Robert Florence stepped down from Eurogamer after writing the following on journalists & PR.

kazooka wrote:

Initially, it sounded like Lauren Wainwright was taking poor advice and had gotten swept up in a bunch of weird legal momentum. Increasingly, it's beginning to sound like the whole thing was her idea, and that she's been prosecuting it pretty vigilantly. I've seen some suggestions that focusing on Wainwright takes attention away from the real issue at hand, but I don't see why we can't discuss both. People are allowed to make mistakes, but this is looking less like a mistake and more like a calculated and cynical maneuver.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/edito...

I don't tend to think as much of Ben Kuchera as many others do, mostly because of the smug high horse he frequently sits on and the fact that he often breaks his own journalistic rules but I think he's spot on with this article. That so many other outlets are dismissing it as unimportant is very telling. Wainwright has been going out of her way to whitewash what are blatantly obvious conflicts of interest. Whether or not the legal threats were her idea, she wouldn't be trying so hard to hide her clear industry ties if she didn't think there was something wrong with it. She promotes Square Enix games while working for them and appears to have lied about not reviewing any while in their employ, I don't think it's in any way unreasonable to say she's currently in a severe state of conflict of interest. In short, based on the facts as they are currently presented, she's wrong, Eurogamer was right.

The thing with games journalism for me is that I don't think we need to see it everywhere. I don't think every enthusiast site needs to be packed with trained journalists but a great many of those reporting on this stuff do think of themselves that way. It's a perception many create for themselves but then get offended when they're called out on it. That's one of the things I love about the Giant Bomb guys. Most of them get audibly disgusted when the whole "game journalism" topic comes up and none of them (well maybe Patrick, I don't know) consider themselves journalists and they don't care because they generally think the title's bullsh*t in the context of what they're covering. They're opinionated but not pretentious (the latter of which is the problem with people like Kuchera). Rather than try to say "We have this cozy relationship with the industry but we're totally still objective journalists guys!", they instead say "We have this cozy relationship with the industry because guess what? It helps us do our job better and give you more interesting stuff to see." Instead of denying the ties, they own them and are honest and upfront which to me, makes them far more trustworthy than any self-professed "gaming journalist". The tired "games journalism" debate is one many in the space perpetuate themselves, I don't think they get to go "Oh no, this again?!" when a very clear demonstration of the problem is put forth as was the case with Wainwright.

Grubber788 wrote:

I think OG holds a high standard for the word "journalism" if he thinks PR influence essentially disqualifies use of the term. I reckon 90% of most "real journalism" is directed by some company or companies' PR efforts. That's the way journalism is. A journalist who refuses to work with PR people won't last long in the industry.

You don't seem to understand the power dynamics between a PR rep and a reporter or editor. The PR rep's entire job is to get their client column inches, ink, hits, page views, impressions, or whatever metric they're using these days.

How does that PR rep get that media coverage? Well, they first have to get through to the journalist in question. That's not a small feat in and of itself because, depending on the size of the media market, there could be anywhere from dozens to hundreds of other PR reps hounding that journalist for the same reason each and every day.

If that PR rep gets lucky, the reporter might actually read their email or listen to their voice mail. But that's not enough. The PR rep needs the reporter to find their story pitch interesting enough to follow up on. And that requires a careful balancing of everyone's objectives. The PR rep's objective is obvious: media coverage for their client. The objective for the reporter is more complex.

First and foremost, the journalist wants something that their readers are going to finding interesting or helpful. Ham-fisted PR pitches that focus exclusively on the client or the client's products or services aren't interesting and that PR rep will simply be ignored.

Next, the pitch has to sync up with the journalist's immediate needs. Every reporter is on a deadline of one sort or another all the time. This means that a PR reps pitch has to not only be timed right--when the journalist is actively looking for new article ideas--but also be followed up on the journalist's schedule. If the PR rep can't do this, then they aren't going to get media coverage for their client.

That means the PR rep has to have everything that journalist might need to write that story ready to go. He needs a customer of his client lined up and ready to tell their story to the reporter. In fact, he needs a couple of customers lined up because one of them will always be too busy to fit the reporter's deadline. The PR rep needs the client's spokespeople and executives ready to be interviewed at the drop of a hat. The PR rep also has to have industry experts primed to say good things about their client, which really means they have to spend months beforehand getting them up to speed about what their client is doing and why it matters.

All these things are needed because no credible journalist would ever write an article that didn't have multiple sources and/or viewpoints. And even if the journalist wasn't so credible and wrote a one-sided puff piece, it would be killed by their editor.

What should be clear is that throughout this entire process the power resides solely with the reporter and editor, not the PR rep. The PR rep cannot force the journalist to do anything and the journalist can safely ignore any--or all--PR reps and still do their jobs.

And, yes, I do have a high standard for journalism because I don't think it helps anyone to claim that a reporter--whether for the New York Times or a local newspaper--who is investigating government corruption or just reporting on what happened at a city council meeting is exactly the same as someone who reviews games or follows the Hollywood set just because both get paid to write. They're not.

