This is the third episode of our new podcast series, Following Up. In these conversations, we sit down with some of the leading journalists in the B2B technology industry and take a deep dive into their careers, unique ways of working and their attitudes towards the changing media landscape. We aim to uncover some of the biggest challenges journalists face in their day-to-day, their key priorities when it comes to delivering the most relevant news, ideas and features to their readers, best practices when pitching and how companies, PR professionals and journalists can work better together in partnership to achieve excellent media results.
Our guest for this episode is Roland Lindner, US Business Correspondent at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of Germany’s leading national newspapers. Roland has been a journalist for almost 30 years and has spent most of his career in New York covering the US business sector.
In this episode hosted by Tyto’s Bastian Meger and Pauline Delorme, Roland takes us through a typical day in his life starting at 5am every morning, and the types of stories and companies he usually covers. Roland reveals how he decides whether a story is interesting, and that he doesn’t always know exactly how the storyline will evolve when he is speaking to people; the best stories are not planned and develop over time. He finds interviews go well when everyone feels at ease, so avoids unnecessary questioning that might make a spokesperson feel uncomfortable.
Over his years in the industry, Roland has interviewed many high-profile names such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg. During his time as a journalist, he has experienced first-hand how the news agenda has changed to become faster paced and has had to learn to adapt to the changing media landscape. More than half of what he covers is technology, which is the area he finds most interesting, particularly the rise of AI, but the stories that stick with him are those with a strong human element.
Are you interested in hearing more fascinating insights from other leading technology journalists? You can listen and subscribe to ‘Following Up’ on your preferred podcast platform and also on our YouTube channel.