Inside the Media Mind of Harry McCracken: Fast Company

You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K. Welcome to Inside the Media Minds. This is your host, Christine Blake. This show features in-depth interviews with tech reporters who share everything from their biggest pet peeves to their favorite stories. From our studio at W2 Communications, let's go inside the media minds. Hello everybody, this is Christine and Madison, and we're thrilled about today's episode. We had just had a great conversation with Harry McCracken. He is the global technology editor at Fast Company. We learned so much this episode, tons of information. One of my favorite parts though is when we asked him how he prefers to be pitched, and he came in with a ton of great insight, ton of great practices. My favorite part was when he said the subject line of a pitch email should be clear and simple and not clever. He was very adamant about how pitches should be simple, very few sentences, and then he'll do the work of reporting and making it into a story. And I think that's something that a lot of PR professionals, communicators, and technology experts can remember when trying to get into Fast Company stories. Madison, what was one of your favorite parts?

Yeah, I would say I loved hearing Harry's perspective on different technology trends that him and his team are keeping an eye on. One in particular, I know AI is all of the rage right now, but they also have noticed quantum computing is, you know, having, having its own moment over the past few months and that trend they expect will increase. And so we loved hearing more about what they anticipate in the quantum computing realm. And then it was also interesting to hear Harry's perspective on how different regions might be covering different new and emerging technologies. He mentioned a few conferences that he's attended and web summits, I believe. And so it was interesting to hear his take on what different countries might be emphasizing more than others. He mentioned, you know, how in Europe, privacy is really important there. There's some notes that we might be able to take on that regard. So yeah, really interesting conversation.

Yeah, lots of good info in this one. We hope everyone enjoys this as our last podcast of the year. And exciting news if you missed it, but Inside the Media Minds will be joining the N2K CyberWire network starting in January of 2026. So you can find us there. Thanks to everyone for listening and enjoy the podcast. Hi everyone, this is Christine Blake, one of the co-hosts of Inside the Media Minds. I'm here with Madison Fairbaugh.

Hey everyone, great.

So on today's podcast, we have Harry McCracken, who's the global technology editor for Fast Company based in San Francisco. Harry writes about topics ranging from gadgets and services from tech giants to the startup economy to how AI and other breakthroughs are changing life at work, home, and beyond, covering a multitude of technology stories. So Harry, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're really excited to have you.

Hey folks, it's great to be here.

So you have a very impressive background, um, going beyond your, your years at Fast Company, appearing on CNBC, CNN, NPR, other media outlets. You were also formerly the editor-at-large of Time magazine. Can you give us a quick overview of your background? How did you get into journalism and what keeps you really engaged in the industry?

Well, um, when I was a little kid, I loved comic books. I still do, but, um, I, I think that led to an interest in magazines and, um, eventually that led to an interest in computer magazines back when computer magazines were a big field and any newsstand had dozens of them. And I read them voraciously. And because I was also interested in writing and, uh, kind of imagery and storytelling. That eventually led to working in computer magazines. And I, I started doing that really at right before the web came along. So it was kind of the last moment when I was entirely a print-based business. And then the web came along. And so I started working on that and, um, eventually we had podcasts and video and all these other amazing tools we can use to tell people about the technology in their lives.

Amazing. Um, you've seen a big evolution then of media journalism and technology altogether, right? Over the years.

Yeah, totally. I mean, most, most of the major publications from the print era are, um, I mean, a lot of cases are still around. Uh, there are ones like Fast Company that began as print and we, we still have a magazine, but we don't rotate around the magazine. And then, then there are all kinds of, um, outlets that are entirely digital. And also another big change is back in the old days, you kind of had to be a relatively large company to start a technology publication. Today, a person on their own can create some amazing things. And, uh, we're not just competing against other kind of well-established companies. We are, we are competing against anybody who is smart about technology and knows how to create content about it.

And it's amazing to you, look at all these media platforms and the social media pages themselves are their own media entity, right? So you've seen probably that a huge change in that over the past decade.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of our activity is on social media and that's, that's certainly one of the ways we find people to love Fast Company. Of course, the big challenge with social media is it's generally speaking kind of a challenge to, turned that into a business on its own, but as part of the mix of ways people interact with us, it's extremely important.

