In 2003 and 2004, Google engineers quietly published two papers about concepts for large-scale data processing— one describing a distributed file system and the other detailing a programming model and implementation. These papers, in turn, inspired a group of developers to build an open-source framework. They named it Hadoop, after a child’s stuffed elephant.
It remained largely inscrutable to the business community — until tech journalists caught wind. They began reporting on Hadoop’s revolutionary ability to democratize the storage and processing of massive datasets. Reporters like Derrick Harris (at then-fledgling tech news site GigaOm founded in ‘06) bridged the gap between technical documentation and real-world impact, helping to position Hadoop as the backbone of an entirely new era of big data — an era that paved the way for the rise of AI.
As long as emerging, often esoteric, breakthroughs have debuted in the technical and academic realms, reporters and communicators have acted as arbiter-storytellers, leafing through white papers, spec sheets, and demos to surface, shape, and translate narratives worth telling. Harris and reporters like him use clear and compelling reporting to fan away the haze of hype, widen the aperture of technical accessibility, and elevate even the most complex ideas into full-fledged movements.
In the early 2000s, business leaders were increasingly turning to digital media as a primary source of insight, including a new class of web-native publications like GigaOm, PandoDaily, ReadWriteWeb, and more. And alongside the rising influence of technical reporters reaching a highly online audience, communications pros (like the newly founded LaunchSquad in 2000) helped companies turn their innovation into market-relevant stories.
LaunchSquad’s first eight years were focused almost solely on doing exactly that: helping B2B tech clients clarify, sharpen, and connect their stories to the world. Though we’ve since expanded to work with consumer-facing brands, we've remained close to our B2B roots. In the past 25 years, we've helped build narratives for leading software, infrastructure, and hardware brands across verticals — from our first client AppStream (which pioneered the then-revolutionary ability to stream software via the internet), to SuccessFactors, Marketo, Joyent, Okta, Jobvite, and more recently, market leaders like Cohere and Airtable, to name just a few.
B2B media, like every corner of the landscape, has changed dramatically in the past 2+ decades. But despite shrinking newsrooms and budgets, an overhaul of the digital ad economy, and today’s AI revolution, a core truth remains: stories, told by smart writers, shape our world. They are as important as the technologies themselves; they have the power to set or temper expectations, slow or hasten adoption, and dispel or validate hype.
As we hit our 25th anniversary of telling B2B stories, I asked a few veteran tech journalists and LaunchSquad communicators to share their views on the last two decades. They reflected on what’s fundamentally changed about the ways technical stories are told, what makes a “good” story today, and what’s coming around the corner.
“Today, the landscape is entirely different. The media ecosystem is fragmented, fast-moving, and deeply skeptical. Journalists are stretched thin and under constant pressure to generate clicks. Traditional coverage is harder to land and sustain — especially for nuanced enterprise stories. At the same time, influence has become decentralized. Today’s thought leaders might be a podcast host, a Substack writer, or someone posting sharp insights on LinkedIn. You can’t rely on earned media alone. You have to think across owned, paid, social, and emerging platforms — and create content that’s not just relevant, but remarkable.” — Jen Holmes, LaunchSquad Senior Vice President
“Whether it’s a product manager on LinkedIn or a CEO in a podcast, people want to hear from the folks closest to the work—no polish required.” — Maria Minsker, Director of Editorial Strategy at Launchsquad
“New technologies gave us the power to create in ways we never could before. [...] Storytelling generation moved from institutions that previously owned expensive ways to make and distribute content — to anyone and everyone with a phone or a social media account. Regardless of the platform, the movement remains the same: individual voices creating and generating stories, ideas and content in massive volume, speed and impact.” — Jesse Odell, LaunchSquad Partner and Co-Founder
“The rise of sponsored content has displaced a lot of unbiased journalism. Trade discourse is largely at the mercy of proprietary algorithms on social media. Misinformation is rampant. Publications are constantly in flux. Website traffic is going down across traditional media outlets. More publications have been outright discontinued or downsized lately, displacing talented journalists who have consistently supported the industry.” — Bill Doerrfeld, tech journalist and editor
“The sheer volume of content has created a kind of white noise. There’s so much fluff — SEO-driven posts, AI-churned “thought leadership,” founder hot takes with no real POV. It’s harder to find the signal through the noise, and a lot of times, the real stories of progress and disruption are drowned out.” — Holmes
“It’s never been easier to flood the internet with content that sounds fine but says nothing. The brands that will win are the ones who know how to show up with a clear point of view, in the right places, with something actually worth saying.” — Minsker
“The startups we worked with [in 2010] were often led by the nerds and the idealists — people who truly believed technology could make our world better. [...] There was a lot of this idealism that looks so hokey in hindsight. But if you go back and look at the coverage from those days, the tech press largely believed in it too, or at least they played along. It was just a more optimistic time for technology, before “big tech" became a dirty word. The tone was earnest and almost kind of innocent, even if the ideas were still taking shape.
