Bobby Allyn
Bobby Allyn is a business reporter at NPR based in San Francisco. He covers technology and how Silicon Valley's largest companies are transforming how we live and reshaping society.
He came to San Francisco from Washington, where he focused on national breaking news and politics. Before that, he covered criminal justice at member station WHYY.
In that role, he focused on major corruption trials, law enforcement, and local criminal justice policy. He helped lead NPR's reporting of Bill Cosby's two criminal trials. He was a guest on Fresh Air after breaking a major story about the nation's first supervised injection site plan in Philadelphia. In between daily stories, he has worked on several investigative projects, including a story that exposed how the federal government was quietly hiring debt collection law firms to target the homes of student borrowers who had defaulted on their loans. Allyn also strayed from his beat to cover Philly parking disputes that divided in the city, the last meal at one of the city's last all-night diners, and a remembrance of the man who wrote the Mister Softee jingle on a xylophone in the basement of his Northeast Philly home.
At other points in life, Allyn has been a staff reporter at Nashville Public Radio and daily newspapers including The Oregonian in Portland and The Tennessean in Nashville. His work has also appeared in BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
A native of Wilkes-Barre, a former mining town in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Allyn is the son of a machinist and a church organist. He's a dedicated bike commuter and long-distance runner. He is a graduate of American University in Washington.
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The two popular social media services have amassed such an entrenched community of users that displacing the platforms is no small feat. Experts say it might not stay that way forever. -
Elon Musk said Twitter's recent labeling of NPR as "state-affiliated media" may not have been accurate during a series of email exchanges that offered a glimpse into the billionaire's thought process.
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In a series of emails with an NPR reporter, the CEO of Twitter suggested that the designation is being re-examined, but it has not yet been removed. -
In a series of emails with an NPR reporter, the CEO of Twitter suggested that the designation is being re-examined, but it has not yet been removed.
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Twitter has degraded in quality under Elon Musk, and TikTok is under siege in Washington — yet replacing them is no easy task. Part of the reason has to do with what experts call "network effects."
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Lawmakers hear from the CEO of TikTok as the threat that the app will be banned grows larger.
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The boss of the hit video-sharing app will testify on Capitol Hill on Thursday in an attempt to assuage growing fears about the app's connections to China. -
TikTok officials say they are "disappointed in the outcome," but will remain focused on implementing a plan to keep the data of Americans safe. -
Justice Department officials have launched an investigation into the bank amid growing questions about who shares responsibility for the largest bank failure since the 2008 collapse. -
A major bank in Silicon Valley experienced a bank run and failed. Fearing a cascading catastrophe in tech and banking, the government stepped in to prevent contagion. -
The Biden administration has taken pains to avoid the word "bailout" in describing the effort to rescue Silicon Valley Bank depositors. Yet banking experts say it sure does look like a bailout. -
Federal officials are attempting to restore public confidence in the banking system after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
