Elizabeth Lopatto: The Verge's Most Versatile Tech Journalist [2025]

You probably know The Verge as the internet's best place for tech reviews, culture coverage, and the kind of reporting that actually holds giant companies accountable. But behind that consistent quality is a rotating cast of journalists who've somehow managed to make the internet a more interesting place to read.

One of those journalists is Elizabeth Lopatto, and honestly? Her beat is impossible to describe. She's written everything from deep dives into Elon Musk's personality to long-form investigations into tech policy, from reviews of backpacking gear to analysis of the latest Netflix releases. She covers fraud trials, media criticism, heavy metal music, and Dogecoin drama with the same level of care and skepticism.

Lopatto represents something that's getting rarer in tech journalism: someone who refuses to stay in a lane. In an era where most reporters specialize obsessively in one vertical ("crypto reporter," "AI reporter," "smartphone reporter"), she's built a career on intellectual curiosity and the willingness to dive into whatever story needs covering.

This isn't just about her versatility, though that's remarkable. It's about what her approach reveals about the state of tech journalism, how to actually do journalism well across multiple beats, and what happens when a reporter refuses the conventional wisdom that you need to pick one thing and stick with it.

Let's dig into her work, her process, and what her career tells us about the future of tech reporting.

TL; DR

• Elizabeth Lopatto covers business, media, policy, culture, and pop culture for The Verge, refusing to be limited to a single beat
• Her versatility includes expertise in fraud trials, Elon Musk coverage, music criticism, and outdoors technology, sometimes within the same week
• The pattern here reveals how great tech journalism requires cross-disciplinary thinking and deep curiosity rather than narrow specialization
• Her audience engagement includes a famous incident where she posted about cats all day on New Year's and people got genuinely angry
• The larger takeaway is that tech journalism's best work happens at the intersections of policy, business, culture, and technology

Lopatto's coverage of Elon Musk emphasizes decision-making patterns and cross-company dynamics, with an estimated focus distribution across key areas. Estimated data.

Who Is Elizabeth Lopatto? A Reporter Without a Single Beat

If you tried to put Lopatto's work into a single category on a newsroom org chart, you'd fail. That's not a problem. It's actually the whole point.

At The Verge, she's listed as a Senior Reporter, which is a title that could mean almost anything. But her work speaks for itself. She's written about Elon Musk's increasingly erratic behavior across multiple platforms, tracking the pattern not just of individual tweets but the underlying pattern of decision-making that leads to them. She's covered the FTC's antitrust actions against major tech companies, diving deep into regulatory frameworks that most tech writers actively avoid.

She's also written thoughtful, critical pieces about Netflix's decisions, analyzed the film and television landscape, and reviewed music albums. One month she might be covering a massive corporate scandal. The next month she's reviewing a steam deck or writing about what makes certain horror novels work.

This might sound scattered, but it's actually the opposite of scattered. It's the sign of someone who's genuinely interested in how things work, regardless of the specific category. The thread connecting her work isn't genre or topic. It's rigor. It's skepticism. It's the refusal to accept easy answers.

When she's not writing about corporate malfeasance, she gets outdoors. Lopatto reviews backpacking gear and outdoor technology, and she doesn't just test this stuff in a lab. She actually uses it. She's gone on multi-week backpacking trips specifically to evaluate how gear performs in the field. That's the kind of commitment to authenticity that's increasingly rare in tech reviewing.

Her beats include:

• Business reporting: Following companies, tracking executive decisions, understanding market implications
• Media criticism: Analyzing how culture gets made and what that says about the industry and society
• Policy and law: Understanding regulatory frameworks, antitrust law, and how the government actually interacts with tech
• Culture and pop culture: Writing about film, television, music, and entertainment industry dynamics
• Elon Musk personality disorder analysis (her words): Covering Elon Musk's decisions, behavior patterns, and implications across his various companies
• Heavy metal expertise: Reviewing and analyzing music with genuine knowledge of the genre
• Outdoors and backpacking gear: Testing equipment through actual use in the field

This isn't a list of beats. It's a list of interests, and that's what makes her work actually interesting to read.

Estimated data shows Lopatto's journalism focuses equally on fraud trials and executive decisions, with significant attention to Elon Musk and mergers.

The Business Side: Following Money and Scandals

Lopatto's business coverage isn't about quarterly earnings reports or analyst predictions. It's about following the actual decisions companies make and what those decisions reveal about priorities, competence, and sometimes outright fraud.

