Little black book: the tech scene - Journalists

Tech royalty | Need to know | Blogs, magazines, newspapers | Journalists | Investors | Corporates | Events | Enterprise initiatives | Websites

Get your press releases on the desks of these bloggers and journos for maximum coverage.

Mike Butcher

A former editor of New Media Age magazine as well as a contributor to various national newspapers, Mike Butcher is now best known as the editor of the European arm of TechCrunch, arguably the largest and most popular technology blog on the internet. Regular dialogue with Butcher should be your first priority if you want to drum up hype: TechCrunch is one of the first sources for the national press.
Find him: Blogging at mbites.com; chairing the panel discussions at TechCrunch Europe's various signature events including the Geek'n'Rolla conference and the Europa awards; @mikebutcher; checking out the offices of startups across the UK.

Paul Carr

Having spectacularly failed to make it as an internet entrepreneur ('he's been fired from every job he'd ever had - including at least two where he was his own boss', explains his blog), Carr decided to chronicle his attempts in his book Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore, which was a surprise hit among critics. Off the back of that, Carr now chronicles his ongoing 'adventures in technology' in a TechCrunch column - the deftly worded, unfailingly amusing but not always likeable 'Not Safe for Work'.
Find him: blogging at paulcarr.com; contributing pieces to various publications including The Guardian and The Telegraph; ranting about hotel wifi connections - Carr started living in hotels a la Alan Partridge as an experiment last year and has done so ever since; @paulcarr.

Jemima Kiss & Charles Arthur

Digital publishing reporter and technology editor respectively, Kiss and Arthur are indisputably the two most high-profile members of the Guardian technology editorial team. While Arthur has been in the industry since he became technology editor of The Independent in 1995, Kiss has been a more recent addition, writing about digital publishing since 2002. Your pitches to Kiss may have to wait, though - she is currently on maternity leave after announcing the birth of son Artley in July.
Find them: Blogging at jemimakiss.com and charlesarthur.com; in the Guardian canteen, where Kiss' Twitter page indicates she spends an inordinate amount of time; @jemimakiss, @charlesarthur; in the classroom: Arthur occasionally doubles as a media trainer; floating around a muddy field: Kiss had a pagan wedding at Glastonbury this year.

Rory Cellan-Jones

The BBC's resident tech expert is a ubiquitous sight at technology events in the UK. Having started his BBC career as a researcher on a regional programme in Leeds, Cellan-Jones moved to London to cover business and economics, and started his job as technology reporter in 2007, where he became one of the early proponents of, among other things, Twitter.
Find him: Blogging at the BBC's dot.life; struggling to find 3G reception for one of his many gadgets; @ruskin147; on the shelves of Waterstones - his book, Dot.Bomb: The strange death of dot.com Britain, was released just after the dot com crash; walking 'dog' - possibly one of the most well-known pooches on Twitter - on Ealing Common.

Bill Thompson

Look at Thompson, and you'll see the ultimate computer geek: what he lacks in traditional horn-rimmed glasses, he makes up for in his thick and lustrous beard and slightly scruffy appearance. Don't be fooled, though: Thompson has been writing about the internet since the early 1990s and can even lay claim to the title of first-ever web editor of the Guardian. These days, Thompson writes regularly for the technology section on the BBC website, as well as The Guardian, The Register and The New Statesman, and is also appears regularly on TV and on the radio, commenting on all things web.
Find him: blogging at thebillblog.com; enjoying a spot of punting on the river Cam in Cambridge where he lives; @billt; waxing lyrical over films - Thompson sits on the panel for the Cambridge Film Festival.

Sarah Lacy

Silicon Valley-based tech pixie Lacy should be at the top of your RSS feeder: she's been writing about startups for the best part of a decade, and is the author of bestseller The stories of Facebook, YouTube & MySpace: The people, the hype and the deals behind the giants of Web 2.0, which gives an insider glimpse into how a few computer geeks created three of the largest websites on the internet. Lacy also writes for TechCrunch, Valley Girl, a bi-weekly column in US publication Business Week, as well as co-hosting Yahoo! Finance's Tech Ticker.
Find her: blogging at sarahlacy.com; attempting to fight the miseries of jetlag incurred during research for her next book on global entrepreneurs; @sarahcuda; getting up to various hi-jinks with British counterpart Paul Carr.

Robert Scoble

Known affectionately to his readers (and most of the scene) as one of the web's biggest 'egobloggers' (a blogger whose writing tends to have a self-aggrandising or narcissistic tone), Silicon Valley-based Scoble's blog, Scobleizer, drew a cult following when, working as part of Microsoft's MSDN Video team, he wrote very openly about his experiences, occasionally lambasting his employer but more often than not drawing criticism by promoting Microsoft's products. Scoble went on to write and produce two web TV shows for US tech magazine Fast Company, and now works for US IT hosting company Rackspace.
Find him: Still blogging at scobleizer.com; still writing the odd article for Fast Company; @scobleizer.

Alex Bellinger

If there is such a thing as an old school of podcasting, Bellinger is part of it: having started SmallBizPod, the UK's first free podcast dedicated to small businesses in March 2005, he went on to co-organise the world's first podcasting conference in September the same year. SmallBizPod tends to run monthly, with entrepreneur interviews and business news to keep you on your toes.
Find him: Blogging at smallbizpod.co.uk; @alexbellinger

The best of the rest

Milo Yiannopolous: Ex-Telegraph blogger turned TechCrunch writer, Yiannopolous is worth following just so you can amuse yourself at the frequency with which he manages to find himself embroiled in scandal. Find him: @nero

Basheera Khan: Eternally lovely TechCrunch and Telegraph writer. Find her: @bash

Zee Kane: WeDoCreative founder and editor-in-chief of tech blog TheNextWeb. Little-known fact: Kane was once asked to play for the Kuwaiti national table tennis team. Find him: @Zee

Simone Brummelhuis: Dutch founder of women in tech blog TheNextWomen, which describes itself as 'the female Business Week, the female TechCrunch and the business Red'. Find her: @thenextwomen.

Tech royalty | Need to know | Blogs, magazines, newspapers | Journalists | Investors | Corporates | Events | Enterprise initiatives | Websites