Laura Sydell
Laura Sydell fell in love with the intimate storytelling qualities of radio, which combined her passion for theatre and writing with her addiction to news. Over her career she has covered politics, arts, media, religion, and entrepreneurship. Currently Sydell is the Digital Culture Correspondent for NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and NPR.org.
Sydell's work focuses on the ways in which technology is transforming our culture and how we live. For example, she reported on robotic orchestras and independent musicians who find the Internet is a better friend than a record label as well as ways technology is changing human relationships.
Sydell has traveled through India and China to look at the impact of technology on developing nations. In China, she reported how American television programs like Lost broke past China's censors and found a devoted following among the emerging Chinese middle class. She found in India that cell phones are the computer of the masses.
Sydell teamed up with Alex Bloomberg of NPR's Planet Money team and reported on the impact of patent trolls on business and innovations particular to the tech world. The results were a series of pieces that appeared on This American Life and All Things Considered. The hour long program on This American Life "When Patents Attack! - Part 1," was honored with a Gerald Loeb Award and accolades from Investigative Reporters and Editors. A transcript of the entire show was included in The Best Business Writing of 2011 published by Columbia University Press.
Before joining NPR in 2003, Sydell served as a senior technology reporter for American Public Media's Marketplace, where her reporting focused on the human impact of new technologies and the personalities behind the Silicon Valley boom and bust.
Sydell is a proud native of New Jersey and prior to making a pilgrimage to California and taking up yoga she worked as a reporter for NPR Member Station WNYC in New York. Her reporting on race relations, city politics, and arts was honored with numerous awards from organizations such as The Newswomen's Club of New York, The New York Press Club, and The Society of Professional Journalists.
American Women in Radio and Television, The National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and Women in Communications have all honored Sydell for her long-form radio documentary work focused on individuals whose life experiences turned them into activists.
After finishing a one-year fellowship with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, Sydell came to San Francisco as a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley.
Sydell graduated Magna Cum Laude with a bachelor's degree from William Smith College in Geneva, New York, and earned a J.D. from Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.
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The Innovators, Walter Isaacson's new book, tells the stories of the people who created modern computers. Women, who are now a minority in computer science, played an outsize role in that history. -
Perhaps no company showed how the Internet could turn sharing into a global phenomenon more than Napster. The music-sharing site upended the record industry. But the industry ultimately survived and free-music Napster did not. What are new businesses doing to avoid the same fate? -
It's now possible to create an impressive copy of Michelangelo's David or Rodin's The Thinker with a 3-D printer. Rather than object, some museum curators see this high-tech replication as a way to bring near-real versions of classic works to the masses. -
Long before smart watches became the latest pursuit for tech companies, Gordon Moore of Intel was experimenting with wristwatch computers. Intel's co-founder and his colleagues built a line of chip-powered watches in the late '70s. The concept was visionary, but the business was a failure. Moore now keeps a memento that he calls his "$15 million watch." -
A $99 video game console funded through Kickstarter went on sale this week. Ouya is significantly cheaper than the big-brand consoles and also relies on a different business model. Games are sold through something like an app store, allowing customers to sample them before buying. -
This week, the Internet radio broadcaster bought a radio station in Rapid City, S.D., in an effort to get the more favorable royalty rates given to terrestrial broadcasters. But the move has songwriters and composers up in arms. -
Consumers already have an abundance of choice when it comes to entertainment and news subscriptions. But analysts say it's still early days for all the digital subscription offerings we'll have to pay for.
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The Canon-sponsored Project Imaginat10n used social media to crowdsource images and ideas to produce five short films. It's an idea director Ron Howard says other artists would be foolish to ignore. -
Digital music sales are expected to reach record highs this year, and legal streaming services continue to gain in popularity. But unauthorized music file sharing is still going strong. -
There are more ways than ever to watch TV programs on the Internet, from Netflix and Amazon to Hulu. But many viewers discover that watching TV on the Web can be frustrating, as their favorite show might suddenly stop and stutter, the victim of a lack of bandwidth.
