David Gilbert is a reporter at WIRED covering online extremism and disinformation.
In this episode of Coffee with a Journalist, host Beck Bamberger is joined by David Gilbert, a reporter from Wired, live from Ireland. David specializes in covering the intricate world of online extremism and disinformation, focusing on how political movements utilize these tactics to influence society.
Follow David on his socials below:
Linkedin: David Gilbert
Bsky: @davidgilbert.bsky.social
Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:
[0:02:40] BB: Perfect. Well, we'll take it. David, you've had quite the career, as we know, you used to be at VICE, you were at International Business Times, you were now at WIRED, you've been there since 2023. This is quite the beat that you cover. Before we get into that, I like to ask everybody, what would you say is the coverage of WIRED today?
[0:03:02] DG: Oh, today. Well, yeah, it's interesting, because you mentioned WIRED to people or I mentioned WIRED to people and they kind have a vague idea that it's this tech magazine, which it was for so many years and still is. It's still a magazine. Its main coverage area has been Silicon Valley and smartphones and laptops and the technology behind those stuff. Yeah. for years, it was like that. But I think I joined in 2023 as part of what was a new politics team, because the editor here, Katie Drummond, she previously worked with her at VICE and she came over one of her stipulations for joining was that she wanted to create a politics team, because she felt that technology and politics had become so intertwined that it was crazy for a publication like WIRED not to have a politics team.
Now, our coverage is obviously on my beat, it's the kind of political side, but even on the business and enterprise side, all of the coverage is around companies and individuals who are people like Mark Zuckerberg, people like Elon Musk who are making such a massive impact on US society at large, rather than just in Silicon Valley and how those impacts are playing out and impacting people's lives.
It's a pretty broad coverage, but I suppose when I joined initiatives, a bit skeptical, because I was wondering how would my beat fit in with WIRED coverage, because typically, WIRED didn't cover the kind of things that I was writing about, but it –
[0:04:42] BB: But here you are.
[0:04:43] DG: It makes sense now.
[0:04:44] BB: Yeah, it does.
[0:04:45] DG: 14 months later. Yeah, that's kind of how WIRED is covering these days.
[0:04:52] BB: Now, let's get a little bit more into your beat. So, you're alluding to the politics and the people, the players who are making it go round and it's getting intertwined ever more in politics, but on your LinkedIn and as we just talked about online extremism and disinformation. I can only imagine the pitches you get, David, because maybe you're not getting pitches of anybody who wants to say like, “Hey, guess what? I have a client in extremism.” No, but man, how do you feel about your coverage beat?
[0:05:22] DG: It depends on what time of day it is and whether I've had a beer or not.
[0:05:26] BB: Yeah.
[0:05:28] DG: Mostly – yeah. Mostly, like it's an absolutely fascinating beat to cover. I feel privileged to be able to write about is, I suppose I began back when I was working with the International Business Times in the UK in London, starting to cover disinformation and that was 2013, 2014 time. Over a decade ago, and it was very early days in terms of what was happening. I was also covering the hacktivist movement, anonymous and stuff like that. That was where it all started. then as you say, I moved to VICE and there I really began to focus on the impact that disinformation was having on countries outside of the US, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and how Facebook in particular was being weaponized to have negative impacts in those countries.
That beat then kind of more – I still cover a lot of that stuff. But I also started investigating online conspiracies, particularly QAnon for a number of years as one of my main focuses and more broadly kind of online conspiracies. That then paved way for looking at more, even more extreme online communities, including online militias, how they were organizing online and kind of more generally the far-right white power movement, stuff like that online. That's where I am now and how most recently, I suppose is how those communities have interacted or moved to become part of the mainstream political system in the US. How we've seen really extreme ideas become mainstream, thanks as a result of the Trump and the GOP more generally shifting to the right.
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[0:07:19] BB: If we may go into your inbox then, are you getting any viable pitches that are useful to you? I would imagine it would be from thought leaders and experts in certain domains.
[0:07:30] DG: No.
[0:07:32] BB: No.
[0:07:32] DG: The idea of getting a pitch from a thought leader just fills me cold, because if someone has to describe themselves as a thought leader, I feel that they've kind of missed the boat if I don't know that they are a thought leader. I suppose there are people who I would rely on to send me pitches and typically they will avoid my inbox more so and guess me on WhatsApp or Signal. These would be researchers and not researchers, but like, I suppose the publicists for researchers and research groups who I've worked with for years and kind of understand what I would be interested in covering and the types of content that WIRED would cover.
Now, that doesn't mean to say that they still don't send stuff that makes absolutely no sense for coverage, because I guess they're doing their jobs. But yeah, the idea of someone sending a cold email with thoughts from a thought leader on extremism, it just really doesn't work.
[0:08:40] BB: Is it safe to say you don't want pitches?
[0:08:43] DG: Oh, no. I love getting pitches.
[0:08:45] BB: Okay. Okay, tell us more though, let's talk about the viable ones.
[0:08:50] DG: I suppose the viable ones are they have to have new information. The idea of sending an email with just someone suddenly had a thought about extremism or disinformation and wanted to share it. Fine, but that's not a news story. I very much focused on news. I do some longer form features as well, but that's not something I would typically look for pitches on. I'm looking for news and specifically news that no one else is going to guess. Obviously, exclusives are better, harder and harder to come by those though, because people want as much coverage as they can guess. But no pitches with access to information before publication, so embargoed reports, but also not just a report, but also access to the authors of the report.
If it is not going to be an exclusive that I would be able to speak to the researcher, get some different quotes than the ones that are in the press release or the report that's going out. Also, access, if possible, to the actual data that they gathered to compile their report, whether that's TikTok videos spreading anti-Semitic hate or a list of Twitter accounts that are part of a far-right network, so that I can then verify that information for myself. If that's all there and that's it's a new and interesting topic, then I'm more than happy to get those pitches via email and work with the publicist to craft something that's different and unique to what everyone else would be writing.
[0:22:42] BB: That’s the way it is, Dave. That's what we're here for. Okay, David, I have a quick rapid-fire question set and then we can wrap it up. Are you ready?
[0:22:53] DG: Hang on.
[0:22:54] BB: Great. Video or phone interview?
[0:22:58] DG: Sorry, I know this meant to be rapid. Video.
[0:23:02] BB: Video. Okay. Video. Bullet points or paragraphs in a pitch?
[0:23:05] DG: Bullet points.
[0:23:07] BB: Short or long pitches?
[0:23:08] DG: Short.
[0:23:10] BB: Short. How short, though?
[0:23:13] DG: Four sentences.
[0:23:14] BB: Four sentences. That's the magic number. Okay. I just was on my own webinar showing the example pitches that worked and four is the magic number. Okay. Images attached or a drop box zip file?
[0:23:26] DG: Oh, images attached.
[0:23:28] BB: Always. Always. Email or a DM of some sort on LinkedIn or wherever you're getting a DM.
[0:23:35] DG: Probably a DM. Again, it depends on the pitch, but if I know the person, the DM.
[0:23:42] BB: Okay. I don't hear that answer too much. By the way, I need some coffee. I didn't get my coffee. Okay. One follow-up or multiple?
[0:23:50] DG: Oh. None.
[0:23:52] BB: None. Zero. Yeah.
[0:23:54] DG: No. No. Look, one follow-up is fine.
[0:23:57] BB: Okay. Okay. Okay. Direct or creative subject lines.
[0:24:02] DG: Direct.
[0:24:03] BB: Direct. The best. Press releases, or media kits for you going, or?
[0:24:09] DG: Neither.
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