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This seems very destructive. It seems very destructive to the media ecosystem. That thing that you just articulated there doesn\u2019t seem like a little deal. It seems like a big deal.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think the defining economic reality of the modern platform media world is that all the platforms realized that an infinite supply of teenage creators are cheaper to deal with than media companies or groups of media individuals or powerful creators. And I\u2019m curious for your read on the number of YouTubers that you see retiring or taking a step back. It just feels like eventually you hit a point where there\u2019s nothing left here for me. It\u2019s just me. I have to just extract more from myself and put it on this platform every day to succeed, and that stops being valuable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Whereas, I think if you were able to build a company or a brand or an institution, at the end of that, you\u2019re like, \u201cWell, I made this<\/em>.\u201d And maybe I could sell it. Maybe I could just let some other people run it. Maybe it stands for something. Maybe we could shut it down and everyone could talk about how much they missed it, but it\u2019s more than you. And I think the platforms are not organized economically to ever allow that to happen because that is expensive and you can replace individuals all the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Yeah, you can. And also, it seems like people have an easier time trusting individuals now than trusting larger brands. So it\u2019s sort of\u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Oh, I totally disagree with that. Wait, I think you\u2019re platform-pilled. I totally disagree with that in the biggest, most serious ways that I can possibly think of.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The platforms are designed to create that idea and reinforce it. They want that to be true. They want to say, \u201cPeople don\u2019t trust brands, they trust people\u201d and that the brands stand for nothing. And that\u2019s because when you shove a brand into the same incentive structure as a group of individuals, an infinite supply of teenagers who will work for free, the brands debase themselves, and now the brands are worth nothing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But you know what? All the celebrities still want to be on the cover of magazines. They want the validation that the big brand, the institution, can provide. And there\u2019s a reason for that because the brand stands for more than just an individual opinion \u2014 or at least at its best it does. There are a lot of problems with that. My little blog that people now think of as an institution started out in opposition to big magazines. We were the upstarts. I feel that tension all the time, but I think the idea that people trust people more than brands is a creation of the algorithmic media environment. It is not the natural result of people getting smarter or becoming savvier media consumers. That\u2019s just the water we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I\u2019m going to stare at my ceiling tonight and think about this because I\u2019ve never heard anyone even make the case that that is\u2014 <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
And I get it. The Verge<\/em> is a collective. It\u2019s a group of individuals who all make something together. And that means when we go to play on a platform that is organized around someone talking to you like a TikTok or an Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts or whatever, it\u2019s a different person every time that stands in for this other thing. But if you look at the cover of Vogue<\/em> this month, it\u2019s all of the Vogue<\/em> legends, all the icons, and Oprah is in the center of that picture, and it\u2019s all of these supermodels around Oprah. And it\u2019s like, no TikToker can create that moment. Only an institution can create that moment, and the moment has to provide value back to all of those people. You\u2019re on the cover of Vogue<\/em> with all these other people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Well, where does that come from? That doesn\u2019t come from any individual. That comes from Vogue<\/em> being Vogue<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
And Vogue<\/em> is making it work in a way that a lot of magazines aren\u2019t. But before we get to magazines, because I want to talk about that, this is a good time to ask: Nilay, how is The Verge<\/em> structured? <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The Verge<\/em> is structured\u2014<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I love this so much. It\u2019s great.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
This is tough. I have a real answer and then a philosophical answer. You ready for this? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I\u2019m glad you\u2019re ready for the question.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I had to think about this a lot. We are structured in two ways. There are two organizing principles of it. We\u2019re structured by topics. We have desks: we have a policy desk; we have a transportation desk; we have a reviews department. That\u2019s like topic expertise. Subject matter expertise is one set of organizing principles. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Then we\u2019re also structured by format. So we have a news team. We have a features team. Reviews, I think, bridges the gap where you need to be a subject matter expert in laptops, and then reviews are a particular kind of format. So those are the two ways, and we have teams that address each of those buckets, and they all work together. And we try to make sure our team is constantly moving across formats and desks because I think we\u2019re at our best when the things collide. But the real way that we\u2019re organized is by cadence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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And that is actually a very difficult thing to explain. And you can\u2019t actually say that out loud.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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What do you mean \u201ccadence\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Our news team operates in 20-minute increments. They wake up, the news hits, it goes on the website, they\u2019re done, they move on to the next thing. If you want a piece of analysis or you\u2019ve got a scoop and you need to build it out, we call those reports. That\u2019s a day or a couple of days. A feature might take a year or a review might take a week and a half. A video might take two months. So we have all these systems that organize those cadences of work so that they can get the appropriate amount of focus. