Nellie Bowles is an American journalist. She is noted for covering the technology world of
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
.
She worked as a journalist for the English-language Argentine daily the ''
Buenos Aires Herald
The ''Buenos Aires Herald'' was an English language daily newspaper published in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 1876 to 2017. Its slogan was ''A World of Information in a few words''.
History
Under the original name of ''The Buenos Ayres Herald'', ...
'', the ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'',
''
The California Sunday Magazine
''The California Sunday Magazine'' was a longform Sunday magazine featuring stories about the Western United States, Latin America, and Asia. In June 2021 it won a Pulitzer Prize, eight months after the magazine ceased publication. The prize was ...
'',
[Adweek, Richard Horgan, December 11, 2015]
Guardian US Boosts Tech Reporter Ranks
Retrieved February 11, 2018, "...Nellie Bowles (pictured) ... a contributing writer to The California Sunday magazine ... working on a book for Hachette and TV show based on one of her stories for 20th Century Fox .. previously covered the tech world for Re/code..." the technology journalism website ''
Recode
''Recode'' (formerly ''Re/code'') is a technology news website that focused on the business of Silicon Valley. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher founded it in January 2014, after they left Dow Jones and the similar website they had previously c ...
'',
the British daily ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' beginning in 2016,
then for ''
Vice News
Vice News (stylized as VICE News) is Vice Media's current affairs channel, producing daily documentary essays and video through its website and YouTube channel. It promotes itself on its coverage of "under-reported stories". Vice News was create ...
''
[Todd Spangler, June 1, 2016, Variety magazine]
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.html" ;"title="Josh Tyrangiel">Vice News Touts New Hires in Staff Reshuffle Under Josh Tyrangiel
">Josh Tyrangiel">Vice News Touts New Hires in Staff Reshuffle Under Josh Tyrangiel
Retrieved February 11, 2018, "... Vice News employees are ... Nellie Bowles, formerly with the Guardian and Vox Media’s Recode, who will head up the soon-to-open San Francisco office and cover tech..." and most recently ''The New York Times''.
Career
From 2017 to 2021, Bowles covered technology for the ''New York Times'' in the San Francisco Bay Area.
[Agility, June 9, 2017]
Journalists on the move – Week of June 5
Retrieved February 11, 2018, "Notable journalist and media industry moves: ...The New York Times: Nellie Bowles, correspondent for VICE News, joins as business reporter on technology and digital culture beat..." In 2020, she was awarded the prestigious
Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award
The Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism is a journalism award named after Robert F. Kennedy and awarded by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The annual awards are issued in several categories and were est ...
and the
Gerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was estab ...
for investigative reporting along with two colleagues for her investigation into
online child abuse
Online child abuse is a unique form of child abuse also known as “Cyber Molestation” due to its virtual, distanced, and anonymous nature. Such abuse may not happen face-to-face, nor does it necessarily require physical contact. However, onlin ...
; according to editor Dean Murphy, their "deep, persistent and compassionate reporting" served to "hold both government and big tech accountable, and tell the stories of untold children who have endured this abuse in silence."
[ New York Times, June 8, 2020, Staff writers]
Times Investigation Wins Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award
Retrieved June 10, 2020, "...'Journalists seldom write about this horrific abuse beyond high-profile arrests and stings,' ... said Dean Murphy, who edited the series...." She covers the technology and business world of hi-tech startups and venture capital, and she has written about personalities such as
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
,
Eric Schmidt
Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 20 ...
,
and iHeartMedia CEO
Bob Pittman.
[Billboard magazine, Andrew Flanagan, August 28, 2014]
Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman Channels Dissent and Tents at Burning Man
Retrieved February 11, 2018, "... intrepid Nellie Bowles, writing for Re/code, visited Pittman at his Burning Man home, a "spider house" or "Dhome" that Pittman had... designed? ... Pittman's reasons for sleeping in the desert ... are quite obvious, according to Bowles' ..." She covered the exclusive conference of technology CEOs called
Further Future
Further Future was a festival held in southern Nevada. The Further Future model was, “a shared experience that’s beyond our future,” and, "promises a carefully curated slate of, business and cultural leaders, chefs, mixologists and masseus ...
,
[May 3, 2016, Maya Kosoff, Vanity Fair]
INSIDE THE ELITE, INVITE-ONLY FUTURISM FESTIVAL FOR TECH C.E.O.S: It’s like TED Talks and Burning Man combined, but harder to get into than either
Retrieved February 11, 2018, "...Nellie Bowles got an inside look at the second-annual Further Future, which took place last weekend...." and has written about subjects such as
doxxing
Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...
