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Comment by jordanthoms | Hacker News Reader

I would have been happy about this a year ago, but the Verge has really been going downhill recently - clickbait, poor articles, less of the awesome long form features they used to do etc. Probably part of the reason Topolsky left if it is due to pressure from Vox. Hopefully ReCode doesn't go the same way.

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I added Ars Technica to my feed since I've always enjoyed their more in-depth pieces and civil liberties beat. Ended up dropping The Verge after I'd see them both cover the exactly same general tech stories I cared about, and Ars without the Spotify playlist and Marvel Universe posts.

Says something about Ars' business model, that a hoary old site seems to sustain itself with some throwback non-native ads and subscriptions, while the Huffington Posts of tech journalism have to sustain growth beyond their audience and crisp initial point of view, into something mushy and barely palatable.

I've done the exact same thing for the exact same reasons. Hurray for social validation.

I've only been involved in one story that was widely covered by the tech press. ArsTechnica's coverage was far and away the most accurate. I've preferred them as a news source ever since.

They might not be the flashiest, highest-profile tech news site, but maybe that is part of their advantage--less clickbait and more actual reporting.

Their coverage of modern password cracking was also top-notch and, with the "correct horse battery staple" XKCD, changed the way a lot of people think about strong passwords.

Ars seems to be the least objectionable of the available tech website choices, but I worry that their decline is just happening at a slower rate. For IT, civil liberties, and biomedical/physical sciences (I would argue their original areas of expertise), they're as good as ever. As soon as they start branching out from those areas, quality as I perceive it takes a nosedive. Take their "Cars Technica" automotive venture as an example. It should be a fertile topic area, but the execution at Ars has been a disaster: look at their Porsche Macan article [0] (an especially bad one) or their Audi A8 article [1]. If you're brave enough to read the comments on either, you'll find plenty of dissatisfied readers and a staff deaf to the complaints—if that is representative of the site as a whole, I see a decline across the site as inevitable.

I would like to be very wrong.

[0]: http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/a-day-in-the-new-porsche...

[1]: http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/hands-on-with-audis-flag...

I don't get the car reviews on tech sites. Clearly they're not "all things automotive" - it seems to be mostly Tesla, tech implications and these sporadic reviews of nice cars that make me wonder if they're really marketing.

Yes, my first thought as well. The Verge has gotten downright terrible of late. So much of the content on the site now is either pop culture click bait or PR fluff pieces for tech companies. Other than the reviews, which are still decent but don't offer much that I can't get on any other tech reviews website, I can find very little reason to go there.

In my opinion, Peak Verge was December 2013, culminating in their "Wow this is doge" piece (http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/31/5248762/doge-meme-rescue-...). It was the perfect expression of what The Verge aspired to be: an exclusive, well-researched mid-long-form on a pop-culture phenomenon. It was interesting, insightful, fun, and something probably only Vox Media could have done – I can't quite imagine another organization with both the desire and the resources to realize a story like that.

Alas, that was something of a perfect storm for The Verge, and these days most of their content that isn't aggregation seems to consist of fairly vapid, Gawker-esque "thinkpieces" and "hot takes" designed only to drive readers to the comment section.

On the other hand, Polygon has been knocking it out of the park lately. Examples:

http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/6/8285529/looking-glass-histor...

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/5/21/8627231/the-first-...

The day-to-day Polygon "news" doesn't interest me much, but their "features" have been excellent.

I've had to stop reading Polygon whilst the Features can be good there's so much clickbait and non gaming news.

I understand they need more traffic but if I want film reviews I'll go to a film website I don't understand why they think their game reviews are equipped to discuss things they don't know much about.

No kidding. Today's piece (nearly unreadable in all lower case) was an article complaining that the Apple Watch wasn't good because when you dictate to it for text messages it... dares to punctuate and capitalize.

Yeah.

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