Jan 11, 2011

[Gaming 'Journalism'? Not So Much...]

Today, Jef Reahard over at Massively has written a great take down of the belief that most gaming bloggers are somehow 'journalists':
"Merriam-Webster defines journalism as "the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media." So far, so good, right? Well, look deeper. A more thoughtful, thorough, and instructional definition is provided by the folks at Journalism.org. Rather than quote the entire nine-point synopsis here on my front page, I'll highlight what I consider to be the second most important principle of journalism (the first obviously being truth). Not coincidentally, this principle is one that game "journalism" utterly fails to uphold on a daily basis: "[Journalism's] practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover."

Let's cut right to the chase, shall we? The vast majority of "game journalism" isn't journalism in the traditional sense. There are many reasons "game journalism" isn't journalism at all, but in the interests of paring a few thousand words off of this piece, I'll boil it down to the three most important."
 Read the rest here. 


 Related Reading: How Broken is Game Journalism?
                          How Game Journalism is It's Own Worst Enemy

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