I would say that most of these sites (95%) are somewhere around Bleacher Report.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joust Williams
Kotaku wishes it could be Bleacher Report.
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I would say that most of these sites (95%) are somewhere around Bleacher Report.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joust Williams
Kotaku wishes it could be Bleacher Report.
Not a whole lot, and that's only because my expectations have been conditioned to take poor, awful quality of reporting and fact finding as standard. Gaming journalism is like gamers themselves. Caught up in the hype of the moment, willing to glom onto anything that's vomited out as truth. That is until proven wrong and they have to rescind - even then may not and/or would rather make excuses for themselves. When taking a deep breath and waiting the 5 minutes it would take to research something would go a long way, they'd rather be as haphazard as their audience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
At my poorest, I never really wanted to write for a gaming news website because I'm almost positive they aren't trained journalists and are just writers.
A simple phone call to any publisher that is answered almost immediately by the PR department (or shit, for some even the owner of the company) would have answered any questions. A phone call at a copyright office is slower but they'll tell you what is on hold by whom. I don't know how many times I'm going to tell you guys that writing like this is mostly PR work. But you can ask Frog or even MarkRyan about a lot of it.
You also don't publish news from an unvetted source. If you have a long relationship with the person and they've come through with gold, that's fine. But some random guy tells you something and it becomes new? Fire the entire editorial department. I'll do all of their jobs and you'll never have a complaint about false information again.
To be fair, how many times have we seen news journalists post some bullshit they read on twitter without checking it too? This is just the world of real-time news and the internet. Fact checking and responsible reporting is in short supply all over, these days.
You have to be pretty fucking stupid to post that kind of story based on a random email from a stranger, and most sites didn't touch it for that reason. But some did. Because they're fucking stupid.
It's totally true, most game journalists don't have any journalism training. I'm no exception. But I still know better than that. I wouldn't have even made a follow up call, because it was just obvious horseshit.
The issue was that some no name site posted it so a bunch of bigger ones joined in. I bet most of them were just waiting to see it posted anywhere.
Some sites (Kotaku) have gone so far as to blame the prankster for making them look like fools.
It's not about real journalism because these sites are not news sites. I expect nonsense like this out of them.
But I've seen stories much like this in every kind of internet news writing. And it is just as you say, once one site posts it, everyone piles on and just attributes it to the first site. They all just want to get the story so they write "According to..." and figure they're covered.
I'm not denying it's a real problem, or that these people shouldn't be shamed for it, but Ramon acts like it doesn't happen in his world too. We all have to live with people who suck at their jobs.
I have to agree that I don't think it's limited to game journalism, just internet journalism.
It's a huge problem with broadcast journalism, too. TV news is basically a joke because of this.
Even print is not immune, but they at least have time to let the dust settle more often.
As a guy who freelances for several news outfits, if I ever based a story on facts I didn't confirm, I would be out of a fucking job and my rep would be shit. Also, my publisher would print a retraction and apologize for their oversight.
The fact that none of these gaming "news sites" are doing this (in fact, they're actually finger-pointing instead) speaks volumes.