Evelyn Richards was one of the first journalists to cover Silicon Valley: in the early 1980s she worked as a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, and as a stringer for the New York Times. She began covering Apple in 1980, and continued to write about the company as it released the Lisa and Macintosh. In the weeks before the official unveiling of the Macintosh, Richards was one of many reporters who tried to break through the company's firewalls of publicity and confidential sneak previews to learn about the new computer. As a result of her efforts, days before the launch, the Mercury News ran a front-page story by Richards on the Macintosh.
Richards is now an editor at the San Jose Mercury News.
The interview was conducted by Wendy Marinaccio at the San Jose Mercury News offices, on 17 May 2000. The interview was transcribed and edited by Alex Pang, and reviewed by Evelyn Richards. A final transcript was produced on 10 July 2000.
The original recording (a cassette tape, with an interview of John Markoff on side B) has been deposited with Stanford University Library's Department of Special Collections.
The transcript has been broken up into several pages, each of which deals with a particular subject. A full transcript is also available that contains the same content, but presents it on a single page.