She's covered fraud trials involving prominent tech executives, breaking down what the evidence actually shows and what the legal implications are. This requires understanding not just tech but securities law, regulatory frameworks, and how civil litigation actually works. Most tech reporters would see a fraud trial and quickly move on. Lopatto digs in.

Her coverage of Elon Musk is probably her most famous work, and it's a masterclass in what happens when you refuse to fall for a narrative. She doesn't approach Musk as either a visionary genius or a dangerous lunatic. Instead, she tracks his actual decisions over time and asks what pattern those decisions reveal.

This is harder than it sounds. Musk is a fascinating figure who generates constant news, which means constantly having new information that might change how you understand his approach. Lopatto's strength is that she doesn't revise her entire understanding based on the latest tweet. Instead, she's tracking the pattern, which is much more useful than getting caught up in daily news cycles.

Her business reporting also covers mergers, acquisitions, and executive decisions at major tech companies. She understands the capital markets, the regulatory environment, and the incentive structures that drive decision-making. This is the kind of reporting that actually helps readers understand not just what happened, but why it happened and what it means.

One of the challenges of business reporting in tech is that the companies being covered are also the platforms that distribute the reporting. The Verge understands this dynamic, and Lopatto's work reflects that understanding. She covers these companies with the rigor they deserve, which sometimes means being unflinching about their failures.

The strength of her approach is that it's not ideological. She's not anti-tech or pro-tech. She's pro-truth and pro-understanding. That's a different thing entirely.

Media Criticism: How Culture Actually Gets Made

Lopatto's media criticism is some of the most insightful tech-adjacent writing being produced right now, even though it doesn't look like "tech criticism" on the surface.

When she writes about Netflix's strategy or how streaming services are reshaping content production, she's not just talking about technology. She's talking about how capital, business models, and incentive structures shape what stories get told. This is actually crucial for understanding the tech industry, because tech isn't just about products. It's about how tech reshapes culture.

Her film and television criticism reveals something important: the most important tech stories are often told through cultural analysis, not tech coverage. When Netflix changes its algorithm or cancels shows at higher rates than traditional networks, that's a technology story. When you analyze what those decisions mean for storytelling and culture, that's media criticism. But it's also tech criticism.

This is why her beat diversity matters. She can write about Netflix's technical innovations and their cultural implications because she understands both sides. Most tech writers don't have that kind of cultural knowledge. Most film critics don't understand the technology that's reshaping their industry.

She's written extensively about how streaming changed television production, the economics of content creation, and what happens when algorithms choose what people watch. This is essential context for understanding why tech companies are investing so heavily in media, and why that matters to culture.

Her music criticism is similar. When she reviews music or analyzes the music industry, she's often touching on tech and business stories: how streaming changed artist compensation, what happens when algorithms choose what music people hear, the business of concert promotions and ticketing.

The through-line in all of this is that she understands culture and technology are not separate things. They're deeply intertwined. Writing about one without understanding the other leads to incomplete analysis.

Antitrust law and Section 230 are among the most critical areas in tech policy, shaping how major companies operate. Estimated data based on topic analysis.

Policy and Legal Analysis: Understanding the Rules

This is maybe the most important part of Lopatto's work, because it's the least flashy and the most consequential.

Tech policy and law are reshaping how the internet works, and most tech journalism completely whiffs on covering it. Reporters either treat it as boring regulatory news, or they don't understand the implications well enough to explain what's actually at stake.

Lopatto understands antitrust law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, data privacy regulations, and how regulatory agencies actually work. When she covers an FTC action against a tech company, she's explaining not just what happened, but the legal framework that made it possible, what evidence matters, and what the precedent means for future cases.

This is sophisticated writing. It requires understanding both legal concepts and tech business models, then explaining both to people who might not have a background in either. Lopatto does this consistently.

Her coverage of fraud trials involving tech executives shows this in action. She can explain the securities law implications, the evidence the prosecution needs to present, what the defense is likely to argue, and what all of it means for how we regulate business in tech.

Policy coverage in tech journalism is underrated. Most readers would rather read about the latest iPhone than about antitrust law. But antitrust law is actively reshaping whether companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft can operate the way they currently do. Understanding that is essential to understanding tech's future.

