Wired's Makena Kelly on Elon Musk, DOGE, and breaking news narratives

Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong sits down with Makena Kelly, senior writer for Wired covering the intersection of politics, power, and technology, about the magazine’s coverage of Trump's second term and how it has aggressively covered Elon Musk and DOGE's takeovers of federal agencies. 

Amid its breaking news coverage, Wired published “Inside Elon Musk’s Digital Coup” on March 13, a longform narrative that aimed to step back and tell the larger story of what was happening inside these agencies. 

Kelly's was one of nine bylines on the 5,400-word piece, and on the Storyboard podcast she talks about how Wired's editorial team — led by global editorial director Katie Drummond and including senior editor Leah Feiger — helped organize the reporting and make sense of a rapidly developing story. 

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Reading List:

• “Inside Elon Musk’s Digital Coup” (Wired, March 13, 2025)
• Makena Kelly at Wired 
• Politics Lab Newsletter
• Makena Kelly at The Verge
• "How to leak to a journalist." (Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Lab) 

Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Associate producer: Marina Leigh
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation curator: Ann Marie Lipinski
Deputy curator: Henry Chu

Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.