
The Verge Hires Writer Who Quit CNET in Protest - recoiledsnake
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/the-verge-hires-writer-who-quit-cnet-in-protest/
======
swang
I enjoy reading The Verge but I don't believe that they're any less vulnerable
to advertising influences than CNET/CBS.

Their gaming site Polygon ran afoul of this
<http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=497693>
[http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/30/3575978/halo-4-avatar-
cost...](http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/30/3575978/halo-4-avatar-costume-
offered-free-from-u-k-pizza-huts#124515407)

Essentially one of their first "articles" was just a copy/pasted press release
from Pizza Hut for Halo 4. When people began calling them out on it in their
comments, rather than take the link down and post a 'mea culpa', they began
censoring the posts and then later deny there was even a controversy because
they didn't receive any money from Pizza Hut for it.

Oh wait except they took $750K from Microsoft (aka the IP owners of Halo 4) to
make their "teaser trailer" for the website.

Some would say that it's SOP for gaming websites to just copy/paste press
releases but I say if you're going to call yourself something different and do
"game journalism" with ethics, you shouldn't be doing stuff like this.

It makes me really think twice about any articles on The Verge regarding
Microsoft.

~~~
siamore
I used to read The Verge and i don't think I've ever seen many articles or
reviews related to Microsoft shown in good light, for example even when most
other sites reported Gmail active sync support being dropped as a bad move,
The Verge reported that as Microsoft not supporting open standards (which was
true) and in the review of the Nokia Lumia 920 the camera was rated the same
as an iPad camera with the reasoning that the quality was not needed and
cameras like the iPhone's were what customers really wanted

tl;dr they never jump on MS bandwagons

~~~
nextparadigms
You mean except the most important review of them all - the Windows 8 review,
which got an 8.8 score, and was written by a guy who used to write Microsoft-
related articles?

The Lumia and Surface RT reviews which were written by Joshua himself were far
more objective and fair, because he was ultimately right about them. Look how
many people are returning the Surface now, unsatisfied with their experience
with it (more than 40%).

~~~
siamore
> You mean except the most important review of them all - the Windows 8
> review, which got an 8.8 score, and was written by a guy who used to write
> Microsoft-related articles?

yes that would be one, but that does not refute what i said.

>> It makes me really think twice about any articles on The Verge regarding
Microsoft.

I was asserting that The Verge do not seem to be partial to MS and i think i'm
justified in saying that.

>The Lumia and Surface RT reviews which were written by Joshua himself were
far more objective and fair

True but it's just not the norm.

------
DigitalSea
Probably one of the best technology news websites to work for at the moment.
The Verge is definitely my goto site for tech news nowadays, the quality of
the writing as well as thought and effort that goes into the articles is
second to none. Greg Sandoval is a great writer and undoubtedly a smart hire
from The Verge who not only have a chance to attract a few new users, but also
a great new writer who understands the industry.

~~~
landr0id
Another great thing that The Verge has going for it is the layout and design
of their articles. In an AMA on reddit [1], a member of the Vox Media Product
Team said they actually have the writers do a basic layout of their article
(with full text and everything), then another dedicated designer to further
refine it. I've never read of any other sites doing this, so I found it quite
interesting.

 _We built a snippet system for our long-form features. Imagine a regular
WYSIWYG editor where the author can insert "snippets" like "picture on left"
or "full width overlay", and then they add whatever text and images they like.
From there, the feature writer will work with a dedicated designer to further
hone the look and feel of the piece with custom SCSS inclusion._

[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/12gm3c/vox_media...](http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/12gm3c/vox_media_product_team_builders_of_sb_nation/c6uvgzh)

~~~
Osiris
The design of the homepage is pretty awful, in my opinion. It lags on anything
a few years old and the multiple columns make it hard to pick out articles. I
don't read The Verge specifically because I think the homepage is terrible.

I'm equally annoyed with ArsTechnica's three column layout. I either have to
skim titles horizontally which is confusing because each column is a different
category, or scroll down, back up, down again, back up, etc. just to look at
all the headlines.

People read left to right, top to bottom. The homepage layout should follow
that pattern. Anything else is counter-intuitive.

~~~
aw3c2
I thought "how bad can it be" and opened the homepage on my netbook. The
browser loaded stuff for about 10 seconds and then froze for another 10-20
until the page was rendered.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
If you have the hardware, The Verge is nicely designed, almost as well as Ars.
But people who don't like Tiles and prefer flat lists might not like it.

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eco
I think he'll fit right in there.

<http://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement>

------
circa
I also like <http://thetechblock.com/> quality stuff on there.

