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 , @profchalmers , @mostlymartha , @briankung , @nick4iezos , @nick4iezos , @beckylehmann , @kevinmnye1 , @demontomatodave , @tasharobinson , @whitneyarner , @catholicdems , @bkurbs , @dawnxianamoon , @waltmossberg , @pierce , @mmasnick , @kevinroose , and @caseynewton See also Mediagazer Tweets: Brandy Zadrozny / @brandyzadrozny : Editors, be like @reckless. https://www.vanityfair.com/... https://twitter.com/... James Chalmers / @profchalmers : Remember that period on Twitter where we all spent our time looking at video of fish being shot through a cannon for some reason? https://twitter.com/... Martha Smith / @mostlymartha : A million years ago, I wrote for a lifestyle site that made us do a certain number of stories per day that combined any two Yahoo Buzzwords. https://twitter.com/... Brian Kung / @briankung : This might be my favorite offbeat piece of news this year https://twitter.com/... @nick4iezos : I've always had a feeling that digital media traffic was... ... ...fishy 🐡 https://twitter.com/... @nick4iezos : Did the Verge just discover how to fund/save journalism??? https://twitter.com/... Rebecca Lehmann / @beckylehmann : Possibly the best thing I've ever read about pandering to the algorithm, LOL... https://twitter.com/... @kevinmnye1 : Sometimes it's a nice break from feeling like we live in a tragedy, to feel like we live in an absurdist comedy 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/... 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/... 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
Patel's tenth-anniversary reflection arrives after two years in which the tech-press-versus-industry tension went fully public: New York Magazine chronicled the online battle between a16z partners, Balaji Srinivasan, and the journalists covering them, and The New Yorker traced the same rift through Slate Star Codex versus The NYT. Casey Newton had already given the reporters' side of it, describing why some people in tech hate tech press and what incentives shape the beat.
What makes the milestone worth marking is the arc Patel is reflecting on: The Verge began in the era of breathless gadget reviews, and the Square communications chief was noting as far back as 2015 that coverage of tech companies runs in cycles. A decade in, the outlet sits at the center of a subject-source relationship that both sides now openly contest.
First-order effects
- Patel's account of how The Verge manages subject-source relationships lands directly into that contested space, giving editors and reporters a template for covering companies whose founders fight back in public.
- For the tech executives named in the broader feud, the anniversary Q&A is another reminder that outlets they once treated as promotional channels now frame themselves as accountability press.
Second-order effects
- Rival outlets face pressure to articulate the same editorial stance explicitly, since the public rift documented by New York Magazine and The New Yorker has made 'breathless review' coverage a reputational liability.
- Communications teams, following the cyclical pattern Square's comms chief described in 2015, can be expected to keep adjusting their access strategies as coverage turns more critical.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, tech media consolidates around outlets that survived the shift from gadget cheerleading to critical scrutiny, with the industry-versus-press conflict becoming a permanent structural feature rather than an episodic feud.
The trend: Tech media is institutionalizing its decade-long move from promotional gadget coverage to adversarial accountability journalism, even as Silicon Valley figures organize public resistance to it.