The Verge’s Patel on tech journalism’s evolution

Nilay Patel, the editor in chief of The Verge, was interviewed by Delia Cai of Vanity Fair about the evolution of technology journalism on the website’s 10th anniversary.

Here is an excerpt:

Let’s zoom out to the bigger picture around tech and media from the past decade. How has coverage evolved from, like, its early, breathless gadget-review days?

I think we’re a little past breathless gadget reviews, but at the same time, we’re still heavily invested in reviews because they offer us a kind of power and control over a story. We can take everything Apple has done with the App Store and antitrust and photo scanning, and then we can look at their phone and say, “This is a nine.” That connection has been an enormous force of our authority. I cannot think of another part of media where the loop gets closed like that, except for sports, right? You can cover teams all day, but at the end of the day, someone’s going to win. At the end of the day in tech, they’re gonna ship a product and it’s good or not.

I think reviews of the products these companies actually make are gaining in importance because you’re surrounded by them and the marketing noise all day. Authoritative review, for us, is going to be critically important. It feeds the journalism. Because when we do the investigative journalism and the big features, we’re not confused about how the products work.

Has the subject-source relationship changed, do you think? Has one side taken more power?

We live in the age of going direct: CEOs starting their own marketing channels, companies doing their own Clubhouse, venture capital firms starting media organizations. And that’s fine. Because, for example, I host a podcast where I interview executives every week, and they keep coming. It’s not like they’re fading away—they want to be on the show.

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