Lopatto's approach to this coverage is to make it actually understandable without dumbing it down. That's a skill that most journalists simply don't have.

The Elon Musk Beat: Pattern Recognition Over Daily News

Lopatto is probably most famous for her coverage of Elon Musk, and it's worth understanding what she's actually doing here, because it reveals a lot about what good tech journalism looks like.

There are a lot of Elon Musk journalists. Most of them are following news cycles: Musk tweets something crazy, that's the story. Musk does something that moves markets, that's the story. Musk makes a deal, that's the story.

Lopatto's approach is different. She's looking for the pattern underneath the daily news. What does his behavior reveal about his decision-making process? How does he actually treat employees? What's his relationship to truth and accuracy? How do his various ventures actually interact?

This is much harder than covering daily news, because it requires stepping back from the news cycle and asking bigger questions. But it's also much more useful, because daily news stories often get overtaken by new information. Patterns persist.

Her work on Musk includes:

• Decision-making patterns: How does Musk actually make business decisions? What information does he consider? What role does impulse play?
• Management style: How does he treat employees? What does his behavior tell us about his organizational philosophy?
• Personality and psychology: The "Elon Musk personality disorder specialist" beat is her joking reference to the fact that she's had to analyze his behavior patterns extensively
• Cross-company dynamics: How do his decisions at Tesla affect Twitter? How do decisions at Twitter affect Space X?
• Market implications: What do his decisions mean for stock price, investor confidence, and business performance?

The strength of this approach is that it doesn't require defending him or attacking him. It just requires observing what he actually does and analyzing what that reveals.

Musk is a perfect example of why beat diversity matters. Understanding his decisions requires understanding business, technology, law, psychology, markets, and public relations. It's not a single-beat story. It's a story that touches everything.

Her Musk coverage is also a good example of how journalists can cover powerful figures critically without being adversarial. She's not trying to make Musk look bad. She's trying to understand how he actually operates. Sometimes those two things produce similar stories, but the difference in approach matters.

Developing genuine expertise is rated as the most crucial skill for maintaining credibility across multiple beats in journalism. Estimated data based on qualitative analysis.

Heavy Metal Expertise and Music Criticism

This might seem like a weird beat for a tech reporter, but it's actually one of the best examples of why Lopatto's approach works.

Heavy metal isn't a tech beat. But Lopatto has genuine expertise in the genre. She can listen to an album and understand what it's doing musically, where it sits in the genre's history, and what makes it good or bad. This isn't casual fandom. This is the kind of knowledge you get from years of serious listening.

Why does this matter to tech journalism? Because it shows that good journalism requires genuine expertise and interest in whatever you're covering. She's not a tech reporter who dabbles in music reviews. She's a music fan who brings journalistic rigor to her music writing.

This distinction matters. When you read a review of music or film or television by Lopatto, you're reading from someone who actually cares about the subject and understands it deeply. That comes through in the writing.

Her music criticism also touches on tech subjects without making them awkward. She can analyze how streaming changed the music industry, how algorithms shape what people listen to, and how the business of music production has evolved. But she does this from a position of genuine knowledge about music, not just tech.

The music criticism also represents something else: intellectual curiosity for its own sake. Not everything needs to be directly connected to tech. Sometimes journalists just write about things they're interested in because those things are worth writing about.

This approach is becoming rarer in journalism, where everything gets justified in terms of audience metrics and SEO keywords. Lopatto's willingness to write about music because she cares about music, not because it hits certain keywords, is part of what makes her work interesting.

Outdoors Technology and Backpacking Gear

One of the most distinctive parts of Lopatto's beat portfolio is her coverage of outdoors technology. But this isn't gear reviews that you read once and forget. It's gear reviews backed by actual field testing.

When Lopatto reviews backpacking equipment, she doesn't review it in a lab or in her apartment. She takes it on actual backpacking trips, sometimes for weeks, and evaluates how it performs in the real world. This is a fundamentally different approach from most gear reviews.

This matters because the gap between lab testing and field testing is massive. Equipment that works fine in controlled conditions might fail or underperform in the actual conditions where it'll be used. Rain gear that stays dry in a shower might fail in a three-day storm. A backpack that's comfortable with a light load might cause shoulder problems after mile 15 with a full load.

Her outdoors coverage is a great example of authentic testing that actually serves the reader. She's not trying to sell you something. She's trying to tell you whether specific equipment works for its intended purpose.