Keep in mind, I'm saying this as someone whose been in the PR racket for nearly two decades now. Throughout my career, especially early on, I've been laughed at, cursed at, and hung up on by reporters for major newspapers and news magazines because that's how it's supposed to happen. I was making a shameless pitch on behalf of my client and the media outlet rightly told me to stuff it. That's journalistic standards in action.

And the absolute lack of journalistic standards in gaming media is exactly what Florence was bemoaning in his editorial. No newspaper would ever allow one of their reporters to prostitute themselves by appearing in a promotion for one of their advertisers like Keighley did. It undermines the credibility of the journalist and, more importantly, the perceived objectiveness of the media outlet. That's why there's a wall between editorial and ad sales with more traditional media.

Nor would a newspaper allow one of their reporters to write a one-sided story based solely on documents fed to them by a PR agency. That's simply not journalism. That's someone playing at being a journalist and relying on the fact they have a byline to give them credibility that they do not deserve. Klepek was a hack for writing that article and a naive one at that. There was a very good reason the law firm's PR agency sent him those documents and he did exactly what they wanted him to: write an article based on partial--and unconfirmed--information that made Activision look bad. Again, that's the total lack of journalistic standards Florence was talking about.

Polygon copy/pastes press release, posts as news stories, people question it, comments get deleted.

Oh boy.

From some of the discussions I've had with people on Twitter about this, whether or not they broke their own rules seems dependant on how you define what advertorial is. I suppose that's a subjective thing but to me, taking a press release, rewording it slightly (but not enough to make it distinguishable from what was put on several other sites) and posting it as a full blown news story in the middle of your news feed is pretty clearly advertorial to me. That you didn't get paid for it (which Chris Grant claims they weren't) doesn't excuse it. This is another thing you don't see on Giant Bomb.

EDIT: Chris Grant is saying that in response to fan feedback, they're removing the article from their front page and leaving comments disabled but are unhiding all the comments they removed. Step in the right direction. Grant's initial hostility was unwarranted but ultimately, they did respond to feedback which I think is good. I'm sure starting something like that is always a learning experience, I hope they learned something valuable today.

Not only does Klepek's piece at Giant Bomb disclose, in detail, where he received the memo...

This filing landed in my inbox from the public relations firm for West and Zampella's attorneys. I've been sitting on the filing for a few weeks, knowing full well this very specific filing was handed over to me, a reporter, with a specific agenda in mind, and one that doesn't paint Activision in a great light. Upon further reading, I concluded there was enough relevant, interesting information about the allegations to warrant sharing.

...but it also calls out explicitly that the document was included in the court filing, which one would assume that Klepek vetted before posting, even though the entire filing wasn't available online...

"Project Icebreaker" was, based on a recent filing from the upcoming trial, an ongoing Activision initiative to uncover information regarding West and Zampella by accessing their work email, computer, and phones.

...

If it were possible, I'd share much, much more. The entire case filing is not available online (proof!), and since I'm not in Los Angeles, I can't go to the court house myself. Maybe that'll change when I'm in town for E3.

...as well as the more significant history that Klepek has with the case, including his reporting at G4 which included procurement of the original internal Activision memo that broke the story in the first place:

The concept of Activision investigating West and Zampella is not new. While reporting for G4 when the original news broke, I'd obtained an internal Activision memo asking internal studios to seek evidence about the following:

"Documents regarding past, current or future IW projects, including but not limited to any and all businesses analyses of future projects (e.g. Modern Warfare 3)"
"Documents regarding any potential 'spin out' of IW, including but not limited to any communications with IW employees, West or Zampella regarding forming a new studio independent of Activision"
"Documents regarding West and Zampella's communications with Activision's competitors, including but not limited to Electronic Arts"

As a fair shake, he doubled back with Activision's lawyers for comment on the story before posting and none was offered:

Activision's lawyers did not respond to my request for comment regarding this story.

Finally, the piece also includes an upload of the entire document itself, so that anybody that felt so concerned about the story's veracity could peruse the document for themselves.

The disclosures are the key thing here, in my opinion. And you don't have to scramble to find instances where a More Professional Newsdesk posts a press release in its entirety with an appropriate dressing of disclosures.

If you still see Klepek's actions as a blind reprinting of a document from a PR -- if you see his additional summary comments of over a dozen pages of documentation, which the majority of the audience isn't going to investigate on their own, as regurgitation -- then I don't know what to tell you.

wordsmythe wrote:
Hollowheel wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Hollowheel wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

3. Lionizing past journalism is folly and romanticizing a fiction. Walter Cronkite was a great journalist. But even in the 60's he was 1 of hundreds, thousands. Walter Cronkite is what we choose to remember from that era. Not the inumerable hacks that were his contemporaries. And we remember Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow because of the history they talked about, much more than the men themselves.

