Wired and The Verge lean into personalization

Today, Wired editorial director Katie Drummond announced what she called a “new era” for the publication, with an emphasis on connecting readers more directly to its journalism and the reporters who make it happen. To do that, Wired is enhancing its subscription offering ($48 annually, or $4 a month, though they are currently running a promotion to get the first year for $24) by introducing five new weekly newsletters, livestream AMAs with reporters that will happen at least twice a month, comments sections, and subscriber-exclusive narrated versions of its articles.

From Drummond’s post:

It’s important to recognize that we’re doing this work within an information ecosystem that’s transforming before our eyes: The platforms on which outlets like Wired used to connect with readers, listeners, and viewers are failing in real time; Facebook traffic disappeared years ago, and now Google Search is dwindling as the company reorients users to rely on AI Overviews instead of links to credible publishers. More and more users are also skipping Google altogether, opting to use chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude to find information they once relied on news outlets for. Meanwhile, AI-generated slop and mis- and disinformation are seeping into the internet’s every pore, polluting social media feeds and drowning out news and human-driven storytelling. At Wired, our solution to this so-called ‘traffic apocalypse,’ and the AI sloppification of the internet, is simple: connect our humans to all of you humans.

Wired isn’t the first tech publication to announce an overhaul this week: Yesterday The Verge announced new personalization features, including the ability to follow topics and writers, a “following” feed reminiscent of social media, a daily email digest populated by those followed topics and writers, and another daily newsletter curated by the Verge’s editorial team. That newsletter will be free for all, including people who haven’t signed up for the subscriptions that The Verge introduced in December ($50/year, or $7 monthly), but executive editor Jason Kastrenakas writes that “there’s more to come” for subscribers soon.

There has been a general shift toward the journalist-as-creator, both independent and at larger publications — and it makes sense that these tech publications are on the forefront of experimenting with ways to better serve their readers as the internet deteriorates into a sea of AI. Nobody knows the landscape better than the people reporting on the tech behind it all.

I’ve long been of the opinion that if you’re gonna paywall digital journalism, doing it for super cheap is a smart strategy. It scales seamlessly! Why not get more people in for cheap than fewer for more moneys?

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— Kevin Collier (@kevincollier.bsky.social) July 23, 2025 at 11:36 AM

oligarchs eating journalism alive but WIRED will be watching like
www.wired.com/v2/offers/wi…

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— WIRED (@wired.com) July 23, 2025 at 11:41 AM

WIRED has been so essential recently; it’s worth a subscription.

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— Maris Kreizman (@maris.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 9:30 AM

THE VERGE: What if instead of billionaires who didn’t do the reading, your feed was curated by weirdo goth nerds who love cell phones

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— nilay patel (@reckless.bsky.social) July 22, 2025 at 11:39 AM

a smart move now that they’re trying to get people to sign up and pay for the verge. they should let people make a custom rss feed with their topic choices though, like the FT does.

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— Paris Marx (@parismarx.com) July 22, 2025 at 12:07 PM