Weekend Welcomes Two New Reporters: Josh Koehn and Paris Martineau
We’re expanding our reporting on power and politics, as well as our coverage of technology’s impact on children, teens and young adults.
Nothing livens up a weekend like change, and I’m very pleased to tell you about some changes here at Weekend, The Information’s weekly magazine section: We’ve added two new reporters, Josh Koehn and Paris Martineau.
Josh joins us from The San Francisco Standard to cover tech’s power and influence in San Francisco and the Bay Area—how the technorati shape the region and vice versa. And at a moment when national politics has again sparked an extraordinary amount of drama and antipathy among Silicon Valley moguls, Josh will also explore how the tech elite extend their influence across the U.S.
Josh is a dogged reporter and very familiar with San Francisco’s corridors of power. Last month, for instance, he showed how venture capitalist and mayoral hopeful Mark Farrell ran what amounted to a slush fund for lavish spending during an earlier stint in city government. Josh can dig deep, as he demonstrated in this investigation into sexual assault allegations against a rising political star, and he has delivered definitive profiles on figures including Gary Tan, Chris Larsen and San Francisco Mayor London Breed. He has been honing these skills for some time: For a start, he reported for the Gilroy Dispatch in Gilroy, Calif., which purports to be the garlic capital of the world. There, Josh wrote about how the city’s annual Miss Gilroy Garlic Festival Queen had, in fact, cheated in a contest against him. “She was a fraud and deserved to be exposed,” Josh said. “That was the beginning of my muckraking career.”
The full Weekend team (from left): reporters Julia Black and Josh Koehn; The Information's Features Editor Nick Wingfield and Editor in Chief Jessica Lessin; Weekend editor Abe Brown; reporter Paris Martineau; and art director Clark Miller, who made this illustration.
Like Josh, Paris has an eye for an exposé. She’s been with The Information since 2020, and in that time, she has penned many memorable features, including pieces on BuzzFeed, the microdosing CEO of an “Uber for Nurses” and Patreon. Her work has consistently shown sharp attention to the level of detail and memorable characters that underpin all of Weekend’s best work. “Journalism at its core is about holding the powerful to account,” Paris said. “This is especially true when covering founders who are often empowered to act with impunity and chase growth at all cost.”
Paris joins Weekend to cover the youth tech beat, reporting on technology made for children and young people, as well as technology that isn’t intended specifically for them but winds up in their hands nonetheless—sometimes with tragic consequences.
That beat has magnified in relevance in just the last couple of weeks, and it seems likely to keep increasing in scope. Policy proposals such as smartphone bans, along with the contributions of figures including Jonathan Haidt, bestselling author of “The Anxious Generation,” are highlighting the issues surrounding youth and technology—and that positions this beat at an intriguing nexus of technological, cultural and political forces. It builds on our existing coverage of this area, like our January Big Read on Snap and Paris’ debut Weekend Big Read, which focused on the former asbestos lawyer who is pioneering a novel litigation strategy against social media companies.
With Josh and Paris, we’re amplifying Weekend’s raison d’être: to chronicle the powers, players and cultural forces that define Silicon Valley and technology, as well as media and finance.