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Ryan Mac is a Vietnamese-American writer and journalist who works for The New York Times. He has previously worked as a reporter at Buzzfeed News and Forbes. Mac was awarded the 2019 Mirror Award and the 2020 George Polk Award for his reporting on Facebook. He is the co-author of 2024's Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.

Education

Ryan Mac attended Stanford University from 2007 to 2011. Initially a pre-med student, Mac began writing stories for the Stanford Daily at the end of his freshman year. As a staff writer, Mac often published about new musical releases and music festivals for the Daily's arts section.

Throughout college, Mac served as a reporting intern at the Half Moon Bay Review, New York Times, Bay Citizen, OC Register, and Bloomberg L.P.

Career

From 2011 to 2017, Mac worked as a staff writer for Forbes, compiling their annual list of billionaires before transitioning into covering tech startups and companies. Mac also continued to cover music, interviewing top-earning DJs such as Calvin Harris, Steve Aoki, and Avicii. Mac also had the privilege of interviewing American rapper Riff Raff in 2014. In 2016, Mac reported on Peter Thiel, who had been secretly funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker (Bollea v. Gawker). Alongside reporter Matt Drange, Mac was a 2017 Gerald Loeb Award finalist in the 'Breaking News Category' for their coverage of Gawker.

From 2017 to 2021, Mac worked as a senior technology reporter for Buzzfeed News. In 2018, Mac reported on Elon Musk and Vernon Unsworth, a British cave diver who played an instrumental role in the Tham Luang cave rescue. Mac released a series of email correspondences that revealed Musk had accused Unsworth of being a "child rapist" who had "married a child". Both these claims by Musk were found to be false. In one of Musk's emails to Buzzfeed News, he referred to Mac as a "f**king asshole". These emails were later referenced during Unsworth's $190 million defamation suit against Musk.

Mac was one of ten journalists whose accounts were suspended on X (formerly Twitter) by Elon Musk on December 15, 2022. Mac's Twitter account was unsuspended by Musk 2 days later.

In September of 2024, Mac and co-author Kate Conger released Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, which covers Musk's poorly executed $44-billion-dollar acquisition of Twitter.

Personal life

Ryan Mac is an avid supporter of Arsenal Football Club.

References

1. Mac, Ryan (September 12, 2020). "At 82, My Grandmother Has Lost Her Husband — and the World as She Knows It". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
2. ^ "Ryan Mac Joining Technology Team". The New York Times Company (Press release). June 24, 2021. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
3. "Past Winners". Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
4. "Buzzfeed News Wins George Polk Award". BuzzFeed News. February 24, 2021. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
5. "The inside story of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
6. "Alumni Spotlight: Ryan Mac '11 – Stanford Daily Alumni". The Stanford Daily. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
7. "Ryan Mac". Muckrack. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
8. "Calvin Harris: From Supermarkets To Superstardom". Youtube. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
9. "Steve Aoki On Being The World's Hardest-Working DJ". Youtube. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
10. "Technology, Music And The Rise of Avicii". Youtube. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
11. "Jody Highrollin' With Riff Raff In Las Vegas".
12. "This Silicon Valley Billionaire Has Been Secretly Funding Hulk Hogan's Lawsuits Against Gawker".
13. "Finalists vie for nation's top honor given to journalists in business, financial reporting". Retrieved September 24, 2024.
14. ^ "In A New Email, Elon Musk Accused A Cave Rescuer Of Being A "Child Rapist" And Said He "Hopes" There's A Lawsuit". BuzzFeed News. September 4, 2018. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
15. "Elon Musk did not defame British cave explorer, jury finds". The Guardian. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
16. "Twitter Suspends Journalist Accounts". New York Times. December 15, 2022. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
17. "CHARACTER LIMIT | Kirkus Reviews". Retrieved September 22, 2024 – via kirkusreviews.com.
18. "The inside story of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
19. ttps://www.patreon.com/posts/podcast-limit-113659007 "PODCAST! Character Limit". Patreon. Retrieved October 10, 2024.

• American writers of Vietnamese descent
• The New York Times journalists
• Living people