Today, the nerds and do-gooders are less visible, overshadowed by tech bros and capitalists. [...] What used to be driven by curiosity and problem-solving now feels a lot more like Wall Street in the '80s—fueled by capital, speed, and spectacle.” — Holmes
“As brands started to produce their own content, they became less willing to engage with journalists. A blog post is seen as far less risky than engagement with media, so brands do the safe thing rather than try to educate and advocate. When I started in the industry — a handful of years before Launch Squad was founded — industry and brand spokespeople were easy to find, eager to talk, and would actually converse. I could field a dozen interview offers each week. That's all gone now — or at least out here in Australia and APAC where B2B tech media relations is basically dead.” — Simon Sharwood, Asia-Pacific Editor for The Register
“In 2010 when I joined LaunchSquad, tech PR was largely about pitching a handful of influential outlets and building relationships with beat reporters who were genuinely excited about innovation. There was a sense of shared purpose, and reporters often felt like collaborators. [...] There’s a lot more “us vs. them” in the dynamic between PR and media today. Reporters play the role of watchdogs — and often with good reason. Trust has eroded. Spin is sniffed out instantly. To break through, storytelling has to be sharper, more transparent, more connected to real people and real stakes.” — Holmes
“Sure, you can't trust everything you hear, and I still get pitches that aren't relevant to what I cover, too. (I think my favorite recently was about how to plant trees in Maine, hah). But, I'm getting more relevant outreach lately. I'm grateful to those who aren't pushy and genuinely want to collaborate in creating cool features and sharing fresh reports. Reverse-pitching has been my new thing lately, too. The results are better when both sides collaborate and respect one another.” — Doerrfeld
“Storytelling has necessarily become more detailed technically, as it would have to be – considering the increasing complexity of apps, infrastructure, APIs and innovation. Despite this complexity, it’s becoming exponentially faster and easier to create new apps, with the recent availability of AI to deliver big-time help in the process.” — CJ Preimesberger, writer at The New Stack/SDxCentral, former Editor-in-Chief at eWEEK
“A marked change is the pervasiveness of the AI topic. It's hard to write (or read) an article that doesn't acknowledge AI in some form. Generative AI has outlived the other trend cycles I've witnessed over the years [...]. It's permeated all discussions in B2B enterprise technology, and this shift will have lasting implications. A silver lining for tech journalists like me is that there's more to talk about than ever. On the darker side, as an editor (mainly for Nordic APIs), I've had to deal with sussing out a new wave of AI-generated spam. From blog contributions using deep-faked image aliases to 100% AI-generated stories that read well but in the end say nothing new. It's disheartening when trust is eroded in editorial workflows.” — Doerrfeld
“Generative storytelling will become a thing... Agents are going to accelerate the creation, generation and monetization of media/storytelling to a level we can’t imagine today.” — Odell
“I often joke that I was the ‘adtech’ guy at LaunchSquad during the 2000s when we saw a lot of innovation across the advertising and marketing industries. We experienced the introduction of ad networks, the promise of personalization, the advent of digital video and streaming, and the boom of social media platforms. It was an exciting time as we saw the way consumers that engaged with media transform our lives. Then within the last 10 years or so, innovation started to stifle and it became apparent that the adtech race was over — Google and Meta had won.