Yeah, and tell us a bit about like, what is your role like as a global technology editor at Fast Company? What are you currently focused on?

Well, I have a pretty sweet gig 'cause I get to do a little bit of everything. I am primarily writing, and for the most part, I'm writing for our website, although I do write for the magazine as well. And really almost anything where I feel like I have something worthwhile to say about a topic people might care about, I can do. And that does range, like you said, from, from great big companies to startups. Sometimes it's very product-centric. Sometimes I'm writing profiles of people. It really covers, you know, topic-wise, everything from quantum computing to the latest iPhone. To robots and back again.

Yeah.

And with all of these different topics that you're covering, um, you know, how do you balance your coverage between maybe if it has that consumer focus or that enterprise organizational focus, even from work life to home life? How do you, I guess, how do you determine the ratio between covering all of these different topics and even the key audiences that they might impact?

Right, I mean, I tend not to divide the world up into consumer and business, partially because everybody is both a consumer and a business person. I'd say that if you look at the stuff I write about, almost all of it is about stuff that individuals actually touch and use. So there is some enterprise stuff I'm less likely to write about just because if it's primarily of interest to the CIO, and everybody else in the business never sees it, it's less likely that'll be a great story for me. A very high percentage of stuff I write about is useful both at work and at home in the way that a smartphone is not inherently a business tool or a personal tool, it's both. There's a certain amount of home stuff I tend not to write about, kind of if it relates to like being, using technology to be a good parent. I feel like probably ultimately that there are, there may be better media outlets and there are certainly better journalists than me to be an expert on that topic. So I don't do a whole lot about that. Um, also, also a lot of the stuff we write about, even if it does involve consumer products, we're writing about the business that makes them. Um, for instance, earlier this year I did a big story on Roku, which is definitely a consumer product, But I was writing about the business and I interviewed the CEO, Anthony Wood, and I talked about their challenges in offering free streaming video and making that into a business. So that was a story about the business of offering a consumer product, which is something we do all the time.

I like that your perspective on that, it's, it's kind of refreshing to hear because it's so true, like the consumer and enterprise business audience bleeds over to each other. And I think the people that are interested in these stories are both consumers and people that work in professional services sometimes. So I think that's a really good way to look at it, especially as you're covering these big topics for Fast Company.

Yeah, um, I mean, almost everything I've ever written has been kind of in the context of being about technology that's useful, and a lot of the, of the best useful technology spans both worlds. And I think A lot of people just don't divide up their lives quite that way, particularly these days when you might be working at home or you might be at the office and taking a break and doing something personal.

So true.

And so with covering an industry like technology that moves so quickly, what would you say are maybe the most challenging parts of keeping up with this industry and keeping up with coverage here? And what are the most rewarding? Aspects of covering technology?

Well, there's pretty much one answer to both of those, and it is the fact that it's fast moving, uh, and also the fact that we are most— for the most part covering it on the web where people expect you to be very up to date, uh, as of the moment they arrive at your website. And that, that's very different from the print days, um, back in the 1990s. It's kind of amazing to think about it today, but, but a monthly magazine might be your timely source of information about tech. And today we have to move really quickly. And we also, I mean, we do, we certainly do short news stories, but we also do longer reported features and reviews and all kinds of different formats. And we don't have an unlimited budget or an unlimited number of staffers. And so we have to be smart about the stuff we cover. That's great Fast Company material. And some things we choose not to do because they're not in our sweet spot. And we also have to understand that sometimes the sweet spot changes, like, you know, ChatGPT just turned 3 years old. If you go back to the Fast Company of 4 years ago, you will find some stuff about AI, but not a huge amount because it didn't seem like it was at the center of most people's lives. And pretty much the day ChatGPT debuted, it was, it was clear we'd have to do a lot of AI. And that's still true. I think at least 80% of the things I write about have an AI angle to them. And that was, that was not true until 3 years ago. And I expect there to be other technologies that don't seem super central right now that will become so.

80%.

Okay. We were going to ask a little bit about that.

