Sarah Jeong
Sarah Jeong | |
---|---|
![]() Jeong speaking at the XOXO festival in 2016 | |
Born | 1988 (age 35–36) South Korea |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley Harvard Law School |
Occupation | Journalist |
Employer | The New York Times |
Notable work | The Internet of Garbage |
Website | sarahjeong |
Sarah Jeong (/dʒɒŋ/; born 1988) is an American journalist specializing in information technology law and other technology-related topics. A member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 2018 to 2019, she was formerly a senior writer for The Verge and a contributing editor for Vice Media's Motherboard website. She is the author of The Internet of Garbage, a non-fiction book about online harassment. In 2022, she rejoined The Verge as deputy features editor.
Early life and education
Jeong was born in South Korea in 1988.[1] When she was three years old, her parents immigrated to the United States as students and brought Sarah with them.[2] Raised as a Southern Baptist, Jeong attended a religious high school near Los Angeles. She later told Willamette Week that the Internet helped her to counter religious dogmas of her upbringing such as creation science, saying, "it's how I unbrainwashed myself".[3]
Jeong studied philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a law degree from Harvard Law School,[3] where she was editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender.[4][1] She received a green card while attending college and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2017.[2]
Career
Jeong writes on law, technology and internet culture.[5][6] She is a former senior writer for The Verge and previously served as a contributing editor for Vice Media's Motherboard website, as well as writing articles for Forbes, The Guardian, and The New York Times.[7][8][9] From 2014 to 2015, Jeong and Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Parker Higgins published an email newsletter called "5 Useful Articles" about copyright law and the Internet.[10][11][12]
In 2015, Jeong covered the Silk Road trial for Forbes.[8][13] That same year, she published The Internet of Garbage, a non-fiction book on the threat of online harassment[14] and responses to it by media and online platforms.[15] The book discusses active moderation and community management strategies to improve online interactions.[16]
In January 2016, Jeong posted a tweet caricaturing Bernie Sanders's supporters as Bernie Bros in response to online attacks against women and Black Lives Matter advocates.[5] A campaign harassing Jeong ensued that lasted for weeks and included rape threats; it drove her to make her Twitter account private and take an unpaid leave from her job at Motherboard.[5][17]
Jeong was a Yale University Poynter Fellow in Journalism in 2016.[14][18] In 2017, she wrote about the Trump travel ban.[2] The same year, Forbes named Jeong in its "30 Under 30" list for media.[1]
In August 2018, Jeong was hired by The New York Times to join its editorial board as lead writer on technology.[18][19] The hiring sparked a strongly negative reaction in conservative media, which highlighted derogatory tweets about white people that Jeong had posted mostly in 2013 and 2014.[20][21][22] Critics characterized her tweets as being racist; Jeong released an apology,[23][24] saying that the tweets were meant to satirize online harassment toward her as a woman of color.[20][25] Editors at The Verge defended Jeong, saying that the tweets had been disingenuously taken out of context[26][24][20] and comparing the episode to the harassment of women during the Gamergate harassment campaign.[24][23]
In August 2019, Jeong left The New York Times's editorial board, becoming an opinion columnist with the newspaper.[27] In January 2022, she rejoined The Verge as the deputy features editor.[28]
Selected publications
- Jeong, Sarah (2017). "Dogecoin". In Maurer, Bill; Swartz, Lana (eds.). Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/10489.003.0009. ISBN 978-0-262-33834-9.
See also
References
- ^ a b c Inverso, Emily; Vinton, Kate; Berg, Madeline (eds.). "Sarah Jeong". 30 Under 30 – Media (2017). Forbes. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ a b c Lind, Dara (July 5, 2017). "A legal journalist on the 'surreal' experience of becoming a US citizen under Trump". Vox. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
- ^ a b Shepherd, Katie (April 3, 2019). "Sarah Jeong Is Watching the Web From Portland. She Sees a Pile of Garbage". Willamette Week. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
- ^ "The New York Times Editorial Board". The New York Times. March 2018. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ a b c Greenberg, Andy (September 19, 2016). "Inside Google's Justice League and its AI-powered war on trolls". Wired. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
- ^ Newitz, Annalee (January 15, 2016). "How Twitter quietly banned hate speech last year". Ars Technica. Retrieved February 26, 2017.
