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