Gamers are their own worst enemy. The game media is only a symptom of this that stirs the pot further.

I guess a little kudos goes to Evil Avatar for recognizing the inconsistencies of the titles and the quote.

Indeed. I hadn't seen that one. Interestingly, they got that right over the article they link to from WIRED.

It does not. One of the Everything Else threads on a topic (I can't remember which) had a link to an editorial on some subject and then a "news article" which effectively just posted quotes and summaries from the editorial. That's it, no independent research, no other sources, no counter-arguments. I'll see if I can find it, I can't even remember what the topic was.

Examples like the ones Elysium gave in the article are why so many writers in the games business are often called "not journalists" or "journalists who can't get a real job." It's not that there aren't people out there trying to do a good job and give due diligence to what they're referencing but sites like Joystiq and Kotaku have created an atmosphere around the concept of "Get it out now so we're first and we'll confirm it later. If we're wrong, we'll post a one-line retraction after the jump and everyone will forget about it." The larger gaming news sites have largely had to stoop to their half-assed level of journalism just to keep up with them. The only thing we as consumers can do I guess (aside from not giving hits to these sites which will never happen) is much like with cable news, take what's said with a grain of salt and dig a little deeper to find out the truth ourselves. Problem is much like cable news, these sites are getting more popular and their readers are as a whole, less willing to dig.

Everyone just wants to be first, like those guys who first reported that the Half-Life 2 code had been stolen.

As someone who has worked in newspapers for seven years and as a reporter for five, I can say that, if I ever ripped a quote from another person's article, I wouldn't have had a job for very long.

That said, the traditional media certainly indulge in frequent circle jerks, with the wire services and cable generally picking up the leavings of the heavy-hitters (ewww). The 24-hour news cycle has put a premium on quick turnarounds, and that's a prescription for laziness and incomplete reporting. In an industry often dependent on its fans for its journalism, that problem is compounded.

As Elysium's experience shows, the crowd-sourcing of information has its hazards as well as its benefits. Buyer beware, no?

(golf clap)

Indeed. Well done. A spit take almost occurred but I caught it.

I saw Gamedaily.biz's headline and it struck my as a painfully obvious attempt to stir up a little controversy. I can't say I'm surprised at the way the story evolved. Just disappointed.

I once posted a slightly negative preview of a game, and a reader responded with a link to another news outlet's take on the title. The reader noted that the other outlet had a "different, more balanced perspective." I checked the link, and was surprised to find that the other outlet's "preview" of the game was in fact a word-for-word cut and paste publisher press release.

Or a slashdot article... I read about Gamedaily's article on slashdot and after first being surprised about this being news ("hey, slashdot has an article about a podcast that I listen to") I was just as surprised about Ken's comments being explained as defending Lair.

Copy-and-paste coverage seems a feature (not a bug?) of the whole slashdot/blogosphere culture. I'm pretty sure that I've seen other people complaining about this style of journalism. You're not alone, Elysium

I wonder how many of them bothered to download the podcast. But I don't believe that would've made much of a difference. Controversy will bring in the readers regardless of "what actually happened."

Headlines are brutal in that way. I can't count the number of times that headlines of respected publications like national newspapers and the like are guilty of the exact same misleading phrasing as this one. My brother works for one of these national newspapers and when I rail on him about it, he is quick to shrug and say "Don't blame me, blame the Editor. I wrote the story, he wrote the headline."

I think that there is a disconnect between the journalists whose job it is to report the news (shallowness notwithstanding) and the editors, who not only edit, but also must make the story more appealing and attract readership.
"Ken Levigne Defends Lair Motion Control" is a hell of a lot more sexy than "Ken Levigne speculates as to reasons behind implementation of Lair Motion Control". Be honest: which one would YOU be more likely to click on?
It's a crowded marketplace, and as with most entertainment audiences, viewership is generated by sinking to the lowest common denominator.

The truth is, we don't really need to click on it to begin with. But hey, when every morsel of news is important, making something SEEM like its news is just as good as news itself.

This is the difference between journalism and blogging. But I actually don't believe we should be holding them to the same standard. Rather, we need to recognize (both as writers and readers) that we are looking at two fundamentally different kinds of writing. One is quite literally "hey check this out." We've come to think of blogging as somehow more than this, but at its default settings, its not. My personal blog certainly bears no relationship to news, nor to most game-fan sites.

Where things get tricky is in editorial. By definition (my definition to be sure) once you start writing a piece of non-fiction that includes your own voice, you're writing editorial in some fashion, and as such, you just raised your own bar. So its one thing to say "Hey, check out this article because isn't it a hoot." It's another to say "... and here's why I think so and so is a douchebag." When you crossed that line, you took on an obligation to your reader (if, and it's a big if, you're asking to be taken seriously).

Where the line also gets blury is when you have "newsblog" places like Kotaku and Joystiq. They're slippery because they do occasionally provide unique and original content (say, covering TGS), but often slip into story regurgitation. Caveat emptor.

As someone who works in a different form of news media, I can only respond to Magnus' comment with, "No more phone calls! We have a winner!"

To the company, news is about eyeballs. Eyeballs = money. To the writer, journalism is about quality, or truth, or some other meaningless gobbledygook. That's fine, as long as it brings the eyeballs. If it doesn't, we'll bring in someone who doesn't mind following Brittney Spears' daily activities ad naseum.

I used to love my job. Lately I am ashamed. . .

Don't even get me started on the average blog.