About me
Hello! My name is Maya Kosoff. I’m a content strategist, writer and editor. When I have something useful to say I write a newsletter. I also freelance as a content marketer, ghostwriter, editorial and social media strategist, writer for brands and reporter for news websites. I’m represented by Anna Sproul-Latimer at Neon Literary. (I would love to write a book or five someday.)
I started my career in 2014 at Business Insider, where I wrote about the then-nascent gig economy, Uber, how millennials and Gen Zers use tech, and NYC venture capital and startups. In February 2016, I went to Vanity Fair to launch The Hive, the section of the website and magazine focused on the corridors of power in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington DC. I was Vanity Fair’s tech reporter until December 2018. I spent several months of 2019 freelancing, with work in places including the Columbia Journalism Review and the Washington Post, before heading to the New York Times, where I was contracted to work on a new editorial product: a new newsfeed we built and beta tested for several months within the existing New York Times app alongside the Times’ formidable product and design teams. It was an eye-opening experience that taught me the value of editorial and product work beyond the confines of traditional newsroom jobs.
At the beginning of the pandemic I wanted to expand the breadth of my communications work, so I went to Codeword, an integrated marketing agency, as a senior editor, shaping and implementing all sorts of social strategy and editorial and marketing projects for tech clients big and small, from VC firms and startups to Google. Then, I edited the news platform for a SaaS startup called The Org, which publishes company org charts. There I did everything from people management and high-level content strategy work to editing stories and audience development. Most recently I was the Director of Content for an early stage NYC-based venture capital firm called Company Ventures.
Every spring I work with Sean Branagan, the Director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Communication, in a class Sean teaches about the future of media and technology. I’m the editor of the class’s final collaborative research project, Media-Nxt, which aims to showcase new media tech, develop sponsored research opportunities, and help shape the future of media.
I studied magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and graduated in 2014. While I was there I also studied women’s and gender studies and Spanish, student-taught a bilingual kindergarten class in Syracuse’s Near Westside neighborhood, and resuscitated Syracuse’s music magazine 20 Watts, transforming it from a glorified zine into a sustainable, ad-supported, multiplatform publication.
Some interests of mine: DTC startups (especially of the CPG food and beverage variety), recipe development, collecting old cookbooks, stocking and maintaining my neighborhood’s community fridge, visiting New York City beaches (but especially the Rockaways), lifting weights, cooking, hiking, taking long walks around Brooklyn, hanging out with my cat Carmichael, connecting people (my record of bringing together disparate people for lasting friendships and roommate-ships is unparalleled), and attempting to secure a win with my recreational skeeball team The Bourgeoiskee.
I’m from Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yes, like the chocolate bar.
Writing
Here is a sampling of my writing.
Stories
"‘They're playing both sides’: Bezos's flirtation with ICE appalls Amazon employees" (Vanity Fair)
Interviewed Amazon workers from across the company, who found themselves up in arms over their employer's continued talks with ICE about facial-recognition software.
“‘It was cataclysmic’: Can Snapchat survive its redesign?” (Vanity Fair)
I talked to publishers in the wake of Snapchat Discover’s redesign in 2018, the future of Snap, about the effect the redesign had on their individual channels.
“To understand where Silicon Valley went wrong, look at what Vine got right” (Vanity Fair)
Two years after Vine’s shutdown, an essay reflecting on the defunct looping video app.
“Reporters continue to cover Parkland closely—but at what cost?” (CJR)
While writing CJR’s daily newsletter, I examined the effects of media coverage on victims of traumatic events like mass shootings.
“When millennials run for office, having grown up online may be their saving grace” (Washington Post)
In the wake of revelations that Virginia’s Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark R. Herring had appeared in blackface pictures when they were younger, an examination of how millennials are different—a whole generation grew up with the expectation of constant surveillance.
“Would You Like A Tiny Fish With That?” (The New York Times)
A piece on the rise of the anchovy, both as a trendy food and a sustainable protein source.
“Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class” (GEN)
How Texas Instruments and its expensive graphing calculators came to be the standard in math classrooms everywhere.
“The Human Toll of the 2019 Media Apocalypse” (GEN)
More than 3,000 journalists lost their jobs in 2019. These are some of their stories.
“Why All The Warby Parker Clones Are Now Imploding” (Marker)
How venture capital became the most dangerous thing to happen to now-troubled DTCs like Outdoor Voices, Harry’s, and Casper.
“Do The Sopranos Love Joe Biden? Just Ask Michael Imperioli” (Vanity Fair)
An interview with the Sopranos actor about why exactly he turned his Instagram feed into a 2020 liberal fanfic account.