It might be higher.

Yeah, I bet it's probably gonna get higher too next year. Um, you kind of alluded to this a little bit, but what makes a Fast Company story? What is that sweet spot right now?

It would be great if there was like a two-sentence version of that that always worked, but, um, we got time. We have the, we have the good fortune to, um, cover a whole lot of different topics. I mean, if you look at like the overarching three words that define us, they are business, we're a business publication, technology, in my case, 100% of the things I write about are technology, and innovation, meaning we're a lot more likely to write about something if it's new and might have an impact on the world and hopefully a positive impact. And if it's more of the same, typically it's not as strong a story for us. Within that framework, we look at things a lot of different ways. Some of which I've mentioned. We do, I'd say a very high percentage of the stuff I write about, a product or service is at the center. And it kind of doesn't really matter how interesting your CEO is, unless the thing that your company is doing is something of interest to our readers. And those are typically, as I said, products that make you more productive, or make technology more enjoyable. A lot of our stories kind of sit at the crossroads between technology and something else people care about. And that other thing might be entertainment, it could be politics, it could be sports, it could be almost anything. But you'll find if you go to my author page on Fast Company and just skim the headlines, you will see that they are often about intersections of one sort or another. We are kind of unusual among business publications in that our primary topic is not to give you investment advice that will make you rich, although we do sometimes talk about whether the business model a company has is working or not. But rather than kind of telling you about a company's stock price and whether it's likely to go up and down, we're much more interested in the impact what they're doing might have on the world. And on the lives of our readers.

I think that was a great summary. I think you summed it up really, really nicely. It sounds like the framework you alluded to makes a lot of sense for the type of coverage you're doing and for the audience you're trying to reach. I love the intersection between technology and the things that other people care about. I think that's a really nice way to put it.

Yeah. And speaking of that intersection there, are there any use cases for, you know, whether it's AI or other emergent emerging technologies that you've seen this past year that have really caught your eye or that surprised you?

I think the industry is getting better at shipping AI that's actually helpful. When generative AI was newer, people got a little overwhelmed by the fact that it was astonishing. And I don't think they always realized that astonishing is not enough to actually make something valuable. And so we saw a lot of stuff that was incredible but didn't work very well or was poorly integrated into products people already used. And I'd say over 2025, we've seen a lot more stuff that actually is helpful and more considered. I wrote about Google's new version of Gemini, Gemini 3 Pro, recently. That might work the best of any of the AI chatbots I've used, just in terms of, for the most part, providing accurate, reliable advice, although you do have to check it sometimes, but it can also do things like code and do research for you. Robots are an example of something that historically we wrote about sometimes, but not all that much, but seemed to be an emerging thing we'll cover more. And I think that's partially because Robots are essentially the physical manifestation of AI. I wrote about a home humanoid robot recently, which is not shipping yet, but they are taking orders for it. And it's something that couldn't exist without AI helping it figure out things like how to pick up a glass or run a vacuum cleaner.

So interesting. And I mean, you kind of alluded to this right now about things that are coming up, you know, next year and in the future in terms of AI, robots, agentic AI, all of that. Are there any emerging technologies that you think are the most underestimated right now?

Well, quantum computing is an example of something that's super hard to write about because the moment you start to sit down and think about it, you realize it involves quantum physics that are kind of mind-blowing. And traditionally, it's been something we've written about every so often, which is usually not the best way to cover technology. It's much better if it's something that matters enough, you follow it on an ongoing basis and become better at understanding it and explaining it. And earlier this year, my colleagues most of who are not technology specialists, they're kind of more general business reporters, started being way more interested in quantum computing than they had, that they noticed there are a lot of interesting startups and some of these startups are doing well in terms of their stock. And we wrote a quantum computing explainer, which is actually pretty basic. We figured that even most people who know that quantum is something they should care about, don't know a lot about it, so—

I need to read that.