This approach has broader implications for tech journalism. Most product reviews in tech don't involve this level of commitment to authentic testing. We read specs, we test in labs, we measure performance metrics. But we often don't live with products the way people actually use them.

Lopatto's willingness to take weeks off to properly test backpacking gear reveals a commitment to authenticity that's increasingly rare. It's not efficient. It doesn't produce constant content streams. But it produces reviews that readers can actually trust.

The outdoors coverage also represents something else: intellectual range. Journalism doesn't have to be narrowly focused on a single vertical to be great journalism. Some of the best work happens at the intersections between different interests.

Fact-checking and critical questioning are the most important practices in skeptical tech journalism, with estimated ratings of 9 and 8 respectively. Estimated data.

The Challenge of Multi-Beat Journalism

Maintaining expertise across multiple beats is genuinely difficult. Most journalism organizations discourage it because it's inefficient. If you're a business reporter, you should be producing business stories constantly. If you're a critic, you should be producing reviews constantly. The idea of splitting focus across multiple areas seems counterproductive.

But there's a hidden advantage to this approach: pattern recognition across domains. When you understand business, culture, technology, law, and policy, you can see connections that single-beat reporters miss.

For example, when something changes in tech policy, Lopatto can immediately understand the business implications, the cultural implications, the legal implications, and what precedent it sets. A single-beat reporter might miss some of those connections.

The challenge is that this approach requires genuine expertise in multiple areas, not just a surface-level understanding. You can't fake expertise. Readers can tell when a journalist is out of their depth. Lopatto's work across all these beats demonstrates actual knowledge, not just curiosity.

This also requires a certain kind of intellectual honesty. When you're wrong about something in one beat, that affects your credibility in others. Lopatto has built a reputation where people trust her across multiple domains, which is significantly harder than building trust in a single domain.

How to maintain multiple beats without losing credibility:

• Develop genuine expertise in each area, not just surface knowledge
• Stay consistent in your approach and values across all beats
• Don't pretend to know things you don't know
• Build relationships with experts in each domain
• Read extensively in each field
• Maintain intellectual humility when moving between domains
• Focus on the connections between beats rather than treating them as isolated areas

Lopatto's ability to do this successfully is relatively rare in journalism. Most people either specialize narrowly or spread themselves too thin. Finding the balance requires genuine commitment to quality across all areas.

The Verge's Editorial Approach: Allowing Journalists to Be Interesting

One of the reasons Lopatto's work is possible is that The Verge, as an organization, has made a conscious choice to allow journalists to be interesting rather than forcing them into narrow lanes.

Most tech publications would never allow this kind of beat diversity. They'd push Lopatto to focus on one area: either tech business reporting, or culture criticism, or policy coverage. Specialization is the conventional wisdom in journalism.

The Verge's approach is different. They hire smart journalists and then let them cover what's interesting and important, even if it doesn't fit neatly into pre-defined categories.

This approach has consequences. It means your reporters sometimes produce work that doesn't fit your expected categories. It means your coverage is less predictable. It means your reporters might occasionally post about cats on New Year's Day and cause reader outrage.

But it also means your reporters produce genuinely interesting journalism. The Verge's success as a publication is partly because they've attracted talented journalists by allowing them to do their best work, which for someone like Lopatto means working across multiple beats.

This organizational philosophy also matters for the quality of tech journalism more broadly. When journalists are forced into narrow specializations, they often become too close to their beats. A reporter who only covers business news might start seeing everything through a business lens. A reporter who only covers policy might miss the cultural implications. A reporter who only covers culture might miss the business and policy dynamics.

Allowing journalists to maintain multiple beats creates natural checks on bias and narrow thinking. It's harder to be captured by a single industry's perspective when you're constantly moving between different domains.

What The Verge's approach suggests about the future of tech journalism:

• Excellence requires allowing journalists to develop genuine expertise rather than forcing specialization
• The most interesting tech stories often happen at the intersection of multiple domains
• Reporters who understand business, culture, law, and technology together produce better analysis than reporters who specialize narrowly
• Allowing some editorial flexibility and reporter autonomy actually improves the quality of journalism
• Tech readers want journalists who can help them understand not just what happened, but what it means

This is a different model from how most tech publications operate. Most have clear vertical organization: phones, gadgets, AI, policy, business, etc. Reporters stay in their verticals. Coverage is organized by category.