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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They can also be finished. Because the hardest thing is to finish what you\u2019re working on and be like, \u201cOkay, we\u2019re publishing it now.\u201d For the news team, everything is always finished. It\u2019s finished before it\u2019s started. The news has occurred. For the features team, it\u2019s like, \u201cIs it done? Have we done everything we need to do? Did we set the deadline? Did the people respond? Has it gone through legal review?\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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There are all these things that prevent you from being finished. So we try to give things space to be finished on their timeline. And you can really see how, if you just stare at the structure of The Verge<\/em> long enough, you can see how it\u2019s mostly organized around those cadences. And then all of the other things just allow like-minded people to work together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
How many people are those people?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think, right now, we\u2019re about 50. I might be wrong about that actually. We\u2019re hiring, so I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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We have some people coming in, so we\u2019re growing in fits and starts again, which is exciting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Yeah, that is exciting. Have things been good since the redesign? I love the redesign. It was very exciting. My first day, I was like, \u201cThis is just on the edge of being too weird where my brain isn\u2019t quite sure what to do.\u201d But on the first day, I feel like I know how to use this website, and on the 10th day, I\u2019m like, \u201cI know how to use this website.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
We definitely changed too much too fast. We dialed it back a little bit, and now we\u2019re starting to reintroduce some of those other changes. But the core piece of it \u2014 which is, \u201cAre we making our own website the most valuable place that we work?\u201d \u2014 has been wildly successful to the point where I\u2019m sometimes like, \u201cWe\u2019re doing too many quick posts. We should make longer things again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I think that\u2019s a good sign because my number one goal, and remember this is pre-Elon [Musk]. My number one goal was, \u201cBoy, I\u2019d like the reporters who work here to write for us in the text box that pays us money instead of over there in the text box that extracts value.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I should be asking that question of myself. Why am I writing in the text box that pays money to Elon and Mark [Zuckerberg] and not my text box?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Why do we all work for free? Look, we want to talk about the platform era and media. Why do we all work for free? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Everybody\u2019s insisting\u2014 <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I don\u2019t know the answer to that question.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2026<\/strong> We can\u2019t shut up about how our work has value, but then we can\u2019t stop giving it away for free.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Yeah. \u201cFuck you, pay me,\u201d he typed furiously for free into another box. It\u2019s very confusing, and there are a lot of reasons. If you just sit back and think about why, there are a million reasons why.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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One, the software is nicer to use than most CMSes. You just pick one. Name a company that makes a CMS. They\u2019re like, \u201cIs this as fun to use as Twitter?\u201d And the answer is no. Flatly no. Even the one we have now for quick posts is not as fun to use as Twitter was in its heyday. Will this immediately bring me the dopamine hit of immediate feedback? No. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I just want my little cookie, and my little cookie is people being mean to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Yeah. Will someone willfully misinterpret this joke? Let\u2019s find out. The answer is yes. Is there a fake revenue source like a creator fund here that will make me believe that there\u2019s\u2026 Like, of course. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Are there people here who are actually making real money? On YouTube, in particular, YouTube has figured out monetization in a way that feels healthiest and most stable. But there are also the haves and have-nots. And I think that YouTube loves having the haves because it provides the infinite incentive to the have-nots. None of that is true on a regular media company\u2019s website. None of that. If you started a WordPress site tomorrow, none of that would be true about your WordPress site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But the first instinct was, \u201cLet\u2019s at least make it easier to publish. Let\u2019s at least remove the barriers to entry to getting on the website, and then we can do comments, and then we can think about how we can distribute in different ways.\u201d So that is working. My team is happier. We did not know that the Twitter thing would happen, but the Twitter thing happened, and our desire to publish in the boxes we controlled went up as a group. And then, on top of it, our audience saw that we were having fun. And once you are having fun anywhere on the internet, people sort of gravitate to you. So traffic has gone up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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That goes back to the conversation we were having before about audience and how do you imagine those people. Who are they in your head, and how do you feel like you understand them? This is a huge thing for me. I think about it all the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Our mission statement is that The Verge<\/em> is a website about how technology makes people feel. We\u2019ve kind of narrowed it down. We\u2019ve had headier ones. We\u2019ve had ones that were designed for advertisers. We\u2019ve had ones that are like, \u201cWe\u2019re about the future.\u201d And over time, it\u2019s like, \u201cOh no, we\u2019re just about how this makes you feel.\u201d It is a very emotional website about cellphones, and that means we can be expansive. It means we can validate the fact that people are having emotional experiences with their technology. One of the things I say all the time is, I can go up to anyone in the world and ask them about their phone, and they will tell me a story because they have an emotional relationship with this piece of technology that mediates almost all of their other relationships.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
