GeekWire gets us
The Seattle tech site shows off the city
It’s not as game-changing as Amazon choosing Pittsburgh for its second headquarters, but another Seattle organization has set up shop in Pittsburgh — and nobody can complain about any possible downsides.
The editors of GeekWire, a Seattlebased website that covers technology news and culture, took a page from Amazon’s playbook last year. They put out their own little Request for Proposals: Which city in North America would like to host their “HQ2” for a month? The benefits: the three-person team would be “embedding itself in a carefully selected community to report on its tech scene and assess its chances to become the next great North American tech city.” Who could not want that? In December, Pittsburgh emerged the winner, beating out the other contestants in the Final Four (Raleigh, N.C.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Denver, Colo.). Carnegie Mellon University submitted the persuasive bid, just one more example of the institution’s profile in the tech world, and an outpouring of readers cast votes for the (former) Steel City.
Many national publications have dispatched intrepid reporters to write about “the new Pittsburgh,” barely containing their surprise that civilization exists in what they expected to be a hellish post-industrial landscape. The team at GeekWire arrived with an eager and upbeat attitude, a reflection of the ethos of the site — to cover technology with the warm sensibility of the Pacific Northwest, rather than the ruthless logic of Silicon Valley. Judging by the nearly 40 stories the rotating cast of GeekWirettes have posted so far, Pittsburghers are lucky to have them in our midst. They’re judging the place on its merits and potential, telling stories about the way people are living as much as the cool stuff that people are building.
A random sampling of headlines: “What Makes Pittsburgh Different as an Edtech hub? Collaboration — and Mister Rogers.” “Can Pittsburgh Land Amazon’s HQ2? Grading Steel City’s Strengths, Drawbacks and Secret Weapons.” “We Rode in Uber’s Self-Driving Car, and Now We’re Less Confident in the Future of Autonomous Vehicles.”
That last headline indicates that GeekWire is happy to report unhappy news, too. One piece took a critical look at how the culture of Seattle has changed for the worse as Amazon and other tech companies dropped an enormous wealth bomb in the once-dowdy seaport city. Another was frank about the bad first impression the writer had upon arriving in a deserted Pittsburgh airport on a Saturday night, and the empty spaces throughout the city — though he did turn the theme around to Pittsburgh’s capacity to absorb growth. An interview with Mayor Bill Peduto did not shy away from the tensions with Uber, after the initial glow of its embrace.
The first rule of writing for a digital audience is that the content must have utility. GeekWire complied right away — with a guide to the Pittsburgh accent ( Giant Eagle — a grocery store chain), using the expert advice of CMU linguistics professor Barbara Johnstone. Taking a step back from gizmos, there was a nice piece about how Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy influenced Bill Gates’. Perhaps the least-expected article to emerge was GeekWire cofounder Todd Bishop’s visit to Downtown’s Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, the 1872 English Gothic structure: “This Church Has Faith in Amazon: Tech Giant’s HQ2 Could Help ‘Make Pittsburgh Alive Again.’”
There’s more than two weeks left in February. Pay a visit to GeekWire.com and get the gift that Scottish poet Robert Burns recommended: “To see ourselves as others see us.”