Michael Leitner

Michael Leitner is a journalist for the Austrian technology news portal Futurezone and the daily national newspaper Kurier.

He started his career as a technology journalist in 2011, when he began covering the local independent video game industry and its struggles to compete in the highly competitive global market. In 2012 he started to specialise in consumer electronics by reporting on some of the biggest events of the industry, such as the Consumer Electronics Show, Computex, Mobile World Congress, Gamescom and IFA.

As a senior review editor, he is trying not just to praise innovations, but also to show the impact of new technologies. Recently this led to several stories on diversity in technology and harassment in online spaces. As a trained mechanical engineer, he has also covered the Austrian maker scene and local developments in the digitalisation of industrial manufacturing, broadly known as Industry 4.0.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in media management and a master’s degree in content strategy. While working on the latter, Leitner became more involved with the product management department and developed concepts for new journalistic products. One of these concepts has been selected for funding by the Google Digital News Initiative and is currently under development. He’s also been selected by the Austrian media industry publication “Der Österreichische Journalist” for their Best 30 journalists under 30 list in 2018.

Aside from news stories and longform articles he also enjoys writing code in his spare time and is an avid runner, and has participated in multiple marathons.