Farhad Manjoo

Farhad Manjoo
Farhad Manjoo
Manjoo in 2008
Born1978 (age 45–46)
South Africa
OccupationJournalist, author
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
EducationCornell University

Farhad Manjoo (born 1978) is an American journalist. Manjoo was a staff writer for Slate magazine from 2008 to September 2013, when they left to join The Wall Street Journal.[1] In January 2014, they joined The New York Times, replacing David Pogue as the technology columnist.[2] Manjoo became an opinion columnist at the paper in 2018.[3] They have also been a contributor to National Public Radio since 2009.[4]

Early life and education

Manjoo was born in South Africa in 1978 to a family with ancestral roots in India. The family left South Africa when Manjoo was eight years old,[5] and moved to Southern California.[1] Manjoo graduated from Cornell University in 2000. As an undergraduate, Manjoo served as writer and editor-in-chief of The Cornell Daily Sun student newspaper.[1]

They were self-described in The New York Times as a "stereotypical, cisgender, middle-aged suburban dad," and said in 2019 that they prefer to be referred to with singular they pronouns.[6] Manjoo publicly disclosed their struggle with esophageal achalasia in 2019.[7]

Career

Manjoo wrote for Wired News before taking a staff position at Salon.com. In July 2008, they accepted a job at Slate magazine writing a twice-weekly technology column. In September 2013, they joined The Wall Street Journal as a technology columnist;[1] their final column for Slate, urging men to wear makeup, was published on September 20.[8] They moved to The New York Times in 2014, and left in 2023.

Manjoo has written about technology, new media,[9] politics,[10] and controversies in journalism.[11]

They are the author of the book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.[12][13][14]

They shared the 2018 Gerald Loeb Award for Breaking News for the story "Ouster at Uber."[15]

In March 2018, they published a column in the Times about a personal experiment in getting most of their news from print sources for two months.[16] The piece drew criticism from the Columbia Journalism Review[17] and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism[18] for the article's assertion Manjoo had "unplugged from Twitter" for this period when in fact they continued to use the social media service every day. Manjoo felt the piece was sufficiently clear that they made exceptions to their "unplugged" policy, and The New York Times stood by the piece.[17] WNYC's On the Media removed a segment with Manjoo discussing the experiment.[19][20]

In April 2021, their column "Let's Quit Fetishizing the Single-Family Home" was used for the Abitur high school leaving exams in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.[21][22]

Their return to Slate was published on the 26th of April 2024, with the first of r/Farhad, an occasional column about interesting things they've read on Reddit.

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Manjoo Joins Wall Street Journal as Technology Columnist". The Wall Street Journal. September 4, 2013.
  2. ^ Cohen, Noam (January 16, 2014). "The Times Hires a Technology Columnist". The New York Times.
  3. ^ "Farhad Manjoo - the New York Times". The New York Times.
  4. ^ "Farhad Manjoo Talks You Into Joining Facebook", National Public Radio, February 17, 2009.
  5. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (February 15, 2013). Twitter
  6. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (July 10, 2019). "Call Me 'They'". The New York Times. Retrieved July 11, 2019.
  7. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (December 11, 2019). "America's Public Restrooms Are Kind of Great Now". The New York Times. Retrieved August 10, 2022.
  8. ^ Farhad Manjoo (September 20, 2013). "Men Should Wear Makeup". Slate.com.
  9. ^ Mitchell, Dan. "The Thin Skin of Apple Fans", The New York Times, March 22, 2008.
  10. ^ Farhad Manjoo. "Rumors Reasons", The New York Times, March 16, 2008.
  11. ^ Kristoff, Nicholas D. "The Daily Me", The New York Times, March 18, 2009.
  12. ^ Hesse, Monica. "Truth: Can You Handle It?", The Washington Post, April 27, 2008.
  13. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (2008). True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-fact Society. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-05010-1
  14. ^ Hluchy, Patricia. "Redefining truth in a 'post-fact society'", Toronto Star, April 20, 2008.
  15. ^ "UCLA Anderson School of Management Announces 2018 Gerald Loeb Award Winners". PR Newswire. June 25, 2018. Retrieved January 31, 2019.
  16. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (7 March 2018). "For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here's What I Learned". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  17. ^ a b Mitchell, Dan (9 March 2018). "The Times tech columnist 'unplugged' from the internet. Except he didn't". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  18. ^ Benton, Joshua (12 March 2018). "The ❤️ of the matter: Here are too many words about Farhad Manjoo's Twitter habits (and some cool charts)". NiemanLab. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  19. ^ "Like We Used To Do". On the Media. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  20. ^ "Did Farhad "Unplug"?". On the Media. 13 March 2018. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  21. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (5 February 2020). "Opinion | Let's Quit Fetishizing the Single-Family Home". The New York Times.
  22. ^ Siegle, Lisa. "Abiturienten aus NRW pöbeln gegen Autor der New York Times: "Bro, du hast ab sofort NRW-Verbot"". ruhr24.de. Retrieved 25 April 2021.
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