{"id":25801,"date":"2025-04-28T18:50:22","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T18:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/?p=25801&post_type=story"},"modified":"2025-05-30T20:49:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T20:49:05","slug":"plugged-in","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/plugged-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Plugged In"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Laura Stevens \u201904 <\/strong>moved to New York City barely a year ago, the pace didn\u2019t faze her. Stevens had kept in step with the perpetually moving world of technology<\/a> as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal <\/cite> and as an editor for The Washington Post <\/cite>before being named deputy technology editor for The New York Times<\/cite>. The pursuit began after she graduated from UCF in 2004 and has taken her to stops in Arkansas, Germany, Atlanta and \u2014 for seven years prior to moving to New York \u2014 the heartbeat of technology: Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis kind of news never stops,\u201d says Stevens, a journalism<\/a> alum. Every day, her reporting teams dig into rumors about tech before they become news \u2014 the on-again, off-again ban of TikTok, for example. \u201cWe have a huge responsibility to know what\u2019s happening behind the scenes because when technology changes, it affects all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why she keeps her eyes and ears on leads about social platforms, streaming services, e-commerce, bots, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a>. For a few minutes, she pauses long enough to tell us about the most significant tech news she sees on the horizon, and the path from UCF to NYC she\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n

“We have a huge responsibility to know what’s happening behind the scenes because when technology changes, it affects all of us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Wanting to Be a Meteorologist<\/h2>\n

Before going to UCF, I thought a career in meteorology would be\u00a0interesting.\u00a0Then\u00a0I\u00a0found out\u00a0about the\u00a0Calculus\u00a0III <\/em> requirement.\u00a0Around that time,\u00a0I\u00a0heard a reporter from The Wall Street Journal <\/em>at a conference say,\u00a0\u201cBusiness\u00a0reporting\u00a0is the most challenging type of journalism\u00a0because you have to take something dry and make it interesting.\u201d I\u2019ve always liked challenges, so that sounded attractive.\u00a0The challenges still motivate me.<\/p>\n

On How She Created a Minor in Tourism Journalism at UCF<\/h2>\n

Journalism majors\u00a0were allowed to\u00a0develop their own specialties. Being in Orlando<\/a>, I thought the business side of\u00a0hospitality\u00a0would\u00a0make sense\u00a0as a minor.\u00a0When I graduated,\u00a0we were\u00a0coming\u00a0out of the dotcom bust and\u00a0it looked like new technology was going\u00a0to change our lives.\u00a0That\u2019s where my career path\u00a0\u2014 and my curiosity \u2014\u00a0led\u00a0me.<\/p>\n

On the Biggest Tech Questions That Loom Over Everyone<\/h2>\n

We\u2019re reporters and editors, but we\u2019re also consumers, so we have the same concerns about technology as everyone else. The big ones are, \u201cHow is my personal information being used?\u201d and \u201cWill AI kill us?\u201d I\u2019ve posed various forms of the AI question to tech leaders and their range of perspectives, good and bad, is fascinating. At the end of the day, let\u2019s just say I\u2019m hopeful about the future. That said, it\u2019s critical that we keep asking about AI. Will it take jobs? How do you know when to trust it? What about the proliferation of deep fakes? To me, it\u2019s an exciting challenge to find the truth.<\/p>\n

On the Importance of Reporters on the Tech Beat<\/h2>\n

We have journalists in time zones around the world covering specific topics of interest \u2014 personal technology, education and tech, X (formerly known as Twitter) and AI. When I lived on the West Coast, I\u2019d be up at 5 a.m. to get a jump on whatever was happening on the East Coast and across the Atlantic. Now that I\u2019m in New York, there\u2019s still no such thing as a typical day. Anything can happen at any hour of the day or night. That\u2019s what drives us as reporters: being curious and never assuming there\u2019s such a thing as the status quo.<\/p>\n

On Her Personal Investigation of Amazon in its Early Days<\/h2>\n

I helped cover Amazon during the company\u2019s earliest ambitions to compete with UPS and FedEx as a delivery service. As part of my reporting, I\u2019d test Amazon\u2019s product offerings. One time, out of curiosity, I ordered a Dead Sea salt mask. When it arrived, I looked at the ingredients and saw it was made with corn starch, which made me look closer at some of the quality issues at Amazon, including the possibility of counterfeit products and other deeper investigative targets. Amazon has greatly improved its quality control methods since then.<\/p>\n

On the Most Important People She’s Covered<\/h2>\n

We talk with senior executives at the world\u2019s biggest tech companies \u2014 Jeff Bezos among them. But the people who leave the biggest impression are not among the rich and famous. My first job out of college was with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette<\/em>, where I investigated the fallout from shale fracking on smaller communities. People invited me into their homes where I saw the effects on everyday lives, including faucets catching on fire. The story became a voice for those people. I\u2019ve never forgotten.<\/p>\n

On Where Technology Will Take Us Next<\/h2>\n

We can plan stories, but we can\u2019t predict them. In January 2020 we thought the biggest story of the year would be tech regulation \u2014 and two months later the world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We didn\u2019t see it coming when Elon Musk announced his plan to buy Twitter. So at the moment we\u2019re following. what happens next with TikTok and how AI will impact our everyday lives. The only prediction I can make is that more surprises in technology are coming and we\u2019ll be right there as they come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":25844,"template":"","categories":[999],"tags":[287,40,1452],"class_list":["post-25801","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumknights","tag-college-of-sciences","tag-journalism","tag-ucf-alumni","issues-spring-2025"],"yoast_head":"\nUCF Alum Shares What It's Like Being a Tech Editor<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As an editor for one of the world\u2019s largest newspapers, Laura Stevens '04 covers the evolving field of technology.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/pegasus\/plugged-in\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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