I pretty much agree with everything you've said but this. While it is true that there were hacks in every era, the mid-to-late 90s onward brought on a resurgence of non-objective and yellow journalism that would not have flown in the 70s and 80s (at least, not in the papers that mattered). Sure, maybe you can only look to post WWI to the the late 80s, but there are periods in which the journalism profession adhered more closely to it's storied idealism.

The shift you recognize was the shift away from pretending to be objective. Let me say this now: No human is objective. Can't be done. We can, however, be honest about our known potential biases, and that's where disclosure comes in. Most professional periodicals and journalistic organizations have rules about disclosure, usually including a cash value amount above which gifts from PR or others either must be disclosed or may not be accepted. I've had to talk to some of our own writers about this, too. You may think something doesn't bias you, but 1) you may well be wrong, and 2) if readers might doubt you, you're going to wish you had disclosed it rather than commit what will appear to have been a cover-up.

I disagree. The shift had more to do with less obvious changes in things like sourcing, editorial oversight and circulation number pandering (damn you internet!). While it is impossible be truly objective, it is possible through proper editorial guidelines (using multiple sources, quoting both sides, fact checking,etc.) to ameliorate reporter bias (and newspaper, and new channel). In the mid-90s, the Society of Professional Journalists officially dropped "objectivity" from their ethics guidelines. I don't think that it's a coincidence that journalism has been spiraling downward ever since.

I, too, disagree. What you claim is a downward spiral, I see as the combination of false nostalgia and a removal of the curtain hiding subjective journalism (not just reporting) which had always existed. Journalism, as KingGorilla points out, was never as good as we may want to believe it was. Oftentimes it was worse than we realized, as it cloaked itself in the pretense of objectivity. It may seem worse now, but I might go so far as to argue that the obviousness of subjectivity in today's journalism (again, not just news) makes for the final product to actually be better. At least now a good deal of readers and viewers know that it's Kool Aid.

I don't know, Wordsmythe. I hear what you are saying, and understand the argument. The problem is that "obvious" subjectivity isn't necessarily obvious. Take FoxNews, or in the Bay Area, the left leaning KPFA. Sadly, much of the media audience isn't sophisticated enough to realize when they are being given dramatically filtered information. In the case of these two examples, the "news" simply serves to further narrow the perceptions of their viewers/listeners.

And as far as your claim of false nostalgia, I should say that I won't claim the period I'm talking was even remotely perfect. However, it was when I worked in it (so I'm familiar first hand), and I can say that of all my journo buddies (from those days) still in the industry have nothing positive to say about the current state of the profession. Standards, your views on objectivity not-withstanding, have deteriorated dramatically.

But it seems like you have a very different view of the current state of journalism. Is that what you work in now?

Rather than try to say "We have this cozy relationship with the industry but we're totally still objective journalists guys!", they instead say "We have this cozy relationship with the industry because guess what? It helps us do our job better and give you more interesting stuff to see." Instead of denying the ties, they own them and are honest and upfront which to me, makes them far more trustworthy than any self-professed "gaming journalist".

What Giant Bomb does and says, as you describe it, is the way things ought to be done by journalists, critics, reporters, and (in my view) anyone else who's writing. Nobody is without bias, and it is the ethical imperative of the person writing to admit and explain their potential biases as part of explaining where they're coming from in approaching the topic.

Hollowheel wrote:

I don't know, Wordsmythe. I hear what you are saying, and understand the argument. The problem is that "obvious" subjectivity isn't necessarily obvious. Take FoxNews, or in the Bay Area, the left leaning KPFA. Sadly, much of the media audience isn't sophisticated enough to realize when they are being given dramatically filtered information. In the case of these two examples, the "news" simply serves to further narrow the perceptions of their viewers/listeners.

And as far as your claim of false nostalgia, I should say that I won't claim the period I'm talking was even remotely perfect. However, it was when I worked in it (so I'm familiar first hand), and I can say that of all my journo buddies (from those days) still in the industry have nothing positive to say about the current state of the profession. Standards, your views on objectivity not-withstanding, have deteriorated dramatically.

But it seems like you have a very different view of the current state of journalism. Is that what you work in now?

I don't work in journalism now. That was a tight enough sector to find employment in well before the crash.

And I think the reason for that is the same reason I'm not as disappointed with broadcast media—I pretty much gave it up as dead about a decade ago. As someone said on Twitter earlier today, (I'm paraphrasing): Five minutes following the right Twitter streams gets you more information than half an hour watching CNN.

There's a lot about the current situation that needs figuring out. Namely, we find ourselves in a place where one of the few ways to maintain a support structure is to go niche, focusing on a demographic, an interest, an ideology. A lot of what people used to go to TV, newspaper and radio for is done for free now on the internet, and I think we all know that things have been lost (namely beat reporting and that editorial infrastructure I've been harping about). What's been and is being lost is the stuff that wasn't as directly valued before, but that it turns out we really don't want to lose.

