• by Sara Guaglione , April 10, 2017

The tech journalism industry will have to say goodbye to a legend this summer: Walt Mossberg announced he will retire in June, after 47 years as a reporter.

Mossberg is editor-at-large and co-founder of Recode and executive editor of The Verge, brands owned by Vox Media. He writes a weekly column for both publications, as well as a weekly podcast called Ctrl-Walt-Delete.

Mossberg said he will leave shortly after the 2017 Code Conference, which he co-founded in 2003.

In a post on The Verge announcing his retirement, Mossberg said the decision to retire is entirely his. “It just seems like the right time to step away. I’m ready for something new,” he wrote.

Mossberg’s career began at The Wall Street Journal in 1970. He originally covered national and international affairs. From 1991 to 2013, he was a technology columnist for WSJ.

“I got to bear witness to a historic parade of exciting, revolutionary innovation — from slow, clumsy, ancient PCs to sleek, speedy smartphones; from CompuServe and early AOL to the mobile web, apps, and social media,” Mossberg wrote.

He and fellow WSJ columnist Kara Swisher left the publication when parent company Dow Jones announced it would not renew its contract with tech conference and site AllThingsD, which Mossberg and Swisher ran. Mossberg famously hosted a discussion with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates during the 2007 AllThingsD conference, where they discussed the future of mobile computing.

Mossberg and Swisher went off to create Recode in 2014, which was acquired by Vox Media in 2015.

In a note shared on Twitter, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff called Mossberg a “legend” as “the most influential product reviewer in the world of personal technology.”

He thanked Mossberg for “everything you have done for our company, our employees, but of course, most importantly, for our audience, your audience. I count myself among the millions who have benefited from your talent as a journalist: in print, audio and on stage.”