The Verge's approach is messier and harder to organize. But it seems to produce better journalism. That's worth paying attention to.

Field testing scores higher in all aspects compared to lab testing, highlighting the importance of real-world conditions. Estimated data.

Developing as a Journalist: What Lopatto's Career Path Reveals

Lopatto didn't start her career with this kind of beat diversity. Her path to becoming someone who can cover business, culture, policy, and technology together is instructive for anyone interested in journalism.

The traditional model would be: pick a beat, become an expert in that beat, build your reputation in that area, eventually move to a bigger publication or outlet covering the same beat at a higher level.

Lopatto's model seems to be different: develop expertise in one area, then expand into adjacent areas, building skills and reputation as you go. Rather than staying narrowly focused, she's become increasingly broad in what she covers.

This requires a different skill set than traditional journalism. You need:

• Intellectual humility: Willingness to learn new domains and admit when you don't know something
• Research skills: Ability to quickly get up to speed on new topics
• Pattern recognition: Ability to connect ideas across different domains
• Writing ability: Capacity to make complex ideas accessible
• Curiosity: Genuine interest in understanding how things work
• Reporting skills: Ability to develop sources and get information across different industries and domains

The key insight here is that journalism is fundamentally about curiosity and rigor. Once you develop those skills, you can apply them to almost any topic. Lopatto's work shows that someone with strong journalism fundamentals can move between beats without losing quality.

Her career also reveals something about the importance of early opportunities. She clearly had access to a publication (The Verge) that was willing to let her experiment with different kinds of coverage. That's not a given. Most journalists don't get that opportunity.

But her willingness to take on different kinds of stories, rather than staying narrowly focused, is a choice she made. That choice has advantages: she's less likely to be pigeonholed, her work is more interesting because she brings different perspectives to tech, and she's probably less burnt out because she's working across multiple domains rather than obsessing over one.

Keys to developing as a multi-beat journalist:

• Master the fundamentals of reporting and writing first
• Gradually expand into adjacent beats while maintaining your original expertise
• Develop genuine knowledge in each area, not just surface understanding
• Look for connections between different beats
• Don't abandon your core skills when moving to new areas
• Be honest about what you know and don't know
• Build relationships with experts across different domains
• Accept that you'll sometimes be wrong in a new area and learn from those mistakes

This approach isn't right for everyone. Some journalists are best served by going deep in a single area. But for journalists with broad interests and strong fundamentals, it's a viable path that can lead to more interesting work and a longer career.

The Cat Post Incident: Authenticity and Audience Expectations

Lopatto's famous story about posting about cats all day on New Year's Day while covering the site solo is actually more revealing than it might seem at first.

What happened: She was left alone covering The Verge's main feed during the dead week between Christmas and New Year's, when most people are off work. She posted a bunch of content about cats. The audience got angry because that's not what they expected from The Verge.

The fact that people got mad is interesting. It suggests that audiences have specific expectations about what publications should cover, and when those expectations get violated, it creates friction. The Verge is a tech publication. They come for tech news. A post about cats doesn't fit that framework, so it feels wrong.

But the incident also reveals something else: the tension between what journalists find interesting and what audiences expect. Lopatto found the cat post interesting enough to spend time on. She wasn't trying to optimize for SEO or audience metrics. She was just writing about something she cared about.

This is a genuinely difficult balance in modern journalism. Audiences have certain expectations. Publications have analytics showing what gets clicks. Journalists have interests and curiosities. Sometimes these align. Sometimes they don't.

The fact that Lopatto apparently can't run the site solo anymore because of this incident suggests that The Verge's editorial team decided the tension wasn't worth it. Better to keep her away from full editorial control than risk another cat post incident.

But there's something worth preserving in what Lopatto was trying to do: the idea that journalism should be interesting first, optimized second. Most modern journalism is exactly backwards. Everything is optimized for metrics and then hopefully turns out to be interesting.

Lopatto's approach is to write about things that are interesting, even if they don't fit neat categories. That's more dangerous from a business perspective. It's also more genuine.

The tension between editorial control and reporter freedom:

• Too much freedom and reporters might post off-topic content that confuses audiences
• Too much control and reporters start gaming metrics instead of pursuing good journalism
• The best approach probably involves setting clear frameworks while allowing flexibility within them
• Different reporters need different amounts of editorial oversight
• The most interesting journalism often happens right at the edge of what's expected

The cat post incident also reveals that audiences are paying attention to who's writing. They notice when coverage seems off-brand or unexpected. That's actually valuable information. It means your brand is strong enough that departures are noticeable.