"And the absolute lack of journalistic standards in gaming media is exactly what Florence was bemoaning in his editorial. "

I just want to check something - A]are you really saying that nobody that produces content to do with gaming has any journalistic ethics? None? Nada?

I'm going to repeat that, not to be condescending or sarcastic, but just because I find that an incredible thing to say.

Nobody producing content related to gaming - video, words, audio, images - has any awareness of journalistic ethics. Nobody creating gaming content has ever considered said ethics when filming, writing, recording or taking photographs.

EDIT:
Splng

OzymandiasAV wrote:

Not only does Klepek's piece at Giant Bomb disclose, in detail, where he received the memo...

And yet he still writes exactly what the PR agency wanted him to write...

Not only that, he doesn't even bother to provide his readers with any background about the case that could help them decide how to view the veracity of court documents and why they ended up in his inbox.

They ended up in his inbox because there was, at least, tens of millions of dollars at stake for West and Zampella (and millions in legal fees for the law firm). They ended up in his inbox because the case was just weeks away from going to trial and West and Zampella's lawyers wanted to put pressure on Activision to settle. They ended up in his inbox because everyone knew Klepek would bite on something any real journalist would pass on.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

...but it also calls out explicitly that the document was included in the court filing, which one would assume that Klepek vetted before posting, even though the entire filing wasn't available online...

He still wrote an article using partial and unconfirmed information, information he himself admitted showed Activision in a bad light. That's unacceptable.

A real journalist would have waited until they could go to the LA courthouse and pull the entire court record before writing the story. No. I take that back. A real journalist would be working for a media company that either footed the bill to fly Klepek out to LA to do the necessary background research for the article or who had a LexisNexis subscription that allowed them to view all the court filings.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

...as well as the more significant history that Klepek has with the case, including his reporting at G4 which included procurement of the original internal Activision memo that broke the story in the first place:

You do understand that that internal memo was included in the lawsuit that West and Zampella filed, right? Klepek didn't procure anything. It was a publicly available document. Hell, the LA Times wrote an article about it on the same day as Klepek supposedly broke the story.

That Klepek makes obtaining a publicly available document sound like he's connected and in the know says a lot about him and his character, none of it good.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

As a fair shake, he doubled back with Activision's lawyers for comment on the story before posting and none was offered:

So he says. Whether I should trust him on that is an entirely separate issue.

A cub reporter would know that you go to the source for quotes. That means he should have directly approached Activision for a quote, not gone through their lawyers or outside law firm. That leads me to believe that all he did was fire off a blind email to whoever's name was on the Activision memo he supposedly procured without even checking to see if they still worked at Activision or their outside law firm.

And he didn't get a quote from West and Zampella's lawyers or West and Zampella themselves. Again, a cub reporter would have done that even if that meant they had to write "West and Zampella had no comment."

OzymandiasAV wrote:

Finally, the piece also includes an upload of the entire document itself, so that anybody that felt so concerned about the story's veracity could peruse the document for themselves.

The disclosures are the key thing here, in my opinion. And you don't have to scramble to find instances where a More Professional Newsdesk posts a press release in its entirety with an appropriate dressing of disclosures.

If you still see Klepek's actions as a blind reprinting of a document from a PR -- if you see his additional summary comments of over a dozen pages of documentation, which the majority of the audience isn't going to investigate on their own, as regurgitation -- then I don't know what to tell you.

No, Klepek's article only included the documents that were hand fed to him by the PR agency that worked for West and Zampella's law firm. It didn't include all the court filings, which might have told a very different story. You can't tell the full story--or an objective one--if you don't have all the information. That's what separates a puff piece or a hack job from actual journalism.

As for your Reuters link, I hope you understand that distributing press releases is actually a service Thomson Reuters, the corporate owner of Reuters, provides. That's why it's listed under the heading Press Release, includes the notification that Reuters has nothing to do with the content, and, at the very bottom, says "This announcement is distributed by Thomson Reuters on behalf of Thomson Reuters clients." That's because it's not news and Reuters isn't actually reporting on it. It's just a press release that Thomson Reuters ONE was paid to distribute via the company's wire service. That's also why you'll never see that press release anywhere under Reuters' business news section.

And I don't know what to tell you if you still think that Klepek is a real journalist or that he was singled out because of his outstanding reporting or "significant history" with the story. He was approached because West and Zampella's lawyers knew he'd bite and write an article that slammed Activision just a few weeks before the entire mess headed to trial.

Now compare that with a story about the lawsuit that the LA Times ran about the same time. You'll note they had access to additional documents--ones that Klepek said he didn't have--and that those documents got to the heart of the lawsuit--whether or not the two were wrongfully terminated---not focus in gory detail on what Activision might have done to get access to West and Zampella's computers, emails, and voice mails. Not that that behavior is even remarkable considering it's been long settled that employees can expect absolutely no privacy when using company provided computers to send emails over a company-owned email system or make calls--or get voice mails--on company provided phones. I mean Zampella's own lawyer effectively tells him "What are you? A f*cking idiot? Why are you sending me sh*t using your Infinity Ward email address?" in one of the emails.