[Andrea Grimes, September 26, 2017, Dame Magazine]
IS DOXXING EVER OKAY? Nazis who get doxxed are not victims. But so far the media has failed to get the message
Retrieved February 11, 2018, "....As with all Times stories that sit at the intersection of culture and politics, Bowles’s piece includes some obligatory, nonspecific handwringing over “murky” ethics, ... it is a very complete New York Times story...." and
cryptocurrencies
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank
A bank is a financial i ...
. She appeared twice on the ''
Charlie Rose'' nationally broadcast television interview show.
Her reporting is often controversial; for example, her account of her interview with
Jordan Peterson
Jordan Bernt Peterson (born 12 June 1962) is a Canadian media personality, clinical psychologist, author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. He began to receive widespread attention as a public intellectual in the late 2010s ...
attracted much attention.
[Nellie Bowles, The New York Times, May 18, 2018]
Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy: He says there’s a crisis in masculinity. Why won’t women — all these wives and witches — just behave?
Retrieved June 10, 2018[The New Republic, Jeet Heer, May 21, 2018]
Jordan Peterson’s Tired Old Myths
Retrieved June 10, 2018, "...
“The messages he delivers,” Bowles wrote, “range from hoary self-help empowerment talk (clean your room, stand up straight) to the more retrograde and political (a society run as a patriarchy makes sense and stems mostly from men’s competence; the notion of white privilege is a farce)...."[Jonathan Foiles, May 22, 2018, Slate magazine]
Retrieved June 14, 2018, ".... Nellie Bowles recounts one such session in her recent New York Times profile of Peterson..." She has moderated televised discussions on the subject of
free speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been ...
in the digital age,
[John Battelle, May 17, 2018, NewsCo Shift]
A Magic Shield That Lets You Be An Assh*le? Now that digital platforms drive physical consequences, what does “free speech” really even mean anymore?
Retrieved June 14, 2018, "...Cindy Cohn Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Carol Christ Chancellor, UC Berkeley, and moderator Nellie Bowles of The New York Times..." and she has written about
gender equality
Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...
in the tech world.
[Thacher Schmid, March 12, 2018, Willamette Week]
While Startups Increasingly Move to Portland, a New York Times Reporter Warns That There’s a “Gender Problem” in Tech: Nellie Bowles will be in Portland next month to speak at TechfestNW on the inclusivity, or lack thereof, in tech culture.
Retrieved June 17, 2018, "...Bowles has written a number of groundbreaking stories on the "gender problem" in tech, including a profile of a "contrarian" fringe element of men leading a backlash against women asserting their rights...." Her reports regarding the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians have sometimes generated additional controversy.
In 2021, Bowles along with Bari Weiss launched ''Common Sense'' on
Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...
''.'' The publication changed names to
The Free Press in 2022.
Personal life
Bowles is a descendant of
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...
, who was dubbed the "Cattle King of California" and was at one point one of the largest land-owners in the United States, and a descendant of Thomas Crowley, who founded the transportation and logistics company
Crowley Maritime
Crowley, legally Crowley Maritime Corporation, is based in Jacksonville, Florida. Founded in 1892, Crowley is primarily a family- and employee-owned vessel management, owner, and supply chain logistics services company, providing services globall ...
. Bowles graduated from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 2010. She is married to political commentator
Bari Weiss
Bari Weiss (born March 25, 1984) is an American journalist, writer, and editor. She was an op-ed and book review editor at ''The Wall Street Journal'' (2013–2017) and an op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics at ''The New Yor ...
, a relationship she says led her to convert to
Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...
. She also says the conversion was part of a personal drive to be more empathy-driven in her reporting.
She takes temporary breaks from addictive technologies such as
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
with a practice dubbed
dopamine fasting
Dopamine fasting is a form of digital detox, involving temporarily abstaining from addictive technologies such as social media, listening to music on technological platforms, and Internet gaming, and can be extended to temporary deprivation of soc ...
.
Filmography
*''
Vice News Tonight'' on
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
Selected bibliography
*"Video Games and Online Chats Are 'Hunting Grounds' for Sexual Predators", ''The New York Times'', December 7, 2019,
part 3 of the "Exploited" series that won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Gerald Loeb Award
References
External links
Nellie Bowles profileat Muck Rack
InterviewBowles interviews
Eric Swalwell
Eric Michael Swalwell (born November 16, 1980) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the U.S. representative for California's 15th congressional district since 2013. His district covers most of eastern Alameda County and part of centr ...
on Inforum
Nellie Bowles and Jessica Lessin on Obligations in TechYouTube video
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowles, Nellie
Living people
Journalists from California
Columbia College (New York) alumni
People from San Francisco
American women journalists
The New York Times people
Year of birth missing (living people)
American LGBT writers
21st-century American journalists
Gerald Loeb Award winners for Investigative
21st-century American women writers
Place of birth missing (living people)
Converts to Judaism
LGBT Jews