Anybody know these video game journalist's qualifications?
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Because it's a witch hunt.archiebawled said:
It amazes me that this still persists after all this time and so many people pointing out she didn't write these articles.Uhura said:
Anyone know what got everyone so upset over her that they're willing to hold against her completely false information?
I don't think people understand how broad journalism can be applied. Without going over each other, straight-up reporting, as well as punditry and editorials are routinely lumped in under the journalism banner. That covers most or all of the people named. And reviews are sometimes counted as well, filling in any gaps with them.Zontar said:
Distinguishing "news" from "journalism" is sort of an artifact at this point.
Hell, we can mock Jim or Joe all we want, but a lot of our "real" journalism is coming from people who likely have equal or lesser credentials.
A degree in a sense is relatively worthless unless you are pursuing a high-paying job where it's used as past experience like every part of your resume. All it says is that you paid to go to class, and passed said classes. In no way it says you are good at it. In this era it's worth even less because you are expected to show your work rather than your education. Which is a good thing even though it kinda screws over college grads. Merit and talent should beat out a whether you went to school to get that merit and talent. Only Doctors should be have their degree checked just so they can get a medical license. (Woohoo! Negative Nancy thy name is me!)
Journalism is another thing entirely. It is putting pen to paper writing down events as they are and projecting it to the public in an easy to digest manner. Sometimes opinion is formed because even when you are trying not to a bias is formed. That said it is an ability that can be learned easily simply by practice. Spending years in a classroom while helpful is not necessary to those who practice regularly. It's another form of writing, except that an event is the purpose of the piece rather than freely writing, say fiction.
If you are going to register their qualifications then their degree is only a minor piece of how they got here today. For instance even if Jim doesn't have a degree, he's had a long-standing presence in garme jurnalizm as a whole having been a writer for Giant Bomb before he went to escapist. That's somewhat old-school cred. By the popularity and the respect his articles have generated he is now an editor here. Which means he did his job well. Those are his qualifications.
Even then if you are going to do an analysis of each person's biases then qualifications are a mild detail. Also that in itself will be affected by your own bias. Jim who I am using as an example again has expressed distaste for Ubisoft, EA and the like. You can't argue that. You can say he loves Koei because he outright states multiple times that he loves Dynasty Warriors (good man) but once you go past the things he says you have to speculate whether he likes this or that or what his favorite flavor of pie is. Speculation leads to subjectivity, subjectivity leads to personal opinion, Personal opinion leads to bias.
In short. You will be biased on bias.
Journalism is another thing entirely. It is putting pen to paper writing down events as they are and projecting it to the public in an easy to digest manner. Sometimes opinion is formed because even when you are trying not to a bias is formed. That said it is an ability that can be learned easily simply by practice. Spending years in a classroom while helpful is not necessary to those who practice regularly. It's another form of writing, except that an event is the purpose of the piece rather than freely writing, say fiction.
If you are going to register their qualifications then their degree is only a minor piece of how they got here today. For instance even if Jim doesn't have a degree, he's had a long-standing presence in garme jurnalizm as a whole having been a writer for Giant Bomb before he went to escapist. That's somewhat old-school cred. By the popularity and the respect his articles have generated he is now an editor here. Which means he did his job well. Those are his qualifications.
Even then if you are going to do an analysis of each person's biases then qualifications are a mild detail. Also that in itself will be affected by your own bias. Jim who I am using as an example again has expressed distaste for Ubisoft, EA and the like. You can't argue that. You can say he loves Koei because he outright states multiple times that he loves Dynasty Warriors (good man) but once you go past the things he says you have to speculate whether he likes this or that or what his favorite flavor of pie is. Speculation leads to subjectivity, subjectivity leads to personal opinion, Personal opinion leads to bias.
In short. You will be biased on bias.
Knowledge of subject matter is fine for opinion pieces, it's shit for news pieces. Most of these people are pretty strong for reviews but aren't so hot when they try to do news journalism.Lieju said:
Video game journalism simply isn't real journalism most of the time. For example an actual journalistic report is supposed to worry entirely about facts. When doing opinion interviews you're supposed to interview two or more people from opposing sides of whatever topic to give balanced coverage and opinion. Most video game journalism I've seen is laden with editorial opinion. The escapist does this a lot, for the record.
