Name: Mark Gurman
Year: 2016
Major: Information
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Her Campus: Hi Mark! So tell us a little about what you do.
Mark Gurman: I’m a senior editor of 9 to 5 Mac, one of the biggest tech news websites in the world. We get between 20 million and 30 million views a month. I regularly appear on TV on CNBC, ABC, and other news channels. Whenever Apple has a new announcement or a new innovation, those networks bring me on to talk about it. I’ve been known as the best Apple reporter in the world for the past few years, ranked as one of TIME Magazine Top 15 Bloggers in the world, one of the 100 Most Influential Tech people, and one of the 17 Most Influential Students at the University of Michigan. I’ve been quoted in the WSJ, NYT, CNN and Fortune, and there are features of me in Wired Magazine and in Popular Mechanics.
HC: So basically you’re a big deal.
MG: That’s your call. I guess I’m known for breaking some big Apple stories over the years. I broke the news about Siri in 2011; I was in 11th grade. I broke FaceTime as well—that was in March of 2011. One of my bigger stories was in May 2012—I had the first pictures of the iPhone 5, 6 months before the phone was announced. I broke the story of when Apple got rid of Google Maps and made their own, and I beat Bloomberg and the WSJ to it. I also broke the news about the watch—how it would have the all the health monitoring stuff.
HC: Wow. What else should we know?
MG: An interesting thing is that Apple doesn’t talk to me—I’m not really allowed to go to their stuff because they don’t like the media. I actually wrote an eBook and published it this past September about how Apple’s PR department works—how they handle the press, how they get their image out and so on. They were really unhappy about that—they kind of put us in the penalty box.
HC: How did you get involved with 9to5mac?
MG: In late 2009 I met the guy who founded the site in 2007. It started very small, but then I worked my way up. The real big break was between 2011 and 2012—breaking a bunch of huge Apple stories that put me on the map. I probably had a big story every week of 2012—it was crazy, especially as a senior in high school, also applying to college. There was also a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes politically, but I wouldn’t trade that year for anything. It really helped me for the future.
HC: What’s a piece of advice you’d give to someone who wanted to do what you do?
MG: Don’t do it. Just kidding. Pick your battles. In this type of business, it all comes down to being right not only more than you’re wrong, but being right 99% of the time. People don’t remember the successes—they remember the failures. People doing this need to remember that the odds are almost never in their favor, so they have to be really careful about what they’re doing.
HC: This is definitely an untraditional thing for you to have started while you were in high school. What has this whole experience taught you?
It really taught me perfectionism. Rewriting things five, six times—reprinting things if one letter is wrong—the worst thing about this job is when something is inaccurate. It also taught me a lot about not giving up. Tenacity. Getting what you want. If you have a goal in mind, you try to get that goal—if you want that story, go get it.
Photo courtesy of Mark Gurman