1Dgaf wrote:

"And the absolute lack of journalistic standards in gaming media is exactly what Florence was bemoaning in his editorial. "

I just want to check something - A]are you really saying that nobody that produces content to do with gaming has any journalistic ethics? None? Nada?

I'm going to repeat that, not to be condescending or sarcastic, but just because I find that an incredible thing to say.

Nobody producing content related to gaming - video, words, audio, images - has any awareness of journalistic ethics. Nobody creating gaming content has ever considered said ethics when filming, writing, recording or taking photographs.

EDIT:
Splng

You're right. I shouldn't have used "absolute" because nothing is absolute.

I know from GWJ and a tiny handful of other sites that there are writers who cover games and the gaming industry that follow some level of journalistic standards and professional ethics.

I also know there are loads and loads of folks who can barely string two sentences together who are courted by gaming companies and their PR agencies solely because they can get a million views on their blog or YouTube channel.

Personally I don't consider either to be journalists that should be taken seriously--that I reserve for actual news media--but even a curmudgeon like myself can see that there a big difference in professionalism between them.

Never heard of GMA's.
That Geoff Keighley image is so dead-on, but I wish my beloved Doritos (the snack, not the company, which is Frito-Lay anyway) were not besmirched with the association.

Holy sh*t, Lauren Wainwright, avoid her at all costs.

I'll answer a couple of questions from a few pages back. It's quite late and I've eaten a couple of ham tortillas, so I won't check your exact wording.

On Mitch Gitelman - I didn't mean to imply he just went ahead anyway. I think he nudged the PR people and so they confirmed things with me. I really liked the guy; he swore a lot, was very honest about problems at FASA and he didn't mind us saying he had a man-crush on Bill Gates.

Trip Hawkins. I met him a corridor in 2005. In 2010 I got in touch. He must have remembered the corridor and we did the interview. (Another cool guy, but he doesn't have a crush on Bill Gates.)

I think we've received about seven boardgames and a couple of indie-style games to discuss. We didn't talk about them all. And, because of how we schedule things and decide topics, it might be several months between playing a game and talking about it. But that's useful (and sometimes necessary) because it gives you longer to play and to reflect. (That's also why our 'GOTY' shows are done six months late. And why don't have set categories.)

On the point of importance, I'm not so demented as to think we're creating great works of insight that will be studied through the generations. There aren't going to be stone feet in the desert with HatchetJob on. But I believe that some of our interviews, some line, some insight from them, might just lodge in a listener's head. The kind of fact that you'll remember for years, that may change how you view some aspect of the world, but that you can't remember where it's from.

So...I'm not sure where we'd sit on your spectrum of standards. I'd like to think we're quite far to the legit side. For all our goofy jokes, I think we take things seriously.

EDIT

Clarification etc

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:
Ulairi wrote:

Video game critics are writing book reports about toys.

I gave some thought to this elegant trivialization of an endeavour I've undertaken in the past, trying to think of examples in other areas. Is automotive journalism not essentially the same? Maybe the price of the "toys" involved differentiates the perceived status of the people writing about them.

We can write about people, about entities, but ultimately the focus (and I daresay the interest of the readers) is on things, the products produced. Some of us are fascinated by the making of the sausage, but 99% of folks just want their sweet, sweet sausage and to be told how yummy the next sausage will be.

I think automotive journalism is very similar to game journalism. You're exactly right, it's just the price of the toy being written about.

My problem is only when game "journalists" try to have it both ways. They want to say that they are changing the world, video games matter, we are so awesome! and anything else Ploygon has said since they've announced the site but then when they mess up, they say "hey man! it's just video games, have fun!" they want to have it both ways. If game reporters were more up front about what they are doing and the triviality of it, I don't think people would really care. I just think that these people are growing up and want to feel as if their job is important and are trying to justify it more than they really need to. The game press (by and large) have no ethical standards but they do have contempt for their readers.

I was really turned off when Polygon came out with that silly documentary and how all the reporters reacted to the criticism on twitter. Follow that up with the Pizza Hut PR Piece they "reported" on and how they treated criticism, really tells me that these people are not grown ups and should not be treated as such. I hold them in contempt because they have earned it.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:
Ulairi wrote:

Video game critics are writing book reports about toys.

I gave some thought to this elegant trivialization of an endeavour I've undertaken in the past, trying to think of examples in other areas. Is automotive journalism not essentially the same? Maybe the price of the "toys" involved differentiates the perceived status of the people writing about them.

We can write about people, about entities, but ultimately the focus (and I daresay the interest of the readers) is on things, the products produced. Some of us are fascinated by the making of the sausage, but 99% of folks just want their sweet, sweet sausage and to be told how yummy the next sausage will be.