So we explain the basics, and it turns out you don't actually need to know all that much about quantum physics to understand how quantum works and why it matters any more than you have to understand how, you know, a central processing unit or a graphics processing unit works in order to use AI. And I would expect we'll cover quantum more, and it's still something that's kind of primarily in the lab and has not changed lives, but there are all kinds of ways in which it might have a positive impact on the world in terms of things like being a very powerful tool for things like drug discovery. There are also some ways in which it's kind of scary, such as it holds the potential to instantly break cryptography as we know it, and so companies such as banks right now are figuring out how to introduce cryptography that is strong enough that they could— that it won't be broken by, by quantum.

Fascinating. We need— we just need to dig more into that. I think that's— between that and AI, I think we're going to see a lot of those types of emerging technologies more in 2026.

And as global tech editor, I'm just curious, have you noticed any trends in emerging technologies, perhaps between different regions or countries? Like, is, are there any topics where you've noticed, oh, in this country or region, you know, this topic seems to be really trending, or this emerging technology, there are lots of stories to cover about this specific thing in this region, or across the board, have you noticed that typically the technology trends, they kind of go across the board?

Yeah, well, um, For the most part, I love reporting about technology from San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but I do live inside a bubble and most of the people inside this bubble are not representative of most of the people in the world. So it's always refreshing to get out of that bubble. I went to the Web Summit conference in Lisbon a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, cool.

There are a number of other conferences I've been to in other parts of the world and like the The biggest part of that that's refreshing is talking to folks from other parts of the world in terms of ways in which what other countries care about is different. I mean, that there are some obvious examples, such as in Europe, they take privacy way more seriously than we do. And typically they're much more concerned about something like handing over all of their personal data to a large US-based company, such as Google. And governments play a much more activist role in determining how technology works than it does here. You can argue that in some ways this is a good thing, and in some ways it's also a challenge. Like anytime you go to a website and you see this annoying message about cookies and click away from it, I'm not sure whether the world is any better because you have those messages, and those stem from originally from rules in Europe. Another thing to keep in mind is that, you know, in a lot of countries there are vibrant and growing consumer markets, such as in India and Brazil, but these are consumers who do not have enormous amounts of money to spend on consumer technology, and in some cases they have very little money, and that really shapes those worlds, such as in India, there just are not all that many people who can go out and buy a new iPhone or the latest Samsung phone. And so a lot of interesting things have happened to drive down the cost of mobile computing to something that people can relatively afford. And so the market looks a lot different than it does in the, in the US, where you kind of do run into a lot of people who have a cool, neat phone that costs them $600 or $700 or sometimes more money.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah, those are— I like those global trends. I think it's, it's interesting to get outside of that bubble and see what's going on and what's top of mind for people in other regions.

Yeah. And I'd say that a lot of places, they are kind of instinctively somewhat skeptical of American tech companies. And maybe even right now, even more than in general, they're, they're skeptical about the US knowing everything and being in charge of everything. And it's humbling but useful to keep in touch with these folks. It is.

Yeah, I know that's interesting. Something good to keep in mind. Let's talk about your Plugged In newsletter. So I know we get this, but it's a weekly tech report where you talk about the latest developments and some of your top stories. You highlight some of the top stories. How do you go about putting that newsletter together? What is kind of your process with that?

Well, it's a fun challenge to have this, this weekly deadline.

I bet.

Like, I, I know every single week, uh, I have to write this thing and I have to finish it up by Thursday because it comes out on Friday. Um, I like it, generally speaking, I like it if there's a news hook that's fresh that week. And, uh, every once in a while you'll find one that's a little less timely, but I want to be able to react to stuff that people care about. At that moment. It can't be too long. It's not going to be like 2,500 words. It's much more likely to be around 1,000 or a little less or a little more. I do sometimes do some reporting, interview people, but, you know, it can't be something that takes up the entire week because I have all these other responsibilities I have as well. So timeliness is important. Quickness matters. Also, it's a little bit different than the web. Um, one of the amazing things about the web is if you write about a topic and there are people out there who care about that topic, they will find it. Um, they might find it through Google rather than coming to your homepage, but you can, you can write about stuff that's somewhat obscure. And if there, there's a critical mass of people who are passionate about it, that can be a useful story. A newsletter is much more like a magazine in that there are all these people who signed up for my newsletter because they're interested in Fast Company and, um, they agreed to let us into their inbox once a week. But I sort of feel like they all, all the newsletters have to be a fairly broad interest. I'm not going to do an obscure niche that a few people are passionately interested in. It has to be something where there's a decent chance that most of the people who receive it will care enough to want to read it.