And then, in the past few years, AI happened, igniting a rebirth of innovation across the industry. The development of CTV ads is now as easy as creating digital ads, and AI search (GEO, AEO) is literally reshaping the SEO industry before our eyes. The amazing thing is — it's still early. The next few years will be really exciting to see how AI shapes and impacts the future of the adtech and martech sectors.” — Gavin Skillman, LaunchSquad Senior Vice President
“Many still believe that the holy grail is getting a big feature in TechCrunch or The New York Times. But the reality is, one splashy article won’t have much impact unless it's part of a broader, integrated content strategy. [...] The trope that relationships dictate whether or not you're covered is just outdated.” — Holmes
“Brands don't get that media write for their readers, not for brands, and that talking points are not fit for human consumption.” — Sharwood
Reporters simply need the facts. Leave as many adjectives behind as possible, never mind that it grates at your marketing approach. Never say ‘at the end of the day,’ ‘new paradigm,’ or ‘excited.’” — Preimesberger
“It’s wild how many companies have pitched themselves as ‘the future of X.’ Some lived up to it. Most didn’t. Over time, customers, the press, and investors have gotten wise to the hype. The bar is higher now, and earning attention takes more than big claims. Attention still matters — it always will — but what you do with it is what really defines you. The best stories today pair a bold, compelling vision with real progress. They don’t just generate buzz. They build trust. And that’s what separates companies that fade from the ones that actually shape the future.” — Mike Schroeder, LaunchSquad Senior Vice President
“One common misunderstanding is the assumption that a vendor should be the spokesperson for a given tool, standard, or ideology. Comms teams often lead with the client or vendor they're representing as a primary source, which makes total sense. But I'd actually like to see more participation from end users in stories. I want to speak to the actual implementers in the dirt.
[...] What we all say needs to be more grounded in tangible outcomes, more so than before. It's not enough to get excited about a new shiny thing. IT budgets are shrinking, and technology choices require more justification. That has trickled down into IT coverage, too. The editors I work with now expect more evidence and specificity, and rightly so.” — Doerrfeld
“I’ve seen a trend toward an increase in focusing on use cases to help tell a story. This is good; sometimes the best way to explain a new technology is to simply explain how it works, and then make SMEs available for going deeper with a reporter later.” — Preimesberger
“PR people might say, ‘No one writes about this anymore. It's too hard to get stories placed.’ I see it as more of an evolution of who we're engaging with, how we're creating, and how we're understanding the audiences we're trying to hit. I see a whole new world of relevant targets that may not write for the New York Times, but do tell stories that will include our clients. It's not a storytelling challenge as much as it is a targeting challenge.
I'd also say for a while people would say ‘there isn't deep, thoughtful analysis anymore.’ I disagree. There's plenty of this. And there are tons of longform podcast content that people love. I think the positives for storytelling are insanely amazing.
Of course, opening up opportunities to everyone also opens up opportunities for bad actors, lack of truth, etc. But the good to me far outweighs the bad.” — Odell
“AI bots will never take over reporting roles. To be a true journalist, one must have a conscience, basic morality and a sense of distinguishing truth vs. lies or embellishment. Bots, in my honest opinion, aren’t capable of these qualities. I am hopeful – but not ‘excited’ – that this will carry through for generations.” — Preimesberger
“I'm stoked on the written word. Digital marketing 'gurus' will say everything’s going video, that SEO is dead, so why bother with words? I disagree. I think we're approaching a renaissance. I see a new frontier emerging in terms of more authentic voices. In the age of AI, your authentic voice, tone, and perspective matter a lot more, even in professional discourse. ChatGPT can do a generic business voice. [...] I'm inspired and excited to see new human voices emerge in hallucination-free journalism that are better sourced, slightly more opinionated and nuanced, but grounded in reality.” — Doerrfeld
“I am a belligerent optimist. All the change in the past 25 years has only served to amplify human creation, connection, and creativity. And therefore storytelling. We have removed the institutions that get in the way of direct engagement between any individual and the world. Everything is open and I don't think we truly appreciate how astonishing this is. I can go to Youtube and find a very specific video on how to change the light bulb in my 2017 VW Passat R-Line. That's incredible and only possible in the age we're in. Storytelling is always a thing. It's amazing and more important than ever. And in a post keyword world where AI is the thing, great storytelling is even more paramount. Storytelling is a permanent fixture.” — Odell
“Big Tech will try to destroy journalism and storytelling by re-packaging it with AI. I think the way to fight back will be to do better journalism, and I am excited by the opportunity to do that work.” — Sharwood