I think automotive journalism is very similar to game journalism. You're exactly right, it's just the price of the toy being written about.

My problem is only when game "journalists" try to have it both ways. They want to say that they are changing the world, video games matter, we are so awesome! and anything else Ploygon has said since they've announced the site but then when they mess up, they say "hey man! it's just video games, have fun!" they want to have it both ways. If game reporters were more up front about what they are doing and the triviality of it, I don't think people would really care. I just think that these people are growing up and want to feel as if their job is important and are trying to justify it more than they really need to. The game press (by and large) have no ethical standards but they do have contempt for their readers.

I was really turned off when Polygon came out with that silly documentary and how all the reporters reacted to the criticism on twitter. Follow that up with the Pizza Hut PR Piece they "reported" on and how they treated criticism, really tells me that these people are not grown ups and should not be treated as such. I hold them in contempt because they have earned it.

1Dgaf wrote:

I think we've received about seven boardgames and a couple of indie-style games to discuss. We didn't talk about them all. And, because of how we schedule things and decide topics, it might be several months between playing a game and talking about it. But that's useful (and sometimes necessary) because it gives you longer to play and to reflect. (That's also why our 'GOTY' shows are done six months late. And why don't have set categories.)

I guess my follow up question would be of those seven board games and couple of indie-style games, how many would you have reviewed if you weren't provided with a copy? And, just to be clear, I'm not questioning your professional ethics. I just know from my job in the PR world that there's a very good reason we hand out free product from our clients like candy to anyone who's in a position to influence others: it gets them coverage.

The timing of the coverage doesn't necessarily matter, especially for the more indie outfits, because they likely have about twenty three cents dedicated to their marketing efforts and any publicity is good publicity.

1Dgaf wrote:

So...I'm not sure where we'd sit on your spectrum of standards. I'd like to think we're quite far to the legit side. For all our goofy jokes, I think we take things seriously.

I'm not sure my spectrum of standards even has legit/non-legit as a major (or minor) axis.

OG, I'm in PR too so I understand the dynamics. I think I'm just surprised that you still hold journalists to such a high standard. Maybe I've met too many desperate reporters looking to fill quotas to be optimistic.

Grubber788 wrote:

OG, I'm in PR too so I understand the dynamics. I think I'm just surprised that you still hold journalists to such a high standard. Maybe I've met too many desperate reporters looking to fill quotas to be optimistic.

Or working in Asia too long

Actually HK must be better than in the Mainland, but seriously you'd need a TEM to see the line between journalist and PR schill over here. We've had guys showing up to events with fake business cards just to collect the gift bag of another journalist who didn't attend, and this is not to mention that most journalists in China are still paid via red packets for their coverage. When I worked for an agency that did Mercedes' PR work in China, a colleague told me about when Ferrari came to China and was outraged at the idea of paying for coverage, assuming the brand itself would draw plenty of attention. They learned their lesson pretty quick when almost no media attended their car show press conference.

In the US, though I haven't been there for awhile, my sense is that the PR-journalist relationship is bit more above the table. We have regular journalists who cover our big clients, clients that any journalist in our industry would die to get exclusive access to, but for these regulars we still have to work our butts off to make sure we're giving them stories they want to tell, and even then we have no idea how they will use our story in the final piece. In China, most journalists will just paste our press release and call it a day.

I don't have much to say about gaming journalism, all I read these days is GWJ, (occasionally Kill Screen or Brainy Gamer) and not because it's blowing the lid off earth shattering stories in the industry. I read this site because to me it is well-written gaming memoir--personal stories that reveal the writer's vulnerability, and I enjoy empathizing with them. It's a far more meaningful and illuminating read than other game writing I've come across.

Giant Bomb spent about an hour talking about this particular story today. It's well worth a listen. Jeff is particularly eloquent and passionate about the issue.

Grubber788 wrote:

Giant Bomb spent about an hour talking about this particular story today. It's well worth a listen. Jeff is particularly eloquent and passionate about the issue.

I was just going to post this. It's in the back half of their podcast for those that don't listen. I think it's absolutely fascinating stuff. When Jeff gets serious about anything I find it interesting since he's been in the industry longer than almost anyone.

I just watched Geoff Keighley's full interview

It's more painful to watch than it was to look at the still image. From 5:16 on, he's a spokesperson for Mountain Dew and Doritos. Does he consider himself a journalist? I'd call him a media host, maybe, but not a journalist.

Just started the latest Bombcast. I can't wait to hear what he has to say about it.

OG_slinger wrote:
1Dgaf wrote:

I think we've received about seven boardgames and a couple of indie-style games to discuss. We didn't talk about them all. And, because of how we schedule things and decide topics, it might be several months between playing a game and talking about it. But that's useful (and sometimes necessary) because it gives you longer to play and to reflect. (That's also why our 'GOTY' shows are done six months late. And why don't have set categories.)