What Lopatto's Work Reveals About Tech Journalism's Future

If you step back from the specifics of Lopatto's coverage and look at the broader pattern, what does it reveal about where tech journalism is heading?

First, specialization in tech journalism is becoming increasingly limiting. The biggest tech stories of the next decade will be at the intersection of business, culture, policy, and technology. Reporters who only understand one of those domains won't be able to cover those stories well.

Second, authenticity is becoming more valuable. There's an infinite amount of tech news available. What's scarce is genuine insight from reporters who actually understand what they're covering. Lopatto's work stands out because it's clear she actually knows what she's talking about across multiple domains.

Third, the best tech journalism is often not written by tech reporters. Some of the most insightful analysis of how technology is reshaping society comes from people covering culture, policy, business, or other domains. Those reporters have context that pure tech coverage often lacks.

Fourth, intellectual range is becoming a competitive advantage. In a world where everything is specialized, being able to connect ideas across domains is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable. Journalists who can do that stand out.

Fifth, the role of tech journalists is changing from explaining new products to helping readers understand how technology is reshaping everything else. That requires understanding not just tech but how tech intersects with culture, policy, business, and society.

Lopatto's career represents what that kind of journalism looks like: someone who can cover the business implications of tech policy, the cultural implications of new platforms, the policy implications of new technologies, and everything in between.

What tech publications need to do to stay relevant:

• Hire journalists who care about being interesting first, optimized second
• Allow reporters to develop expertise across multiple beats
• Value writers who can make connections across domains
• Invest in long-form, complex reporting that requires genuine expertise
• Stop forcing everything into narrow categories
• Trust your reporters and your readers to be more interesting than algorithms suggest

The tech industry is still relatively young. The role of tech journalism is still being defined. Publications like The Verge, by allowing journalists like Lopatto to work across multiple beats, are helping to shape what that role becomes.

The Role of Skepticism in Covering Tech

One pattern that runs through all of Lopatto's work, across every beat she covers, is consistent skepticism. Not cynicism. Skepticism. There's a difference.

She approaches tech stories with the assumption that something might be wrong. Companies might be misleading customers. Executives might be making bad decisions. Products might not work as advertised. Legal claims might be shaky. Cultural trends might not be what they seem.

This skepticism is valuable because the tech industry has strong incentives to mislead people. Companies want to look better than they are. Executives want to appear more competent than they might be. Marketing wants to promise more than products deliver.

A journalist who doesn't approach tech coverage with skepticism will end up being a press release distributor. Companies will hand them stories and they'll publish them with minimal fact-checking or critical analysis.

Lopatto's approach is different. She fact-checks claims. She asks critical questions. She verifies information. She looks for the version of reality that a company would prefer people not see.

This is particularly important in tech journalism because the companies being covered are often the biggest, most powerful companies in the world. They have resources to manage perception. They have stakes in how they're covered. Without journalist skepticism, those companies would completely control their own narrative.

How skepticism works in practice:

• Don't accept company claims at face value
• Look for evidence that contradicts the official narrative
• Talk to people who have reasons to tell you the truth (often disgruntled employees, competitors, regulators)
• Follow the money to understand incentives
• Ask what the worst-case version of this story looks like
• Be willing to report uncomfortable facts even if they contradict conventional wisdom

This approach has downsides. Companies might be less cooperative with skeptical journalists. You might report stories that later turn out to be more complicated than you initially understood. You might frustrate people who want good news about tech.

But the alternative is worse: journalism that serves power instead of readers. Tech coverage without skepticism is just marketing.

Lopatto's work across all her beats demonstrates what skeptical journalism actually looks like. It's not adversarial. It's not ideological. It's just committed to understanding what's actually true rather than what companies want you to believe.

Building Credibility as a Journalist

One of the things that allows Lopatto to cover such diverse beats is that she's built genuine credibility. When she publishes something, readers believe it. That credibility is the foundation that allows her to move between different domains without losing readers.

How do you build that kind of credibility?

Be right more often than you're wrong. This is the foundation. If you report facts, they should be accurate. If you make predictions, they should prove out. Over time, if you're right more often than you're wrong, readers develop trust.

