Honors – CGW's Blog

Technical.ly accepts Online Journalism Award for technology reporting excellence

This was originally a Linkedin post, shared here for archiving purposes. (I previously shared about the win here)

Well, at last night’s splashy Online News Association in New York, they may have given more stage time to producers of The Daily Show, leadership at La Nacion in Venezuela and the Reuters team who fearlessly covered the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. That included enthusiastic hosting by Vitus Spehar of Under the Desk News.

Still, let it be known that last night, Danya Henninger and I were plenty proud that Technical.ly was honored in such company for excellence in technology reporting. It was a genuine honor to stand next to the impressive WIRED team, including Vittoria Elliott and Andy Greenberg. Congratulations also to Nilay Patel and The Verge team, which was up for several honors (I meant to say a proper thank you for the inspiring work for us locally.)

Keynoting the LION Publishers conference on AI usage

I led the opening plenary for the LION Publishers conference held in San Diego this month.

I couldn’t be away from the kids for too long, so I arrived late Tuesday evening, had dinner with a friend and checked into my hotel. The next morning I walked some of downtown San Diego before returning to the conference opening.

I led a conversation on real-world, practical AI uses, and sat in a slate of sessions. That evening a reception opened by honoring Technical.ly as one of just 11 local news orgs that have reached a mature level of sustainability.

Then I flew back home the next morning. Details here and photos below.

A data center developer is suing my news organization

A data-center development company spent $250,000 pitching the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Now it is suing the Technical.ly team to keep you from reading it.

TECFusions is building a data center campus on the site of a closing aluminum plant in Western Pennsylvania. Our editor Katie Malone filed a routine open records request for what the company told state officials. She won partial release through the Office of Open Records. The company went to court, arguing the deck contains trade secrets.

The project has since received $2 million from state government. The case is still pending, and our reporter is named in it.

Technical.ly is one of just 11 “sustaining” local news orgs in the country

Technical.ly received special recognition during the 2026 LION Sustainability Awards as one of 11 Sustaining news organizations in LION’s updated maturity model for independent news publishers. The announcement was made in San Diego at the annual conference of the well-regarded national association of local publishers.

That’s 11 out of close to 500 audited, or 2.5 percent. I wrote more here.

This really shows how rare, and how hard, sustainability is in local news in our post-newspaper digital era.

Technical.ly awarded national Online News Association award for tech reporting

Incredible honor: I am overcome with pride for the Technical.ly’s newsroom big win at the Online News Association’s annual awards, first announced last night.

Alongside Wired and Reuters, Technical.ly was honored for Excellence in Technology Reporting. The only local newsroom to get this distinction.

This particular award is for our deep, insightful and balanced data center coverage, led by Danya Henninger, Katie Malone, Alice Crow and Sarah Huffman, and the kind of work we’re now doing in 10 U.S. states and growing. It took 18 years and many hands to get to this level.

A vision for Philadelphia 250 years from today

This might be the project, and the writing, I’m proudest of in my career thus far.

Find here the backstory, and an Inquirer op-ed here I wrote. Below find the words of a vision statement for Philadelphia 250 years from now, which has now inspired a mural by my friend Sean Martorana and Mural Arts Philadelphia.

Gubernatorial conversations

I’ve recently interviewed a pair of influential elected officials: Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer and Maryland Lt. Governor Aruna Miller. I filed Technical.ly stories. Find the live recordings of my interviews and links to my reporting below.

The Technical.ly beat once felt less directly state relevant, but that’s shifted in recent years, with the rise of industrial policy and the importance of entrepreneurship. As publisher, I’ve seemed like a good starting point for direct interviewing, though our newsroom has long interacted with these and other elected officials at the state level around policy and one-off engagements. This marks something that will likely be more direct and more frequent now, reflecting our beat’s growing profile.

ESHIP “Builder of the Day”

The tribe I feel closest to are the ecosystem builders: those who work their tails off to bring entrepreneurship to the center of local strategy.

One of the chief conveners is ESHIP Alliance, which is growing an online community of just such ecosystem builders. Smartly, and generously, there they’re highlighting longtime and active ecosystem builders. I’m proud they kindly highlighted my Technical.ly work today.

This is a clever strategy 🙂 Thanks to ESHIP leader-organizers and champions

A vision for Philadelphia 250 years in the future

I’m deeply proud and honored to have helped develop a vision statement for Philadelphia for the next 250 years. An earlier version was shared last summer here. I shared this new version more widely for one last round of resident feedback in an Inquirer op-ed here.

The statement, a place to give feedback and information on the process can be found at PH.LY.

Below is the vision statement as it stands now.

We didn’t remove gatekeepers; we replaced them with algorithms.

I joined CURRENTLY, the slick video interview series from the creative agency [Electric Kite], hosted by principal Kevin Renton, to talk about local journalism, entrepreneurship and how we build healthier information ecosystems. (I wrote more about it on Technical.ly here)

Themes we hit: why geography still matters online; why “friction” is a feature of community; how luck shapes entrepreneurial outcomes; and why journalism is a strategy you attach to sustainable business models.

Below the full video, and a few points I want to stand out.