's the audience you're going after.
Annie Saunders:Yes, thank you, first of all, for saying that is well written and clear. Very much. Yeah, no, it's, we're definitely not looking to write routine 1800 word stories going in depth about how a specific AI tool works. It's pretty, it's business focused, it's reader focused, it's keeping things in that morning brew voice, which is snappy and conversational and not taking ourselves too seriously while still covering pretty serious topics.
Dave Reddy:Is the mission to stick with the three areas? I mean, I realize it's impossible to tell the future, but are you thinking, maybe using TechCrunch as a barometer, or others who cover broader news, will you be covering other things? Or are you sticking with these three?
Annie Saunders:Good question. I think for the moment, we'll stick with these three. When I first joined TechBrew, we had... We didn't have anybody covering climate tech, but we did have somebody covering connectivity. So the internet, how internet things are connected, internet of things. And I said that I really wanted to hire somebody to cover climate tech because it's my belief that if we're going to cover tech business, we need to cover climate tech because if we don't have a planet, we don't have business. So these are the sort of technologies that are hopefully going to help aid in solving the various problems consequences of the climate crisis. And, you know, Morning Brew said, okay, great, let's hire a climate tech reporter. So I was able to bring on Tricia Crimmins to cover climate tech, and that has been really wonderful. So I do think there's some flexibility there, but what the future holds, I don't necessarily know.
Dave Reddy:That's interesting, too, because, you know, thinking back 15 years or so in my career, and I was at a bigger firm, and we had an entire climate tech practice separate from the tech practice. And oddly enough, that whole focus started falling apart, candidly, not just with us, but at outlets and other publications over the course of the last decade. So despite the fact that it's a hot topic, no pun intended, bully for you for bringing it back.
Annie Saunders:Yeah, I think it's tough because it is a difficult segment of the tech sector just because it tends to be pretty hardware based. So it's expensive and it's a long time horizon. You know, it's not software as a service. You can't spin it up and put it out like it's going to take some time. So that's why I'm sort of interested in covering that for the long term.
Dave Reddy:So speaking of and I don't understand why climate tech is a political thing, but it is. So past six months, there's been a shift by almost everybody in tech media. To covering Musk, I guess that may come to an end now. Trump, DC, executive orders, tech in Washington seem to be more tied together than they ever have been. How long do you expect this to last? And how are you folks, if at all, handling it at TechBrew?
Annie Saunders:Oh, I don't know how it will last. And anybody who tells you they do, I think is probably not telling you the truth. I... I will say that I think a lot of tech journalists were really well positioned to cover this current political moment. I think some of the best reporting coming out of Washington is in Wired magazine. And we're covering it as it relates to our three core subject matter areas. So are there going to be federal regulations on AVs? Are they going to repeal core portions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which would impact climate tax credits? So we're looking at it from those pretty specific standpoints. But yeah, in terms of what happens every day is a new adventure.
Dave Reddy:We live in interesting times. Speaking of AI, it's story number one, two, and three. It is one of the three things you cover. Force for good, force for bad,
Annie Saunders:both? I don't think we know the answer to that question yet. I think as... as much as we seem to be in it, as much as I have a full-time reporter on my team covering AI, I do still think we're early in this technology. And the way it's going to play out in terms of business and the tech sector as a whole, I don't know that we know yet.
Dave Reddy:How about AI and journalism? Are you using it? And what do you think about it?
Annie Saunders:I am not using it and no one on my team is using it. I think that... for writers, there might be a little bit of an allergy to it to say, I don't need AI to do this. I can do this. You know, that's not to say that I would be opposed about using it in the future. I have friends who are lawyers who use it a ton. It's great in with research help. So, you know, it's not to say that I'm opposed, but at the moment we're not, we're not using any AI
Dave Reddy:tools. Okay, great. My, my last question, this one's a little different because normally I ask someone to pick between two places they've lived, but You've lived essentially in one place. So if not Pittsburgh, where?
Annie Saunders:Nowhere. In spite of the terrible weather and the terrible baseball team, I'm a lifer. I travel to New York for work a lot, and I always say that I can spend three days there, but I'm not tough enough to live there. I love Pittsburgh, and I've... I've got a really great life here. I live within walking distance of my best friend of 30 years. And, you know, it's not paradise. It has flaws, but I earnestly couldn't see myself living anywhere else.
Dave Reddy:Well, Annie from Pittsburgh, thank you so much for being on the show and continued good luck with Tech Brew and Morning Brew.
Annie Saunders:Thanks so much, Dave. This was fun.
Dave Reddy:I'd like to thank you all for listening today. And once again, a big thank you to our guest, Annie Saunders of Tech Brew. Join us again next month when we interview yet another member of the B2B Tech Top 200. In the meantime, if you've got feedback on today's podcast, or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley Marketing and how we identified the B2B Tech Top 200, be sure to drop me an email at dreadyatbigvalley.co. That's D-R-E-D-D-Y at Big Valley, all one word, dot C-O, no M. You can also email the whole team at pressingmattersatbigvalley.co. Once again, thanks for listening. And as always, think big.