So there\u2019s something they love, there\u2019s something they\u2019re frustrated about, there\u2019s something they wish were better. And if you can ask them the right questions, everyone has a story to tell you about their phone. That is a pretty massive set of things to think about. So I think of our audience as people who want to feel those feelings. They want to love things, they want to dislike things, they want to be passionate about these objects, these screens that literally mediate almost everything else that happens in our lives. And I think we poke at that pretty hard all the time. And we\u2019re never punished for thinking too hard about things.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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And that, to me, is the surest sign that we\u2019ve at least found a group of people that are stable that over time can grow because it\u2019s kind of fun to be smart. So I think people, they latch onto that, and they evangelize how they feel to their friends, and then the audience grows again and again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I feel like telling Hank Green it\u2019s fun to be smart is one of the funniest things I could possibly do. I truly do not have to convince you of that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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It turns out, I do agree with this. And also that it\u2019s a great principle from which to build an audience, because of course you get the audience that you build for. [There are] lots of ways to have lots of different audiences, but it\u2019s always better if you\u2019re building an audience that you actually like hanging out with.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
And your <\/strong>Apple Vision Pro coverage<\/strong><\/a>. I\u2019m a guy who doesn\u2019t care at all about the Apple Vision Pro. Maybe I should, but I did<\/em> care about how much y\u2019all cared about it and just this sort of college dorm room, \u201cI can\u2019t believe we\u2019ve just spent this much time thinking about the difference between a 6 and a 7\u201d kind of coverage of the Apple Vision Pro. I was like, \u201cI don\u2019t care about this piece of tech at all, but I care about these doofs. They\u2019re great.\u201d And I think that you\u2019re doing that in a really good way. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Once you have that audience and you have this website, how do you turn, at The Verge<\/em>, that into money?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
We are very precious about how we turn things into money. And I think this has almost entirely helped us. It has hurt us in one particular way, which is we don\u2019t make as much money as influencers do. I can talk about why that is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I just said no to such an expensive brand deal. I was so mad. My assistant was like, \u201cIt\u2019s okay, Hank.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cIt\u2019s not okay. I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m doing this.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
So we say no to all of them. So this is the real hard thing. But the main way we make money is we sell advertising. \u201cSenator, we sell ads.\u201d We sell display ads on our website, banners, and boxes. We have some ideas on how to make those experiences better. We sell ads on the podcast. I don\u2019t read them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Which is not as lucrative as if I did read them. We sell ads, we have YouTube pre-rolls, there\u2019s sponsored content on the website \u2014 it has big disclosures, but there\u2019s advertiser content on our website. So all the ways that media companies make money except the way that individual creators make a lot of money, which is directly making the brand deals for our talent. So I don\u2019t read the podcast ads. Most podcasters just read the ads. We will not stop a YouTube video in the middle and let any of our journalists do the brand read or whatever. We have somebody else who does that, which is Andrew Melnizek. He\u2019s great. He\u2019s part of our advertising team. He does them. He\u2019s very good at them, that\u2019s great, but someone else does them. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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We just maintain and enforce this distance between our work as journalists and what advertisers would like us to say. And I think that is… again, many YouTubers are very, very successful. They make a lot of money. I don\u2019t begrudge anybody their businesses. Go be successful. I am proud of you all. We won\u2019t do it because we are so protective of the journalism that we make. And I worry, honestly, that the audience doesn\u2019t care anymore. They\u2019re just like, \u201cWhatever.\u201d The audience just assumes that we\u2019re bought and paid for left and right. And we\u2019re like, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I think they do, and I think they know. The thing I just said no to, it was because they wanted me to… It was a food product, and they wanted me to be a person who knows about the world being like, \u201cThis is good for you.\u201d And I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s not my job. That\u2019s not who I am. I don\u2019t know anything about whether this is good for you or not.\u201d And also, it\u2019s not. Food is food. That\u2019s not the business that we need to be in convincing people that one snack food is better than another. Just eat the Doritos, everybody. It\u2019s snacks.