That makes a lot of sense because it's like you're delivering that to their inbox versus people searching for it organically. Do you see a big kind of result of people going to the website from the newsletter? Do you see like a pretty good result of that?

That's certainly part of it. If you scroll down past the text I write each week, you will find links to 6 stories from our website. And I also put links into my text and I mean, definitely one of the reasons we have newsletters is to drive traffic to our site, and we have a whole bunch of new newsletters that are entirely links. And so their only purpose is to drive traffic to our site. Mine's a little bit different in that it has this large chunk of original content every week. And, um, you know, we want to forge tight bonds with our readers. And if all you do is is open my newsletter and read it and get value out of it, that's okay. And you know, we may have a sponsorship, in which case that's another way that we turn this thing into a business.

Yeah, very cool. And I know a lot of our audience is like PR professionals, communicators, and technology experts. If you had any advice of how, how you like to be pitched, if someone wants to be in one of your stories in the newsletter, how do you prefer to be pitched? And are there any tips or best practices you can offer?

I'd say there, there are like two key things to keep in mind. And, um, the first one is sometimes people email me and ask me what I cover or what I care about. And even better than asking me that is just going to my author page on fastcompany.com, and you will literally find hundreds of examples of what I care about. I'd say it is a little bit tricky in that I don't have 3 or 4 beats I'm covering. It's pretty diverse. And sometimes if somebody sees I covered quantum computing, they get excited and assume I want lots more quantum computing stories, when in actuality, if I've just written about quantum, I might write about something else for a while before I come back to it.

Of course.

But just, just looking at my stories and kind of the topics and approaches, I think will tell you most of what you need to know. The other thing I ask people to do is Try to envision me looking at my inbox. Literally almost everything in my inbox is pitches because for the most part, I'm not talking to my coworkers via email. We use Microsoft Teams for that. And a very high percentage of these pitches are not ones that are well-targeted to me. And even if you have a great pitch, which some of them are, it's swimming in a sea of other pitches. And so the more direct it is, the better. It's great when the subject line is just extremely clear rather than clever. You have to remember that I'm sitting there going through these pitches, which is a challenge in itself because I have all, you know, I'm actually trying to write stuff and create content rather than respond to pitches, but I go through them as quickly as I can. And if you write this very long pitch, keep in mind I'm not going to read it. Um, people like to send me pitches with things like, like bullet lists. I'm probably not going to go through your bullet lists. A lot of the time they try to make the case for why this is a good story for me. With, like, with all due respect, I'm the expert on what's a good story for me. So you kind of— I will, I will know it if I see it. And I, rather than looking for like fully fleshed out story ideas, I'm looking for wonderful raw ingredients I can turn into a story. So just, just being brief and factual and direct is always helpful. Um, I always, you know, it's always great if the subject line is clear about kind of what the call to action is and the call to action might be you're announcing something in 2 weeks or somebody is coming to town who you're hoping I'll meet with. I get a lot of pitches where the subject line doesn't mention the company.

Mm-hmm.

I think, or it mentions some other company, like, like they're trying to piggyback on news from OpenAI. It's always best to mention the company name, even if it's not that well-known a company. Uh, just the more direct, the better. And I'd say the majority of the, of the great pitches I've ever gotten have been no more than a handful of sentences long. And if it looks like a good story for me and I have questions, I'll ask you. So you don't have to try to answer every possible question in the original pitch, which, which again, kind of makes it too long.

Fantastic summary. I'm obsessed with what you said about, um, be clear, not clever. I think that's really important.

