Why tech news site The Verge is running fiction

Christine Schmidt of Nieman Lab writes about why tech news site The Verge is running serial fiction stories.

Schmidt writes, “It’s an attempt to brighten up their coverage of the dismal real world and push for science fiction that inspires. It’s the seven-year-old site’s first steps into fiction, and it’s planting the series across all its regular distributed platforms — but with less of a focus on Facebook.

“‘The reality of doing journalism around science and engineering right now is there’s a bunch of fun stuff — but there’s also a bunch of pretty negative stuff,’ Nilay Patel, The Verge’s editor-in-chief, told me. (Recently departed culture editor Laura Hudson came up with the initial idea last spring.) ‘We’re trying to strike a balance where we’re showing people as much opportunity, the democratization of culture, innovation as we are [showing that] ‘Hey, Facebook should get its shit together.”

“In other words, if you can’t report positive news, maybe kick in some fiction to cheer folks up! (Just kidding?) The Verge is trying to intersperse Star Trek-level sci-fi encouragement among its reporting on, say, whether Nest cams are being hacked to transmit fake nuclear bomb threats. (They’re not.) ”

Read more here.