Admit when you're wrong. Nobody's right all the time. What matters is how you handle being wrong. Do you quietly delete it? Or do you acknowledge the error and explain what you learned? Admitting errors actually builds credibility because it shows you care more about accuracy than about appearing infallible.

Show your work. When you make a claim, explain where it comes from. Link to sources. Quote people on the record. Help readers evaluate whether your claims are credible.

Be consistent in your approach. Don't attack companies you disagree with more aggressively than companies you think are fine. Don't give favorable coverage to people you like and harsh coverage to people you don't. Be consistent in your standards.

Develop expertise. Readers can tell when you actually know what you're talking about versus when you're improvising. Develop real knowledge in what you cover.

Stay independent. Don't take money or favors from the people and companies you cover. Don't develop friendships that compromise your judgment. Maintain clear boundaries between yourself and your sources.

Write clearly. If people don't understand what you're saying, they can't evaluate whether it's true. Good writing is part of building credibility because it allows people to actually engage with your arguments.

Have conviction. Present your findings confidently. If the evidence supports a conclusion, say so. Don't hedge constantly or try to present "both sides" of things when one side is clearly wrong.

Lopatto's work across multiple beats demonstrates these principles in action. She reports accurately. She admits when she's wrong. She shows her work. She's consistent. She has expertise. She's independent. She writes clearly. And she has conviction in what she reports.

That's why she can cover business, culture, policy, music, and gear all at the same publication and be credible in all those domains. The credibility transfers because the underlying principles are consistent.

The Future of Multi-Beat Journalism

As the tech industry continues to evolve and become increasingly integrated into every aspect of society, the question of how to cover it effectively becomes more complex.

The old model—narrow specialization by topic—might be becoming obsolete. Instead, the future might be journalists who understand how technology interacts with business, culture, policy, and society. That's what Lopatto represents.

We're likely to see more journalists like her: people with broad knowledge who can make connections across domains that single-beat reporters miss. The complexity of tech coverage demands that kind of intellectual range.

But that also means the bar for tech journalism is getting higher. You can't just understand tech. You have to understand business, culture, and policy too. That's a lot to ask of reporters.

How publications can develop multi-beat journalists:

• Hire people with intellectual curiosity, not just narrow expertise
• Give them time and space to develop knowledge across multiple domains
• Encourage them to read broadly, not just in their beat
• Let them take on assignments in different areas
• Pair them with experts in domains where they're less experienced
• Don't punish them for occasionally producing work that doesn't fit categories
• Trust that good journalism will find an audience regardless of category

The challenge for publications is that this approach is less efficient than narrow specialization. A business reporter can produce more business stories if they focus exclusively on business. A culture critic can produce more reviews if they focus exclusively on reviews.

But efficiency isn't the same as quality. And in journalism, quality is ultimately what determines credibility. Publications like The Verge seem to have decided that the quality gains from allowing journalists to work across beats outweigh the efficiency costs.

The future of tech journalism might look less like:

• Clear vertical organization (business, culture, gadgets, policy, etc.)
• Reporters specializing narrowly
• Coverage organized by category

And more like:

• Reporters with broad knowledge covering complex stories
• Coverage organized by importance and insight rather than category
• Journalists who can connect ideas across domains
• Publications that value understanding over specialization

If that's the direction things are moving, then journalists like Lopatto are not anomalies. They're templates for what the future of tech journalism looks like.

FAQ

Who is Elizabeth Lopatto?

Elizabeth Lopatto is a Senior Reporter at The Verge who covers an unusually diverse range of beats including business, media, technology policy, culture, pop culture, and technology itself. She's known for refusing to be confined to a single beat and instead pursuing whatever stories are interesting and important, regardless of category.

What beats does Elizabeth Lopatto cover?

Lopatto covers business reporting (especially corporate scandals and fraud trials), media criticism and television analysis, technology policy and legal issues, heavy metal music and music criticism, Elon Musk's decisions and behavior patterns, pop culture, and outdoors technology through actual field testing. This diverse portfolio makes her one of the most versatile journalists in tech media.

Why is beat diversity important in tech journalism?

Beat diversity is important because the most significant tech stories often intersect with business, culture, policy, and society. Reporters who only understand one domain miss important context and connections. Journalists like Lopatto who understand multiple domains can produce more comprehensive analysis of how technology actually impacts the world.

