Anyone eager for a glimpse inside the worlds of technology and network television journalism will enjoy Laurie Segall's candid and engaging memoir, Special Characters: My Adventures with Tech's Titans and Misfits. Segall's energetic chronicle of her rise from an entry-level position at CNN to the network's senior tech correspondent is both an engrossing coming-of-age story and a revealing cautionary tale of the power Silicon Valley wields over modern life.
When Segall arrived at CNN in 2008, fresh out of college, she embarked on a job whose duties included routine tasks like rolling the teleprompter for anchors. But by 2010, she was interviewing Silicon Valley heavyweights like Twitter/Square's Jack Dorsey and soon understood that social media sites like his "weren't just changing our social culture; they were transforming how the media did their job." But the luster of encounters with technology's celebrities soon wore off and, in some of the book's more interesting chapters, Segall describes how her perspective evolved on the relationship between technology and the lives of ordinary people. That process culminated in the creation of CNN's first-ever streaming show, Mostly Human.
After a decade at CNN, Segall made the difficult--but necessary for her--decision to leave. In December 2019, she started Dot Dot Dot Media, a company self-described on its website as "focused on creating content that explores the complicated intersection of technology and humanity." Whatever she decides to do, with the talent she's displayed thus far in her career, it would be a serious mistake to bet against her. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer