Steve Wildstrom, a long time Business Week columnist and one of the first journalists to focus primarily on technology, died on November 24 of brain cancer. Wildstrom wrote the Technology & You for Business Week from 1994 to 2009. He was a larger-than-life figure in the world of journalism and, more specifically, tech journalism.
His wife confirmed his death via Facebook.
Born in Detroit, Wildstrom went to the University of Michigan and began writing for BusinessWeek in 1972 where he served as news editor in BusinessWeek’s Washington bureau. He was also active in the Children’s Chorus of Washington.
“Steve Wildstrom at Business Week was hands-down the best person in the 1990s-2000s to explain to a broad nationwide audience what tech meant to them in their personal and business lives,” wrote Bill Howard, an editor at PC Magazine. “Steve put his effort into researching, analyzing and writing rather than building the Brand of Wildstrom.”
Wildstrom was part of an early cadre of tech journalists who built the framework for modern tech writing. By adding humor, personality, and detail to stories about microchips and other ephemera, Wildstrom and his group of friends moved technology out of the dry halls of academia and into the real world.
He is survived by his wife Susan and sons Jonathan and Jake.