Ryan Mac

Last updated

Ryan Mac
OccupationJournalist, writer
Education Stanford University (BA)
Notable works Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (2024)
Notable awards
Website
Ryan Mac - New York Times

Ryan Mac is a Vietnamese-American writer and journalist who works for The New York Times . [1] [2] He has previously worked as a reporter at Buzzfeed News and Forbes . Mac was awarded the 2019 Mirror Award and the 2020 George Polk Award for his reporting on Facebook. [3] [4] He is the co-author of 2024's Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter . [5]

Contents

Education

Ryan Mac attended Stanford University from 2007 to 2011. Initially a pre-med student, Mac began writing stories for the Stanford Daily at the end of his freshman year. As a staff writer, Mac often published about new musical releases and music festivals for the Daily's arts section. [6]

Throughout college, Mac served as a reporting intern at the Half Moon Bay Review , New York Times , Bay Citizen , OC Register , and Bloomberg L.P. [7]

Career

From 2011 to 2017, Mac worked as a staff writer for Forbes , compiling their annual list of billionaires before transitioning into covering tech startups and companies. Mac also continued to cover music, interviewing top-earning DJs such as Calvin Harris, Steve Aoki, and Avicii. [8] [9] [10] Mac also had the privilege of interviewing American rapper Riff Raff in 2014. [11] In 2016, Mac reported on Peter Thiel, who had been secretly funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker (Bollea v. Gawker). [12] Alongside reporter Matt Drange, Mac was a 2017 Gerald Loeb Award finalist in the 'Breaking News Category' for their coverage of Gawker. [13]

From 2017 to 2021, Mac worked as a senior technology reporter for Buzzfeed News . In 2018, Mac reported on Elon Musk and Vernon Unsworth, a British cave diver who played an instrumental role in the Tham Luang cave rescue. Mac released a series of email correspondences that revealed Musk had accused Unsworth of being a "child rapist" who had "married a child". [14] Both these claims by Musk were found to be false. [14] In one of Musk's emails to Buzzfeed News , he referred to Mac as a "f**king asshole". [14] These emails were later referenced during Unsworth's $190 million defamation suit against Musk. [15]

Mac was one of ten journalists whose accounts were suspended on X (formerly Twitter) by Elon Musk on December 15, 2022. Mac's Twitter account was unsuspended by Musk 2 days later. [16]

In September of 2024, Mac and co-author Kate Conger released Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter , [17] which covers Musk's poorly executed $44-billion-dollar acquisition of Twitter. [18]

Personal life

Ryan Mac is an avid supporter of Arsenal Football Club. [2] [19]

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References

  1. ↑ Mac, Ryan (September 12, 2020). "At 82, My Grandmother Has Lost Her Husband — and the World as She Knows It". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  2. 1 2 "Ryan Mac Joining Technology Team". The New York Times Company (Press release). June 24, 2021. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  3. ↑ "Past Winners". Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  4. ↑ "Buzzfeed News Wins George Polk Award". BuzzFeed News. February 24, 2021. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  5. ↑ "The inside story of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  6. ↑ "Alumni Spotlight: Ryan Mac '11 – Stanford Daily Alumni". The Stanford Daily. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  7. ↑ "Ryan Mac". Muckrack. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
  8. ↑ "Calvin Harris: From Supermarkets To Superstardom". Youtube. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  9. ↑ "Steve Aoki On Being The World's Hardest-Working DJ". Youtube. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  10. ↑ "Technology, Music And The Rise of Avicii". Youtube. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  11. ↑ "Jody Highrollin' With Riff Raff In Las Vegas".
  12. ↑ "This Silicon Valley Billionaire Has Been Secretly Funding Hulk Hogan's Lawsuits Against Gawker".
  13. ↑ "Finalists vie for nation's top honor given to journalists in business, financial reporting" . Retrieved September 24, 2024.
  14. 1 2 3 "In A New Email, Elon Musk Accused A Cave Rescuer Of Being A "Child Rapist" And Said He "Hopes" There's A Lawsuit". BuzzFeed News. September 4, 2018. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  15. ↑ "Elon Musk did not defame British cave explorer, jury finds". The Guardian. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  16. ↑ "Twitter Suspends Journalist Accounts". New York Times. December 15, 2022. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  17. ↑ "CHARACTER LIMIT | Kirkus Reviews" . Retrieved September 22, 2024– via kirkusreviews.com.
  18. ↑ "The inside story of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
  19. ↑ ttps://www.patreon.com/posts/podcast-limit-113659007 "PODCAST! Character Limit". Patreon. Retrieved October 10, 2024.
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