Transcript
John Scott-Railton (0:00)
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Dhruv Mahatra (0:15)
Immediately after getting hired, they gutted the entire desk and fired everyone on it except for me. That was my first time in the newsroom. I didn't know how to write a story, record a story or do anything. All I knew how to do was like, tech stuff.
John Scott-Railton (0:31)
Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founding company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to the best comments. And they get early access to our interview series too. Like this episode. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. Dhruv Maratra is my guest this week. He does data journalism and investigations at Bloomberg. Kind of a vague title. You'll learn more specifics in the interview itself. He was previously at Wired, where you're probably familiar with with quite a bit of his work. There's IMSI catchers at the DNC using mobile phone location data to track people going to Epstein Island. We've also worked on stories together, also about location data, actually, and the apps being used or hijacked to get your location information. I've really admired Drew's work from afar for years, really. And then of course, I was very happy to get the chance to work with him in some collaborations at Wired, and really, really happy to have this conversation as well. We run through his career, which I think is very interesting because he didn't start as a journalist. He started much more as a technologist who then moved into journalism. And I think that's a very difficult thing because as you hear me say, and as the conversation goes on, there are lots of people who are good at the tech, but it's exceptionally rare to find somebody who can do both the tech and the journalism part. And I don't just mean picking up the phone. Anybody can do that. I mean understanding what makes a good, interesting and potentially impactful story. In the show notes, there'll be links to some of Drew's previous work. As you'll hear when the time of this recording, he was on paternity leave, so he hadn't actually done all that much in Bloomberg yet. But then he's going to be going Back. He's done some stuff on Epstein emails that they managed to get hold of. But without any further ado, I really hope you enjoy the conversation. Thank you for joining us. I'm going to jump straight into questions because as I was just telling you, I've already explained to listeners sort of who you are and your work and that sort of thing. But if we can go sort of way back and I mean, even before journalism, really, like, I'm really, really curious because I don't know anything about this part of your history. Where does sort of the technological background start for you? Like even before journalism?