I guess my follow up question would be of those seven board games and couple of indie-style games, how many would you have reviewed if you weren't provided with a copy? And, just to be clear, I'm not questioning your professional ethics. I just know from my job in the PR world that there's a very good reason we hand out free product from our clients like candy to anyone who's in a position to influence others: it gets them coverage.

I don't think I have a problem with receiving and reviewing free games, or with a PR person alerting you to those games. (Providing that things are disclosed.) There are literally too many game developers out there for even a small team of reporters to catch everything.

I am still on a few PR mailing lists and I think my last written piece was 5-6 years ago. Telltale still sends me code in e-mails once in awhile still (not full releases anymore, but advanced demos).

So I think PR runs the gamut. Not all PR is sitting around leaning on sites and magazines about metacritic scores, pouring honey in their ears. Some are just sending out mass e-mails and bulletins.

Some of the blame is on developers for the overly aggressive PR in some arenas. So many large holiday releases are Spruce Gooses. Couple that with the creative forces are a lot like NFL Quarterbacks who think they never threw a bad ball (See Bret Favre's record number of TD throws and interceptions) or slugging hitters who never say a ball that was not a homerun (Babe Ruth leading the league in HR and strike outs). They will hold PR responsible for review scores, sales, etc.

Do PR/Sales Reps in other industries get held to the same insane standards? IE is PR at Chrysler held responsible for sales of cars?

KingGorilla wrote:

Do PR/Sales Reps in other industries get held to the same insane standards? IE is PR at Chrysler held responsible for sales of cars?

To some extent, yes, but with some qualifiers. It is incredibly easy for someone on the marketing and operations team to say that sales would have been better if PR had been doing its job properly. Also, value of PR is often intangible in many instances, so it becomes an easy target for budget cuts. In a typical PR agency, a good portion of the work is managing the client's expectations of the results. That said, good companies have good CEO's who understand what PR is and what PR isn't. It doesn't surprise me that the video game industry is like this. Usually if a game company knows it's putting out a sub-quality game, "good" PR might be the only thing that can help them recoup their losses. It's foolish though. From a business POV, I think that money would be better spent in marketing rather than trying to develop good relationships with game journalists. It's hard to sway one high quality news outlet, much less all of them. It's a risky investment, which I have never seen pay off.

Kotaku responds on their lack of coverage of this.

Reads like a non-apology apology to me but they claim they will be covering it in some fashion. I suppose doing it well after the fact is better than not doing it at all.

I suppose doing it well after the fact is better than not doing it at all.

By recapping all of what has already been said? Hemming and hawing on the readily available pluses and minuses, sounds cowardly...

Grubber788 wrote:

OG, I'm in PR too so I understand the dynamics. I think I'm just surprised that you still hold journalists to such a high standard. Maybe I've met too many desperate reporters looking to fill quotas to be optimistic.

I haven't really had that experience, though I mostly deal with weeklies and monthlies and their publication schedule is a bit more forgiving. Even in the rare cases when they've lost a page of advertising and need a quick filler I'll get a call from them, but it's understood that that reporter is reaching out to multiple PR reps and the end story will still be balanced.

My experience has been that it's tremendously hard to get a reporter to shill for you, even in the trade or industry rags. In fact, it's harder since the editorial teams of those pubs understand that they can only continue to get advertising from every company in the industry is if they take great pains to be neutral. Their entire business model collapses once it becomes known that there is no wall between editorial and ad sales.

There are, of course, exceptions. Mostly "industry experts" who have a blog that's read by just enough people that you have to pay attention to them. Those are the folks that want the goodies, nice meals, free airfare and hotel, and, well, other things.

I think Chairman_Mao also hit the nail on the head. PR in Asia is very different than the States or even Europe. Asia is essentially a pay-for-coverage zone (or, at the very least, you have a your "press conference" in a nice location with food, booze, and a goodies bag). That wouldn't fly here unless you were in the entertainment industry.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Just started the latest Bombcast. I can't wait to hear what he has to say about it.

Grubber788 wrote:

Giant Bomb spent about an hour talking about this particular story today. It's well worth a listen. Jeff is particularly eloquent and passionate about the issue.

For those looking, it's at a little after 2:27.

Frig, these guys just talk forever. (I get impatient.)

OG_slinger wrote:

I think Chairman_Mao also hit the nail on the head. PR in Asia is very different than the States or even Europe. Asia is essentially a pay-for-coverage zone (or, at the very least, you have a your "press conference" in a nice location with food, booze, and a goodies bag). That wouldn't fly here unless you were in the entertainment industry.

He was also right to note that HK tends to mimic Western sensibilities when it comes to the media. The Chinese media is almost as corrupt as its government. Thankfully, it's not pay to play in HK. I do work with large corporates though, and given the competitiveness of the daily media (i.e. WSJ vs. FT), PR people can exert more influence than a lot of people might think.

This is... off topic.

