Simonw is a cheerful and straightforward AI journalist who likes to show and not just tell. He has done a good job aggregating and documenting the progress of LLM tools and models. As I understand it, OpenAI and Anthropic have both wisely decided to make sure he has up to date info because they know he'll write about it.
Thanks for all your work, Simon! You're my favorite journalist in this space and I really appreciate your tone.
I get it, you would trust yourself if you said that, but it doesn't really matter whether you say that or not, what counts for your ongoing credibility if you will preface every future blog post with, whether you got special access, a special deal, sponsorship, or the fact that you didn't get any of those things.
You're a reviewer. This is how reviewers stay credible. If you don't disclose your relationship with the thing or company you're reviewing, I'm probably better off assuming you're paid.
And if your NDA says you can't write that in your preface, then logically, it is impossible to write a credible review in the first place.
awesome, thanks a lot that's important but ... sorry I just checked those, and I do think it's better to do it on a per-article basis, because a lot of your audience (I'm guessing) comes from external links, not browsing your website
this is (or should be) a pretty standard thing to do on youtube review channels (that I would trust), and it's not a bad thing to remind people of, on every occasion, plus it can function as a type of "canary" in cases of particularly restrictive NDAs
I like Simon, but he's not a journalist. A journalist would not have gone to OpenAI to glaze the GPT-5 release with Theo. I don't say this to discount Simon -- I appreciate his writing and analysis but a journalist, he isn't.
I actually talk to journalists on the AI beat quite often - I've had good conversations with them at publications including The Economist and NY Times and Washington Post and ArsTechnica.
They're not going to write up detailed reviews of things like the new Claude code interpreter mode though, because that's not of interest to a general enough audience.
Shoot that's what I get for staying off twitter and email for a week. Glad newsletters provide a little bit of a cushion these days but hopefully someone snaps her up.
You normally keep up with staffing updates for writers at random internet blogs? That is mind-blowing, I don't think I ever even read the name of the author of an article intentionally, and when I do it by mistake I forget it 2 webpages down the road.
i've never used twitter myself, but isn't that its purpose? follow people you like because of what they do and get informed by themselves about what happens behind the curtains. OP mentioned being off twitter, maybe they follow the author there and would've seen a tweet about it.
Thanks for all your work, Simon! You're my favorite journalist in this space and I really appreciate your tone.