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It\u2019s really interesting like that to me. What do those brands want? They want people to advocate for them, and they can buy it at scale on a lot of platforms for wild amounts of money, and they can\u2019t buy it from us. And the fact that we are not for sale, I think, is… I am pretty sure this is a bad thing. The fact that we are not for sale is increasingly an anachronism. I think it\u2019s our competitive advantage, right? Because I get to yell loudly, \u201cWe\u2019re not for sale,\u201d but it is increasingly an anachronism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Do you get affiliate fees for reviews?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Yeah, so we have a commerce operation that\u2019s over there<\/em>. And so we review things. That is all editorially independent of what happens on the commerce side of things. And then that team adds affiliate links to buying guides and things like that. And that provides us some revenue, but that is walled off in a meaningful way from what our reviewers do all day. So if some thing makes us more money in affiliate sales, our reviewers are not incentivized by that. They barely know it. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The one place where it gets a little muddy, and I hope people understand why this is muddy, is deals coverage. Our audience wants to know, \u201cIs this a good deal? Here are some deals that are happening, are they good deals?\u201d And then we have to evaluate that. So the person you want to evaluate that is closer to editorial than not. You want an objective judgment of, \u201cIs this a good deal?\u201d But then you get affiliate fees on that. That\u2019s where I think it gets the muddiest. But overall, we try to stay as precious and unscathed by the commercial aspect of our business as we can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Untainted. Does The Verge<\/em> make money?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The Verge <\/em>makes money. Yeah. We\u2019ve been around for over a decade. We\u2019re the last website on earth. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Do you think about that a lot? Do you have conversations a lot about the P&L and etc.?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
We do. I think, in my role as editor-in-chief, it is incumbent on me to make sure that one: We have an audience. The audience is happy with us. We are invested in places where we think audience is growing or there\u2019s impact and that we are growing responsibly. So I have a publisher, her name is Helen Havlak. Helen used to be our engagement editor and then she was our editorial director. So she was my number one deputy. And I would go off into the company and have meetings and then I would come back and ask Helen what to do and then I would just go to the meeting and do whatever Helen said, and eventually, I was like, \u201cThis is stupid. You should just be my boss.\u201d So Helen is our publisher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Above her is our group publisher, Chris Grant, who\u2019s the founder of Polygon<\/em>. He and I have worked together for years upon years. So the three of us spend a lot of time just thinking about our business and where we\u2019re investing and how it works. But the split is that I\u2019m in charge of editorial and creative, and Helen is in charge of our business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It\u2019s a website that makes money. Amazing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Last one around. Look, I think, fundamentally, the idea that we have a website that makes money is weird. It is weird\u2014<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2026 <\/strong>But also, I will say we operate inside of a company called Vox Media that also makes money and is also in the turmoil of the digital media business, but overall, compared to its peers, has managed to weather the storm. And a huge part of that is the company is founded on community and is founded on product, like building web products, and that is resilient.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
So you are a busy guy. What do you do? You host several podcasts. You just launched a second Decoder<\/em> every week.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
[A] second episode of Decoder<\/em>. Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
So you\u2019ve got that going on. You got a lot of people to manage. You\u2019re a dad. You got many, many things. I have a classic Decoder<\/em> question, but in two parts for you. How do you make decisions at The Verge<\/em>, but also how do you make decisions at Nilay Patel?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I really workshopped this answer. And the answer is panic. <\/strong>Pure panic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I use that, too. That\u2019s one of my favorite ways. Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I am optimized around speed, that fundamentally, the crisper you are in making a decision, the faster that decision can be proven to be wrong. And then you know a lot. So you get to remake the decision. There\u2019s one thing that makes that different for me than I think other people in other kinds of jobs. There are a bunch of decisions we make as an organization every single day, minute to minute, that don\u2019t get to be unmade. We publish a news story, and it\u2019s wrong, we don\u2019t get to unmake that decision. We have to issue a correction and put it at the bottom of the story. We write a headline, it\u2019s really not great for us to write and rewrite headlines. So there\u2019s a whole bunch of instinct and taste and hard-fought experience just about making the product we make every day that we still have to do it really fast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The core value of a newsroom, especially news on my cars, is speed. So we still have to win every day all the time, but we have to be fast. But next to that\u2026 And so I just want to bracket that set of editorial decision-making because that is a group product: a lot of us make those decisions all together all the time, and we are very aware of the stakes of getting some of that stuff wrong. But then there\u2019s everything else. Should we spend money and [get] going on this thing? It\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, we should. Just go. Let\u2019s see what happens. Get a story out of it.\u201d How many podcasts am I going to do today? There\u2019s only so many I can do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Because you got to be in a lot of meetings, but you also have to be in a lot of podcasts, which are like meetings but hopefully more fun.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n