I get, I get a lot of, um, stuff that kind of feels like they're, they're kind of trying to write a Fast Company story or the subject line Sounds like that's your job, like a headline we might, we might write. That's not the right way to intrigue me. I should mention I also get a ton of pitches that, uh, really are not productive at all because they're stuff that I don't need. Um, a lot of pitches are based around funding news, which I will sometimes mention in a story, but that's, that's never like, like the hook for us because, because again, it's, it's, um, It's not so much about getting rich, it's about what that company created. So funding-centric pitches are not that great. I get a lot of pitches about experts I might want to interview in a story. I find my own experts, so I don't really pay attention to those. I get pitches with canned quotes. I never use canned quotes, so that's not so helpful. And in some of those cases, even if if the way something pitched wasn't that helpful, that there might have been another way to pitch it that was better for us.

Now all those people asking you can now listen to this podcast and hear exactly what you're looking for and exactly what not to do. Thank you so much. I love that. Yeah, that's great.

I love how you phrased it as, you know, the ingredients too, because if they provide the right ingredients, you're the master chef. You'll cook up a great story.

And I should say the ingredients are things like interviews with interesting people at the company and A little bit of a head start on reporting on something that will be announced a little bit down the road. Sometimes just getting to try things before they've been released to the public. Those are the sort of things I'm looking for and I figure out how to assemble them into a satisfying meal.

Love it.

Love it. And speaking of interviews, I think that's a good segue to some of the listener questions that we got for you. Um, one of them was what has been your favorite profile that you've written, or perhaps person that you've interviewed for a story. And I know you've, you've done many interviews. So if you could think of either favorite, top 3, um, however you want to answer that question.

One of the interesting things about, about writing for the web is much more than with print. I'm always thinking about the other 3 or 4 stories I have in the works. So a lot of the time, the moment I press publish on a story, I kind of forget about it. And also, there are a lot of great tech stories that have a very short shelf life, and hopefully they're valuable when you publish them, but a year later, they don't have that much value, so they don't stick in my mind. And so I'd say the ones that do stick in my mind are the ones that are about tech history. And if you write about something that happened 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, there's a much better chance that it will still be a worthwhile read a year from now than if you're writing about that week's news. Um, I'd say one that I remember as being a really great experience and something I was pleased with the end results was, um, gosh, 9 years ago I talked to Regis McKenna, who was Apple's original marketing guy. And in fact, pretty much the inventor of tech marketing. And he actually went out and talked to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak about Apple in 1976, when it was still literally a garage startup and nobody had heard about it. And he not only talked to them, he kept notes about the marketing plan he was formulating for them. And he kept those notes. And so, I wrote the story that talked about the experience of figuring out why anybody should care about Apple when it was this tiny company. And I even published the pages from Regis' notebook in the story. And Apple turns 50 next year. I have to remember to re-promote the story because it really will be kind of equally useful 10 years after I published it in a way that's unusual. And These notebook pages had not been seen by anybody and they really are kind of a fascinating look at how Apple became interesting in the first place. And I am proud to have worked on it.

That's so cool. We need to go back and read that. That sounds interesting. Definitely a cool take. Okay, the last listener question for you, Harry, and the most challenging one of all. You're our last podcast of the year and we're coming up on the holidays here. What is one of your favorite holiday traditions that you participate in?

Well, I don't think I have any that are fascinating or unusual. I like anything that involves making or decorating stuff. So decorating cookies is fun. I love to decorate eggs at Easter. Sometimes I carve two jack-o'-lanterns.

Oh wow, overachiever.

Those are the ones I enjoy.

Have any, um, competitions with other people, whether it's like a cookie decorating competition or a jack-o'-lantern competition?

Yes. I mean, sometimes, and they tend to be people like nieces or nephews or cousins, although it's not so much competition as enjoying the community of sitting together and doing this stuff.

That's so nice. I love that. Well, Harry, this has been a great episode. We loved hearing more about your background, what you're covering, and more about Fast Company. We're gonna go read about quantum computing. We're gonna read the Apple marketing story. We're gonna read the newsletter, get all the information. So thank you so much for coming on our podcast. We really appreciate your time.

It was fun. Thanks so much for the opportunity, folks.

Thanks for everyone listening. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of Inside the Media Minds. To learn more about our podcast and hear all of our episodes, please visit us at w2com.com/podcast and follow us on Twitter @MediaMinds. Media Mind Show, and you can subscribe anywhere podcasts are found.