Joanna Stern Launches New Things, Partners with NBC
Why it matters: Stern's move from a legacy newspaper to a YouTube-first, NBC-partnered venture is a signal of how established tech journalists are restructuring around AI-era distribution. Her year-long AI experiment functions as extended product testing, and her verdict that humanoid robots flopped while wearables could win — packaged alongside a replacement of a human researcher with AI — gives readers a rare end-to-end review from a single household.
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- Joanna Stern left her senior personal technology columnist role at The Wall Street Journal to launch her own tech media company called New Things, structured in partnership with NBC to keep her in front of a mainstream audience.
- New Things debuts alongside Stern's new book 'I Am Not a Robot,' out May 12, which documents 12 months of integrating AI into every part of her and her family's life, organized by seasons.
- In the book, Stern coins the term 'AEI' — 'artificial enough intelligence' — arguing existing AI tools are already 'good enough' and need better consumer application, rather than the industry's fixation on AGI.
- Stern concludes that humanoid robots are 'definitely not ready' and won't be for a long time, but she's notably bullish on wearable AI as a potential 'killer app' that could justify the industry's tradeoffs.
- Stern hired a human researcher for the book, then replaced her with AI tools, finding the AI was 'pretty much as good and much cheaper' — a tension she explores in a later chapter by interviewing the displaced researcher about her experience.
- New Things is built around a YouTube-first distribution strategy rather than traditional media, and Stern says she is already using AI tools to help run the new venture.