TB isn't even a journalist, and would argue with you if you called him one. He just does first impressions videos on youtube. Angry Joe just reviews games and livestreams on twitch now a days. I guess he interviews devs sometimes, but is that really journalism?
IMO if they're video game journalists, then so is PewDiePie.
TB isn't even a journalist, and would argue with you if you called him one. He just does first impressions videos on youtube. Angry Joe just reviews games and livestreams on twitch now a days. I guess he interviews devs sometimes, but is that really journalism?
IMO if they're video game journalists, then so is PewDiePie.
No, you sort of need to know why a certain piece of news is interesting or important. And what is just the publisher trying to work out hype, and what of that hype would actually interest people. And you need to understand your audience. If you're writing for a gamer-audience, you need to know what you can assume to be common knowledge.SecondPrize said:
Do you need to explain what an X-Box is? Or terms like MMO, or some cult classic from the 80's? Some specific terminology only used in Eve online?
Also you need connections and you need to know where to get the news.
Or are you saying you could write news articles for topics you know nothing about?
Then again, most 'news' articles on this site for example are regurgitated from other sources...
Still even they need to know what stories to go for, and how to present them in a way that interests the intended audience.
Well I think the issue comes from most people not knowing the difference between journalism the occupation and journalism the field. The former is what one would put under the banner of "news" (and is also what one would call themselves when asked what they do) while the latter is about, well, anything which is spreading information.Zachary Amaranth said:
I wasn't suggesting that you don't use game knowledge for news pieces, given the context and what I was replying to. When all you have is game knowledge, it is shit. You'd need a mix, and these people don't have the journalism part of that mix.Lieju said:
I agree for the most part, but it's fairly common to see newspeople calling themselves journalists.Zontar said:
I mean, my experience is rather limited, but this seems in that limited experience to be something that is only of issue on the internet.
You've just described almost every mainstream journalist and newscaster in the US at the very least. And a lot of my news is from the BBC or Guardian, where I'm not always convinced they're knowledgeable (though better at the reporting and journalism parts). In other wirds, while it's definitely an American thing, I'm pretty sure it's not solely an American thing.Lieju said:
I mean, how many times have you seen--for example--a mainstream article on gaming that doesn't spend its time bothering to understand even the basics? We're seen a couple decent Forbes articles, but for each of those, there's like 5 gajillion ones that couldn't tell you an Xbox from a Nintendo or the difference between Call of Duty and Angry Birds.
Except it's not just about something as "trivial" as games. The consumer market in general, conflicts worldwide, you will have people who "report" by merely parroting the facts that have been handed to them with little-to-no research or understanding. Even if we were to parse down what journalism was, it's not all remotely investigative.
Apparently, this wasn't his point, but I would make it one.
TB actually shows credibility by stating where he does not have experience and sticking to what he can objectively criticize. Angry Joe does to some degree acknowledge he's not perfect, and I guess Jeff and Jim just have their experience from their years of covering games. How Jeff covered Kane and Lynch demonstrates the best one can do to corporately careful with an un-redeemable game, and they still axed him for it. smh. No one would've been THAT nice.Gankytim said:
Someone from polygon, maybe the editor wanted game journalists to aim to join the society of professional journalists. Now nothing wrong with having high ambitions, but considering the lay of the land, we've got a ways to go. The punditry style post-election cable issues coverage that we see, has also had a negative influential impact.
They could also get ad-clicks by doing 'defense force' for video games that have been overlooked or panned that actually have a lot of play value. If there are certain mechanics that arent seen in video games because of copy paste design, they could also talk about design systems or untapped character choreography mechanics, machines, concepts and ideas that haven't been system-ized in video games. Now that PS4 is not region locked, they can talk about stuff like 'Yakuza', that we haven't got to play and dredge up enough interest to convince Japan to import those games.
There's so many ways to dredge up excitement for games, that I think haven't been tapped as much in our current social media climate. I say let CNN, Fox News, Drudge, MSNBC and Salon do their thing, but prioritizing game-play in coverage as much or as equally as culture around games and pop entertainment is still important.
Now if only AAA would get over themselves about copy-paste game design and sort window releases, it'd be easier to turn things around.
