Q&A with EIC Nilay Patel on The Verge's 10th anniversary, tech media's advance from early breathless gadget reviews, subject-source relationships, and more
After a decade covering the Zucks, Googles, and Ubers of the scene, the Verge editor in chief reflects on tech's troublesome relationship with the rest of the world. Tweets: @brandyzadrozny , @pierce , @demontomatodave , @tasharobinson , @whitneyarner , @catholicdems , @bkurbs , @dawnxianamoon , @waltmossberg , @mmasnick , @kevinroose , and @caseynewton See also Mediagazer Tweets: Brandy Zadrozny / @brandyzadrozny : Editors, be like @reckless. https://www.vanityfair.com/... https://twitter.com/... David Pierce / @pierce : I have always believed in @reckless' view of good gadget reviews as something much more than just buying advice, and still think he's dead right about it https://www.vanityfair.com/... https://twitter.com/... Dave Bulmer / @demontomatodave : Every single online content creator who sees this tweet, read the excerpt in the picture https://twitter.com/... Rakshtashi Robinson / @tasharobinson : Now I'm a little bummed that I got hired at @Verge too late for Fish Fridays. I could have written about BIG FISH, and A FISH CALLED WANDA, and PASSION FISH, and THE FISHER KING, and a bunch of Laurence Fishburne movies... https://twitter.com/... @whitneyarner : my old job did a bunch of ridiculous things chasing the yahoo clicks (like redesigning our whole homepage to fit their preferred image specs) but none were as funny as this https://twitter.com/... Catholic Democrats / @catholicdems : In Catholic households, this is just called “Friday.” https://twitter.com/... Brian Koerber / @bkurbs : i can confirm that mashable had a similar deal with yahoo and would ALWAYS pick up stories about fish https://twitter.com/... Dawn Xiana Moon / @dawnxianamoon : “The algorithm loves stories about fish.” The computer manipulated a group of humans into spending hours making content about what it wants to see. When it's fish, it's hilarious. But it's also Facebook, Google, et al in a nutshell, which often has less amusing impacts. https://twitter.com/... Walt Mossberg / @waltmossberg : Look! @reckless is being interviewed in @VanityFair! It's well worth a read! https://www.vanityfair.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : Yup. We have deliberately never shared traffic info with anyone who writes for us (even one contributor who begged for the info). Hell, I barely check our traffic myself (it's been at least 4 months since I last looked). https://twitter.com/... Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : @reckless @delia_cai It's so funny that every VC's conspiracy theory is “journalists do hit pieces for clicks” when the actual experience of chasing traffic is just “algorithm likes fish???” Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Now it can be told: @reckless reveals the history of Fish Fridays on the @verge https://www.vanityfair.com/... https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The Verge's tenth anniversary lands at the end of a decade in which tech press coverage inverted itself: Patel's retrospective frames the site's move from the early breathless gadget-review era toward coverage that treats the Zucks and Googles of the industry as subjects of accountability rather than products to be scored. That arc sits inside a documented conflict — the rift between prominent Silicon Valley figures and increasingly critical journalists that the New Yorker traced through the Slate Star Codex vs. NYT episode.
The interview also extends a running series of press self-examinations: Casey Newton's earlier Q&A on media incentives and why some in tech hate the tech press, and the online battle between a16z partners, Balaji Srinivasan, and the journalists who cover them. Even back in 2015, Square's comms chief was describing tech coverage as cyclical — Patel's answer is that the cycle broke, and the relationship between subjects and sources never returned to the review-era baseline.
First-order effects
- Patel's retrospective codifies The Verge's editorial identity as accountability journalism, which raises the cost for tech executives of granting access — every interview is now a subject-source negotiation rather than a product briefing.
Second-order effects
- Tech companies and their investors respond by going around the press: the a16z and Srinivasan Twitter battles against journalists show the industry building direct-to-audience channels precisely because critical coverage like The Verge's no longer flatters its subjects.
Third-order effects
- If the split holds, tech media consolidates around two durable camps — enthusiast product coverage and adversarial accountability reporting — while the industry's power players treat independent press as an adversary to be routed, deepening the structural rift the New Yorker documented.
The trend: Tech media is completing a decade-long shift from enthusiast gadget coverage to accountability journalism, with the subject-source relationship — not the review score — now the defining battleground between the industry and its press.