Vox Media Week: The Verge

The Verge is about tech and culture, people and trends, news and insights. It’s a publication on the forefront of innovation—in content, community, and style. Learn more about its history, motivations, and what trends to watch in 2013. 

How did The Verge get its start? With tech being such a crowded space, what was the motivation for launching a brand new and very ambitious endeavor?
We started The Verge because we realized that technology was having such a huge impact on culture that we needed a new kind of publication to talk about it. We all grew up reading great magazines, and we wanted to bring some of that to the web, without losing any of the immediacy that online media has to offer. We hope it’s working!
 
The Verge is so much more than a tech site. How does it continue to set itself apart from other publications?

Our tagline is that The Verge covers the intersection of technology, art, science, and culture. That’s a huge set of things, and it allows us to cover pretty much anything we think is interesting. And as technology culture becomes the dominant culture, we’ve found ourselves doing everything from movie reviews to news about the latest iPhone to interviews with senators about privacy legislation. Turns out we think a lot of things are interesting.

How has The Verge integrated new technologies and media in its reporting?

The Verge runs on Chorus, our own in-house publishing platform built from the ground up — our developers work closely with our editors to build new features and experiences constantly. Our incredible feature layouts are a good example of that collaboration, as are other custom tools like StoryStreams, which help us organize stories that take place over weeks, months, and even years. We’re also heavily focused on video production, and we have an incredible video team that’s always pushing the boundaries of what you can do with video on the web. They’re making little documentaries alongside our reporting, basically.

What tech or cultural innovations do you have your eye on in 2013?

The living room is set to be a major battleground this year. In some ways it’s one of the last unconquered frontiers in the home, and all of the major players – companies that people interact with every day – are vying for control.