You say this, but given a story on vaccinations journalists are expected to actually seek out opposing views. My cousin is a journalist, and he complains about this too. He just hopes the public is clever enough to believe the educated doctor over the crackpot.MarsAtlas said:
Obviously seeking two sides to a story is not what you're supposed to do every time and is not what I'm saying, especially in cases where there the situation or story doesn't have more than one side. A train crash, a car accident, a fire, a robbery. These are just things that happened.
Regardless, my point is in gaming we get headlines that are steeped in opinion and bias of the writer. For example on Steven Bogos' latest article "New super smash bors. 4 charater will be revealed on monday" he speculates what the character would be, then insinuated the inclusion of the wii fit trainer proves Sakurai is not one for making sense.
In "traditional journalism" adding your own speculation and insinuations like this is incredibly poor form. In gaming, however, it's basically the norm. Mainly because, really, it doesn't matter.
Looking at higher education qualifications is the wrong way to go about this. It is entirely possible to get through a bachelors level university degree and come out at the end with very little usable skills in your area of study. I've seen it a dozen times, I've even gotten through a couple pieces of assessment myself with very little idea as to what I was doing. And the reverse is true too: you can be brilliant without any formal education qualifications.
These people you're talking about are established in their field. You have access to their work. Just noting the formal qualifications they hold is a pretty shallow investigation and doesn't necessarily tell you a whole lot. Experience is worth far more and that's how you should be judging them. Compare their opinions to that of their target audiences (are they a good voice for gamers? does what they desire reflect the wishes of consumers?), compare their predictions to things that have actually (or since) occurred (do they have a solid grasp of the workings of the industry?), compare both to relevant studies sociological, psychological and marketing studies. That's how you want to approach it. If you're unable to do that, then it's not worth your time making a video or anyone else's time watching it.
These people you're talking about are established in their field. You have access to their work. Just noting the formal qualifications they hold is a pretty shallow investigation and doesn't necessarily tell you a whole lot. Experience is worth far more and that's how you should be judging them. Compare their opinions to that of their target audiences (are they a good voice for gamers? does what they desire reflect the wishes of consumers?), compare their predictions to things that have actually (or since) occurred (do they have a solid grasp of the workings of the industry?), compare both to relevant studies sociological, psychological and marketing studies. That's how you want to approach it. If you're unable to do that, then it's not worth your time making a video or anyone else's time watching it.
There is a huge difference between reporting opinions and reporting facts. When you report on research findings on dangers of vaccinations or whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa you are talking about scientifically determined facts.MarsAtlas said:
But when you talk about "War on Terror" it's all about opinions since who is terrorist and who is not depends entirely on one's position in the conflict therefor it's an opinion piece. You can a lot from other side that would make understand the situation much better then "grrr, them bad"
Not really, in fact most $SUBJECT journalism jobs I've seen would rather have a degree in $SUBJECT than in journalism.Gankytim said:
Point of fact it's similar with my field. I must be one of the few people in the IT industry with a computer related degree. I know sysadmins qualified as biologists, mathematicians and even musicians. Not sure how I feel about it considering too much infrastructure is fly-by-night as it is but there we go.
Gerstmann and Klepek have users in giantbomb (the site they run), and they are fairly open about answering to the community if you are respectful when asking.Gankytim said:
About your original question, I believe Klepek has studied journalism as he often mentions being the "weird one" that choose videogames as his field of interest in his class, while others went for more classical fields like politics and hollywood.
I think Gerstmann has no formal education in journalism, but he kind of hanged around gamespot in the times before they got really big and is extremely knowledgeable about games, so they invited him to join.
I know a few journalists (of varying ages), and none of them have journalism degrees. Mostly they have English degrees (although one has never been to university at all).Gankytim said:
Most journalism degrees are actually viewed pretty poorly by the industry (at least in the UK). What the industry looks for is demonstrated skills and experience, which you can get from: unpaid internships, working on student newspapers (or radio/TV stations), writing a successful blog, running a popular YouTube channel, etc. The main reason to do a journalism degree is to get contacts inside the industry (for the purpose of acquiring internships).
It's like saying that you would assume someone calling themselves a businessman would need a business studies degree. It's just not a career path where a degree helps you all that much.
Maybe you should email Bombcast to ask Jeff about his qualifications and them to speculate about the other peoples.