The Information Hires Reporters to Cover Apple and Musk’s Companies

The Information is pleased to announce the addition of two new reporters to The Information’s newsroom—and the extended fellowship of a third reporter who is already here.

Aaron Tilley is returning to The Information as a reporter after more than five years at The Wall Street Journal to cover Apple at one of the most fascinating junctures in the company’s history. Aaron is a familiar (and much-respected) face to many of us in the newsroom, having written a string of exceptional stories during an earlier stint here. In 2019, he wrote a memorable story about the departure from Apple of Jony Ive, the company’s celebrated design chief, after staking out a location in Pacific Heights where Ive was said to have a private design studio. He wrote a colorful profile of Apple services chief Eddy Cue’s at a time when the company was trying to get its act together in services. And he and Kevin wrote the definitive early story about how Apple fumbled its Siri personal assistant.

At the Journal, Aaron profiled Microsoft’s Brad Smith as the company was seeking regulatory approval of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and he chronicled Apple’s “kiss of death”—its tendency to swipe ideas from aspiring partners. He also scooped Apple’s plans for a data center chip, and got an exclusive interview with a former Apple executive that the company fired for being in an offcolor TikTok video.

Aaron hails from the Pacific northwest and is a graduate of the University of Washington. He and his wife live in Oakland, Calif. He will start in San Francisco on May 5.

Evan Robinson-Johnson is joining The Information to cover Tesla, SpaceX and other Elon Musk businesses in our New York bureau. Evan comes to us from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was a roving tech and business investigations reporter. Last year, he was part of a team that won a Polk award, along with ProPublica, for a joint 2023 investigation into a maker of dangerous CPAP machines for people with sleep apnea. After the story published, the CPAP maker reached an agreement with the federal government to stop selling its machines in the U.S. The story was also a finalist for a Goldsmith award.

For coverage of Nippon Steel’s proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel, Evan and his colleagues won a 2023 SABEW award in the breaking news category. Last year, Evan also nabbed a scoop closer to his future beat at The Information when he broke a story about a SpaceX supplier in Pittsburgh that was shutting down. Before the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he worked as an intern and then as a health and education reporter for the Jackson Hole News & Guide in Wyoming, where he braved contentious school board meetings in the midst of Covid-19 mask mandate debates.

Evan has both bachelors and masters degrees in journalism from Northwestern University. He’s in the process of relocating to New York from Pittsburgh. He will start April 14. (Oh, he’s also an outstanding photographer and plays the trumpet.)

Rocket Drew, who has been The Information’s first fellow sponsored by the Tarbell Fellowship for AI Journalism, is staying on for another year under the same program. Since August, Rocket has contributed to our AI and Pro coverage, including the Generative AI Takeover and Enterprise Software Takeover lists, and regularly writes for AI Agenda and other newsletters. He will continue to focus on AI, particularly robotics, in his extended fellowship starting in April.