OG_slinger wrote:

Not only that, he doesn't even bother to provide his readers with any background about the case that could help them decide how to view the veracity of court documents and why they ended up in his inbox.

I don't quite follow the line of thought that obligates Klepek -- or any other reporter, for that matter -- to dump the complete history of a given story within their copy. Do reporters on the political beat attach an ongoing tab of attacks between Obama and Romney onto every new poll report that they file? If there's a bombing of the Gaza Strip, should the international affairs reporter attach a 20-page summary of the Israel/Palestine conflict? (After all, the Wikipedia article comes out to around 40 pages, but perhaps a Real Journalist could cut that number in half with judicious editing.)

OG_slinger wrote:

They ended up in his inbox because there was, at least, tens of millions of dollars at stake for West and Zampella (and millions in legal fees for the law firm). They ended up in his inbox because the case was just weeks away from going to trial and West and Zampella's lawyers wanted to put pressure on Activision to settle. They ended up in his inbox because everyone knew Klepek would bite on something any real journalist would pass on.

The Icebreaker documents ended up in his inbox because it's a press leak, which is not a concept that's confined only to the sinister world of games journalism. The information provided by Deep Throat, the holy grail of journalism that you cited earlier in the thread, came from press leaks that were so "unethical" that Nixon aides were still griping about it years after the scandal. Leaks always carry a motive -- are you asserting that any such motives should forbid a journalist from using any such leak as a basis for their reporting?

OG_slinger wrote:

A real journalist would have waited until they could go to the LA courthouse and pull the entire court record before writing the story. No. I take that back. A real journalist would be working for a media company that either footed the bill to fly Klepek out to LA to do the necessary background research for the article or who had a LexisNexis subscription that allowed them to view all the court filings.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a dedicated media company for any entertainment medium that would foot the bill for a LexisNexis subscription, especially when you consider how rarely those outlets are required to rifle through legal filings for their day-to-day reporting. We'll just have to agree to disagree there.

OG_slinger wrote:

You do understand that that internal memo was included in the lawsuit that West and Zampella filed, right? Klepek didn't procure anything. It was a publicly available document. Hell, the LA Times wrote an article about it on the same day as Klepek supposedly broke the story.

No, that's not the internal memo in question here; again, read the article. The internal memo that Klepek referred to in his Giant Bomb write-up is an internal memo related to Activision's information gathering on West and Zampella, which includes the possibility of communication with Electronic Arts, which was not public knowledge at that time, as far as I'm aware. The original G4 report of that memo is here.

Having said that, I'm somewhat amused that you'll gleefully point to an LA Times article written by Ben Fritz as a counter-example, since he's a former gaming reviews editor for Variety who still covers games semi-regularly in his LA Times coverage. Does the LA Times protect him from bearing the scorn associated with the scarlet letter of games journalism?

OG_slinger wrote:

So he says. Whether I should trust him on that is an entirely separate issue.

No, actually, distrusting the reporter's disclosures by default is not a separate issue; if anything, it seems to be near or at the heart of your issues with the journalists and their work.

OG_slinger wrote:

As for your Reuters link, I hope you understand that distributing press releases is actually a service Thomson Reuters, the corporate owner of Reuters, provides. That's why it's listed under the heading Press Release, includes the notification that Reuters has nothing to do with the content, and, at the very bottom, says "This announcement is distributed by Thomson Reuters on behalf of Thomson Reuters clients." That's because it's not news and Reuters isn't actually reporting on it. It's just a press release that Thomson Reuters ONE was paid to distribute via the company's wire service. That's also why you'll never see that press release anywhere under Reuters' business news section.

There was never any issue related to the sourcing in the first place - the posting says all of that pretty clearly. The point is that, if you go to Reuters and search for "Statoil and Statkraft" in the search bar at the top, which is used for general news search, it comes up as the first result. And, save for the disclosures that flank the reprint, the press release bears all the same formatting as any news story on the site. I would say there's more bleedover than you're alluding to here, but Reuters still handles it appropriately with its disclosures of sourcing and responsibility over the content contained therein.

OG_slinger wrote:

Now compare that with a story about the lawsuit that the LA Times ran about the same time.

Nine days later qualifies as "ran about the same time," eh?

OG_slinger wrote:

You'll note they had access to additional documents--ones that Klepek said he didn't have--and that those documents got to the heart of the lawsuit--whether or not the two were wrongfully terminated---not focus in gory detail on what Activision might have done to get access to West and Zampella's computers, emails, and voice mails. Not that that behavior is even remarkable considering it's been long settled that employees can expect absolutely no privacy when using company provided computers to send emails over a company-owned email system or make calls--or get voice mails--on company provided phones. I mean Zampella's own lawyer effectively tells him "What are you? A f*cking idiot? Why are you sending me sh*t using your Infinity Ward email address?" in one of the emails.

Staging a mock fire drill at the Infinity Ward building to gain access for imaging West and Zampella's PCs is "not even remarkable?" Really?