- ^ "Sarah Jeong". The Guardian. Retrieved September 9, 2016.
- ^ a b "TODAY: Legal reporter Sarah Jeong to discuss 'How to Cover a Futuristic Cybercrime Trial'". YaleNews. Yale University. October 29, 2015.
- ^ Jeong, Sarah (January 17, 2017). "Should We Be Able to Reclaim a Racist Insult — as a Registered Trademark?". The New York Times Magazine.
- ^ Sankin, Aaron (December 21, 2014). "Why newsletters are the future of online media - The Kernel". The Kernel.[dead link]
- ^ Kulwin, Noah (September 8, 2014). "The Best Newsletters on the Web, the Man Behind Alibaba and More Morning #Mustreads". Recode. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
- ^ Schultz, Colin (June 19, 2014). "'Sherlock Holmes' Is Now Officially Off Copyright and Open for Business". Smithsonian. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
- ^ Wood, Molly (February 5, 2015). "Marketplace Tech for Thursday, February 5, 2015". Marketplace Tech (podcast). Minnesota Public Radio. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ a b "'Gamergate' is topic of journalist's talk". YaleNews. Yale University. February 5, 2019.
- ^ Newitz, Annalee (June 23, 2016). "What if we treated online harassment the same way we treat spam?". Ars Technica. Retrieved August 6, 2018.
- ^ Stone, Maddie (September 1, 2015). "Fantastic Science and Tech Books that Will Reboot Your Brain for Fall". Gizmodo. Retrieved August 3, 2018.
- ^ "Bernie Sanders supporters get a bad reputation online". BBC News. January 28, 2016. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ a b "Sarah Jeong Joins The Times's Editorial Board". The New York Times Company. August 1, 2018.
- ^ Patel, Nilay (August 28, 2018). "The Internet of Garbage by Sarah Jeong". The Verge. (Introduction). Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ a b c Wolfson, Sam (August 3, 2018). "New York Times racism row: how Twitter comes back to haunt you". The Guardian. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ "NY Times stands by new hire Sarah Jeong over Twitter furor". Associated Press News. August 2, 2018. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ "Sarah Jeong: NY Times stands by 'racist tweets' reporter". BBC News. August 2, 2018. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ a b Uberti, David (August 3, 2018). "Sarah Jeong, The New York Times, and the Gamergate School of Journalism". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ a b c Sharman, Jon (August 3, 2018). "Technology journalist who tweeted 'cancel white people' is victim of 'dishonest' trolls, claims employer". The Independent. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ Rosenberg, Eli; Logan, Erin B. (August 3, 2018). "An Asian American woman's tweets ignite a debate: Is it okay to make fun of white people online?". The Washington Post.
- ^ Kludt, Tom (August 3, 2018). "New York Times stands by new hire amid Twitter backlash". CNN Business. Retrieved September 14, 2022.
- ^ Byrnes, Jesse (September 28, 2019). "Sarah Jeong out at New York Times editorial board". The Hill. Retrieved September 29, 2019.
- ^ Orr, Amani (January 4, 2022). "Zoë Schiffer and Sarah Jeong rejoin The Verge". The Verge. Retrieved August 25, 2024.
Further reading
- Chung, Nicole (July 23, 2015). "An Interview with Sarah Jeong, Author of The Internet of Garbage". The Toast.
- Jeong, Sarah (December 12, 2023). "Goodbye to all that harassment". The Verge.
- "The Internet of Garbage With Sarah Jeong" (video). Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. October 27, 2015.
External links
Media related to Sarah Jeong at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Sarah Jeong at Wikiquote
- Official website
- 1988 births
- Living people
- American women journalists
- Harvard Law School alumni
- South Korean emigrants to the United States
- The Verge
- University of California, Berkeley alumni
- Naturalized citizens of the United States
- The New York Times people
- American technology journalists
- American writers of Korean descent
- 21st-century American women