Laura Sydell
Laura Sydell fell in love with the intimate storytelling qualities of radio, which combined her passion for theatre and writing with her addiction to news. Over her career she has covered politics, arts, media, religion, and entrepreneurship. Currently Sydell is the Digital Culture Correspondent for NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and NPR.org.
Sydell's work focuses on the ways in which technology is transforming our culture and how we live. For example, she reported on robotic orchestras and independent musicians who find the Internet is a better friend than a record label as well as ways technology is changing human relationships.
Sydell has traveled through India and China to look at the impact of technology on developing nations. In China, she reported how American television programs like Lost broke past China's censors and found a devoted following among the emerging Chinese middle class. She found in India that cell phones are the computer of the masses.
Sydell teamed up with Alex Bloomberg of NPR's Planet Money team and reported on the impact of patent trolls on business and innovations particular to the tech world. The results were a series of pieces that appeared on This American Life and All Things Considered. The hour long program on This American Life "When Patents Attack! - Part 1," was honored with a Gerald Loeb Award and accolades from Investigative Reporters and Editors. A transcript of the entire show was included in The Best Business Writing of 2011 published by Columbia University Press.
Before joining NPR in 2003, Sydell served as a senior technology reporter for American Public Media's Marketplace, where her reporting focused on the human impact of new technologies and the personalities behind the Silicon Valley boom and bust.
Sydell is a proud native of New Jersey and prior to making a pilgrimage to California and taking up yoga she worked as a reporter for NPR Member Station WNYC in New York. Her reporting on race relations, city politics, and arts was honored with numerous awards from organizations such as The Newswomen's Club of New York, The New York Press Club, and The Society of Professional Journalists.
American Women in Radio and Television, The National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and Women in Communications have all honored Sydell for her long-form radio documentary work focused on individuals whose life experiences turned them into activists.
After finishing a one-year fellowship with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, Sydell came to San Francisco as a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley.
Sydell graduated Magna Cum Laude with a bachelor's degree from William Smith College in Geneva, New York, and earned a J.D. from Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.
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CEO Sundar Pichai says that he supported the right of workers to express themselves but that a senior engineer's memo had gone too far. The memo's author says he is weighing legal action. -
In a 3,300-word document that has been shared across Google's internal networks and beyond, an engineer at the company said "biological causes" are part of the reason women aren't represented equally. -
Silicon Valley is known as the nation's tech hub, but decades ago New Jersey had that distinction. The state was once home to Thomas Edison's lab and Bell Labs, the home of Nobel laureates. -
In the late 19th century, French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville patented the earliest known sound recording device. But his accomplishments were only recognized recently. -
Point your camera at a flower and your phone identifies it. Walk into a store and your phone leads you to the item you're looking for. It's part of a future world blurring the virtual and the real. -
The film, based on the book by Dave Eggers, presents a dystopian view of where Silicon Valley is taking the world and captures the tech industry's failure to acknowledge the downside of its creations. -
YouTube has tweaked algorithms to prevent ads from appearing next to objectionable and extremist videos. But the moves have left YouTube content creators earning less money. -
Apple was once considered the most innovative company in the tech sector. But by some accounts, it's being shown up by products from Amazon, Microsoft and now Samsung. -
The digital content mashup of Internet oldsters will be led by Tim Armstrong, AOL's CEO. Though the Yahoo deal was widely panned, it gives Verizon a vast subscriber base appealing to advertisers. -
The South by Southwest Interactive Festival, one of the first big tech conferences since the election, added a special track this year about tech under the Trump administration.
