Sam Faulkner Biddle (born 1986) is an American technology journalist. He is a reporter for ''

The Intercept ''The Intercept'' is an American left-wing news website founded by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras and funded by billionaire eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Its current editor is Betsy Reed. The publication initially reported ...

'', and was formerly a senior writer at

Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in ...

, the editor of the news website

Valleywag Valleywag was a Gawker Media blog with gossip and news about Silicon Valley personalities. It was initially launched under the direction of editor Nick Douglas in February 2006. After Douglas was fired,Gizmodo ''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite ''io9'', whic ...

Education

Biddle attended

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

, where he was a member of the

Delta Phi Delta Phi () is a fraternity founded in 1827 at Union College in Schenectady, New York consisting of ten active chapters along the East Coast of the United States. The fraternity also uses the names "St. Elmo," "St. Elmo Hall," or merely "Elmo" ...

fraternity and majored in philosophy.

Career

Biddle was formerly the editor of

Valleywag Valleywag was a Gawker Media blog with gossip and news about Silicon Valley personalities. It was initially launched under the direction of editor Nick Douglas in February 2006. After Douglas was fired,Gawker Media Gawker Media LLC (formerly Blogwire, Inc. and Gawker Media, Inc.) was an American Online and offline, online Mass media, media company and Link farm#Blog network, blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was ba ...

. In October 2014, he announced that he was leaving Valleywag and taking a sabbatical, after which he took another reporting position at Gawker. His writing focuses on Internet issues, such as cybersecurity and online political activism. In 2014, he was one of ''Vanity Fair's'' "News Disrupters," a "new breed of journo-entrepreneurs

triking Triking is the common name for the Triking Sports Cars, the United Kingdom based manufacturer of the 3-wheeled Triking Cyclecar, located in Hingham, Norfolk, formerly in Marlingford, Norfolk.The A-Z of Three-Wheelers A definitive reference ...

out on their own, cutting to the chase and influencing the masses without (much of) a filter."

Controversies

Biddle's articles have often been controversial, at times criticizing and making fun of technology companies and affluent people in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. ''

New York Magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'', ...

'' has referred to Biddle as "perhaps the most hated journalist in the Bay Area", while an article in

PandoDaily PandoDaily, or simply Pando, was a web publication offering technology news, analysis, and commentary, with a focus on Silicon Valley and startup companies. History PandoDaily was started by former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy on January 16, 201 ...

attacked him as a "grotesque hypocrite".

Gamergate

Biddle made controversial statements on Twitter during the

Gamergate controversy Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized online misogyny, misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "# ...

. In response to tweets by Biddle saying "Bring Back Bullying", and "Ultimately #GamerGate is reaffirming what we've known to be true for decades:

nerd A nerd is a person seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted or lacking social skills. Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, little known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly tec ...

s should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission," Gamergate supporters posted a list of Gawker's advertisers online, and contacted them in a campaign to force them to pull ad campaigns from Gawker websites.

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

then pulled its sponsorship in response.

Justine Sacco incident

Biddle played an important role in the

online shaming Online shaming is a form of public shaming in which targets are publicly humiliated on the internet, via social media platforms (e.g. Twitter or Facebook), or more localized media (e.g. email groups). As online shaming frequently involves expo ...

of Justine Sacco in December 2013 after Sacco had tweeted "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just Kidding. I'm white!" to her 173

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

followers. Biddle posted her public tweet to Gawker, and Sacco was later fired after considerable global media coverage of her tweet. In January 2014, Biddle said "It's satisfying to be able to say, 'O.K., let's make a racist tweet by a senior IAC employee count this time.' And it did. I'd do it again." In June 2014, when Sacco found a job at

Hot or Not Hot or Not, currently rebranded as Chat & Date, is a rating site that allowed users to rate the attractiveness of photos submitted voluntarily by others. The site offered a matchmaking engine called 'Meet Me' and an extended profile feature ca ...

, Biddle wrote: "How perfect! Two lousy has-beens, gunning for a comeback together." Sacco later defended herself, offering that she (a South African) had intended her tweet to "mimic—and mock—what an actual racist, ignorant person would say of South Africa."

References

External links

Biddle's personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Biddle, Sam Living people American male journalists Place of birth missing (living people) Johns Hopkins University alumni 1986 births Gawker Media Technology journalists