The Information is Launching a Book Club. Here’s Why

If you missed them, I hope you can kick off the week by digging into some of last week’s awesome feature stories.

There was Tom’s profile and interview with Hollywood producer and investor Peter Chernin, who rarely speaks on the record to reporters and had a lot to say. Kate’s article on how Marc Andreesen is personally funding smaller investors to boost dealflow hits basically every major trend in venture capital at the moment.

And Yunan’s profile of Kuaishou—a company worth nearly $30 billion that you probably haven’t heard of—is also an important story. With the hottest new social app (TikTok) owned by a Chinese company (ByteDance), there’s never been a more important time to understand China tech trends.

And for a limited-time, we are very excited to offer you an amazing deal. For $315 off, you can now get full access to The Information and Bloomberg.com for just $499.

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Feeds vs. Brains

Since I started The Information, I’ve wanted to launch a book club for our subscribers. But we’ve been busy. It had to wait.

This week, however, as four fascinating books about tech and the Bay Area piled up on my desk, I knew it was time. Starting this month, The Information will choose a book a month as our official Book Club selection. We’ll host a live video Q&A and discuss over video conference—often with the author—and also discuss the work over Slack. Our team will also publish reviews of the books to our site to help those short on reading time.

We’ll announce the new books in this newsletter and announce live video Q&As with authors in our events section below and via email. There’s nothing more subscribers have to do to sign up.

Beyond the surfeit of good options, there’s another reason we’re starting this now, and it has to do with a Twitter debate over why tech journalists and tech leaders are so at odds. Sparked by some back and forth over Recode’s coverage of the coronavirus, the debate has generated a slew of think-blog posts on the testy relationship between tech journalists and the people they cover.

I agreed with investor and scribe Hunter Walk’s contribution to the debate. He argued that everything would be more civil if more journalists understood business and more business executives understood journalism.

But it’s not the war between investor and journalism tribes on Twitter that really concerns me. I am more worried about the fact we’re all embroiled in our own wars in our own filter bubbles. And we’re rarely paying attention to the bigger picture and to others’ views.

I hope our book club is a chance to get out of our feeds and into our brains.

As for our selections, we’ll skew towards new books on business and/or tech—but not exclusively. I’m also keen to include books from authors outside the Bay Area and the U.S.

For our first book, however, we’re sticking close to Silicon Valley with “Facebook: The Inside Story” by Steven Levy.

I chose this book, which goes on sale Tuesday, for a very simple reason. Its author Steven Levy, who reported it over three years, is one of the best writers about tech, period. His access—through the company and around it—is impressive. And he’s willing to join subscribers next Thursday live to discuss the book and answer your questions.

Now, I don’t expect that you will read all 592 pages of what is billed as the company’s “definitive history” by then. But we’ll start the conversation with Steven and keep it going in Slack and elsewhere. Sign up to join Thursday’s conversation here.

As for future selections, send your suggestions to [email protected]. Authors, we’d love to hear from you too.

Oh, and those other books on my desk (or in the mail) I’m itching to read.

• Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America by Conor Dougherty
• No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier
• Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber by Susan Fowler

Join Our Team

We’re constantly hiring amazing people in San Francisco and beyond. Here are some of our open roles. We hope to hear from you.

• Senior Editors
• Full-Stack Engineer
• Reporter, Apple
• Reporter, Fintech/Crypto
• Head of Communications
• Summer Reporting Intern

The Information 2020 Event Calendar

Check back here weekly as we add new events. By popular request, we’ll be hosting video Q&As with our reporters and speakers every week. Email [email protected] to learn about sponsorship opportunities.

February 26: Future of Social (San Francisco)

February 27: Live Q&A with Steven Levy, author “Facebook: The Inside Story”

May 12: WTF Summit: Women in Tech, Media and Finance (New York)

June 25: The Information’s 4th Annual Autonomous Vehicle Summit (San Francisco)

This Week's The Information Articles.

• The Information’s Turnover List by The Information Staff
• How Coronavirus Is Affecting Big Tech Firms by Wayne Ma, Juro Osawa and Yunan Zhang
• The People With Power on Google's Policy Team by Ashley Gold
• What I Learned From My Mother-in-Law’s Cable Bill—and Trying YouTube TV by Martin Peers
• Peter Chernin’s Unexpectedly Successful Third Act by Tom Dotan
• Marc Andreessen’s Secret Weapon for Finding Startup Investments by Kate Clark
• Meet ByteDance’s Biggest Homegrown Rival by Yunan Zhang
• The Information’s 411—Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tack by Tom Dotan