How does Elizabeth Lopatto approach tech coverage differently?

Lopatto approaches tech coverage with consistent skepticism, pattern recognition over daily news cycles, and genuine expertise across multiple domains. Rather than treating tech as an isolated vertical, she analyzes how technology intersects with business, culture, policy, and society. She also emphasizes authentic reporting, including actual field testing when covering products.

What is the "cat post incident" and why does it matter?

During a New Year's Day when Lopatto was covering The Verge's main feed solo, she posted multiple pieces about cats. The audience responded with anger, apparently feeling that this was off-brand for a tech publication. The incident reveals the tension between reporter interests and audience expectations, and suggests that The Verge decided it was better to avoid giving Lopatto full editorial control than to risk further departures from expected coverage.

What does Lopatto's career reveal about the future of tech journalism?

Lopatto's work suggests that the future of tech journalism may involve less narrow specialization and more journalists who can connect ideas across business, culture, technology, and policy. As technology becomes increasingly integrated into every aspect of society, reporters who understand multiple domains will be increasingly valuable for helping readers understand what tech actually means beyond the products themselves.

How has The Verge's editorial approach enabled journalists like Lopatto?

The Verge has made a conscious choice to allow journalists to work across multiple beats and pursue interesting stories even if they don't fit neatly into predefined categories. This approach is less efficient than forcing narrow specialization, but it produces more interesting journalism and attracts talented reporters who want the freedom to do their best work across multiple domains.

Why is skepticism important in tech journalism?

Skepticism is crucial in tech journalism because tech companies have strong incentives to control their own narratives and present themselves favorably. Without journalist skepticism, companies would completely control coverage. Skeptical journalism—not cynical, but genuinely questioning official claims—is what makes tech coverage serve readers instead of serving the companies being covered.

Conclusion: The Case for Intellectual Range in Journalism

Elizabeth Lopatto's career represents something increasingly rare in modern journalism: a reporter who refuses to be narrowly defined. She covers business, culture, policy, music, technology, and the intersections between all of these. She brings skepticism, expertise, and intellectual curiosity to whatever she covers.

This kind of work matters more than it might seem. Tech journalism often gets criticized for being too cheerful about technology, too willing to accept company narratives, too focused on product launches and not enough on implications. Reporters like Lopatto help counterbalance that tendency by bringing policy expertise, cultural knowledge, and genuine skepticism to tech coverage.

The Verge's decision to allow this kind of beat diversity is worth paying attention to. It's a bet that quality and intellectual range matter more than narrow optimization. It's a bet that readers want journalists who can help them understand not just what technology companies are doing, but what those actions mean for business, culture, policy, and society.

That bet seems to be paying off. The Verge has become one of the most important publications covering technology, and that success is partly because they've built a team that includes journalists with Lopatto's range and depth.

As technology becomes increasingly important to understanding everything—business, culture, policy, entertainment, everything—the value of journalists who understand technology and these other domains will only increase. The future of tech journalism might look a lot like what Lopatto's doing: refusing narrow categories, pursuing genuine understanding, maintaining intellectual curiosity across domains.

That's harder than specialization. It requires more work, more expertise, more willingness to admit what you don't know and learn it. But the results are richer, more interesting journalism that actually helps readers understand how technology is reshaping everything else.

If you care about understanding technology and its impacts on the world, read Lopatto's work across all her beats. You'll understand tech better. You'll understand how it intersects with business, culture, policy, and entertainment better. You'll see the patterns that matter more clearly.

That's what great journalism does. That's what Lopatto's been doing, across every beat she covers. And it's exactly what tech journalism needs more of.

Key Takeaways

• Elizabeth Lopatto represents a new model of tech journalism: multi-beat reporters who understand business, culture, policy, and technology together
• Her diverse beat portfolio (business, media, policy, music, outdoors tech) demonstrates that intellectual curiosity matters more than narrow specialization
• The Verge's decision to allow journalists to work across multiple domains produces more interesting and credible journalism than narrow vertical organization
• Skepticism and pattern recognition, not daily news cycles, are what separates great tech journalism from basic reporting
• The future of tech journalism will likely involve less specialization and more journalists who can connect ideas across domains as technology reshapes all of society

Related Articles

• How Global Trade Power Is Shifting: The Tariff War's Hidden Weapon [2025]
• 20 Best Useless Websites to Visit When You're Bored [2025]