Aram Zucker-Scharff

“I understand what you mean when you say your relationship with advertisers and developers is complex. But your readers, the people whose blogroll is occupied by your websites and then Reddit and 4chan and 9gag and on and on, they may not understand – or worse, they may misunderstand that relationship. This is where you need to spend time clarifying everything. You need to let some sunshine in on your operations so that no one can credibly accuse you of shady dealings again. This has the added bonus of lending some credence to the idea that games journalism is actually becoming more professional.”

– “Gamergate” and Media Ethics in Trade Writing.

“But in the end it boils down to this: TEDx is just another organisation asking me to work for free.”

–  Frank Swain, Why I’m Not a TEDx Speaker.

Payola: I Sleep Beneath the Golden Hill | Sufficiently Human:

An excellent look at why what is happening in gaming journalism is relevant to the entire field of journalism:

“Because the pieces themselves are worth peanuts, I was expected to produce like 10 of them a day. That may not sound like a lot, but believe me, you start to feel like you’re on an assembly line they way these articles are cobbled together. And because your labour is valued based on what you’re producing and not what it takes to produce it, you quickly start to feel overworked and brutally underpaid (I was making about $200/mo). On the other hand, the system is kind of set up to seduce writers shouldering for visibility into jobs like this, producing an enthusiast press that is willing to work more or less for exposure. As a writer working in this system, you’re basically a low-level functionary with no leverage to seek information beyond what a publisher wants on record. Being able to gain access to these companies is fundamental for games press to exist, so editorial isn’t really in a position to demand very much most of the time. As such, you end up with a press that mostly operates like cheap PR.”

Do you know Elise Andrew?:

The creator of the Facebook page IFLS

IFLS and Elise Andrew are cool. This article, not so much:

The way CJR covers the internet is almost always awful; the idea that no one has been a journalism brand since Facebook is incredibly odd (seriously, TV news anchors? Watergate?); and I’m pretty sure that profile articles shouldn’t have nearly 1/3rd of the grafs be about the author. 

Also, having the cover article of your magazine be a profile-by-assumption, as the author has apparently never actually spoken with the subject is weird-at-best. 

Also, io9 isn’t *really* a science blog. CBS should be capitalized. That the sexism issue was basically just lampshade-ed is a huge missed opportunity. Why are their no links to the other works covering Andrews? 

Also, giving an even handed treatment to some of her more illegitimate critics is a shame and claiming that one needs to be professionally connected in journalism to escape criticism is both false and entirely missing the point. Having a Reddit dedicated to criticizing you is hardly that difficult, rare, or particularly useful in grading her accuracy. 

Finally, having an article about a person whose claimed mission is to promote science without actually talking to any scientists to get an idea of what they think of it is a stunningly large missed opportunity. How about asking Bill Nye or deGrasse Tyson what they think of Andrew’s methodology vs traditional science journalism. Isn’t that the whole point of even discussing this in a venue like CJR? Isn’t the whole point of journalism to do a good job of informing and educating the populace? Wouldn’t some assessment of that be useful? 

*sigh* oh CJR.