Player Three – journalism’s latest saviour
October 8, 2009
Is this anything more grating than a journalist who has just “discovered” something and decided they should be the first person to write Real Objective Journalism about it? Ugh.
I’ve just been reading Patrick Brosnan’s guest post on Margaret Simons’ Content Makers blog. Apparently there was never a real games journalist until Mr Brosnan came along. I hope he’s going to let the readers down gently. Or, you know, he could take some time to actually read up on games journalism.
It may be a shock to Mr Brosnan that in addition to the cheap and nasty sold-at-the-supermarket-checkout games mags that rely on teen gamers to write reviews in return for free games, there are also games sites and publications which value quality writing.
Take a look at Atomic MPC – a PC hardware and gaming magazine which was so well respected internationally that the Heseltine-owned Haymarket Media acquired its small Australian publisher, AJB Publishing, largely to get their mitts on it. I haven’t read Atomic in a while, but at the time I was working for AJB, Atomic had a fanatical audience, and a number of award winning journalists who wrote for it, myself included.
Or Mr Brosnan could take a look at Edge, a UK games publication which also had an international reputation because it did a great job of writing up not just games news, but also covering the technical innovations and business dealings of the games industry. (Let us not speak of the horrible, watered down Australian version. That was just a massive disappointment.)
These publications employed Real Writers – both journalists and reviewers. I’d be surprised if any of them weren’t also gamers. Yes, Virginia, there can be Real Journalists who also play computer games. The notion of the detached, objective journalist was always a lie. People don’t get to know an industry intimately in the way that journalists must, without forming opinions on what’s going on around them. It’s just that they’re meant to write objectively, give both sides of the story, and look cagey when you accuse them of being biased. I’m sorry, but bloggers have taught us that disclosure is a far more powerful means of earning credibility than hiding behind “objectivity”. I don’t want to read games journalism written by non gamers.
It’s not just about whether you’re a qualified journalist, either. Mr Brosnan, sadly, seems allergic to opinion. And snark. Apparently you can’t express opinions, or employ sarcasm and be a good writer, or reviewer (That’s me gone then. That’s ok, Patrick. I just want you to know that we can still be friends). He’d better not watch Zero Punctuation then. Shame, because Yahtzee raised the bar for other reviewers by presenting his reviews as hilarious, fast paced animated movies. I’ll happily watch Zero Punctuation reviews for games I’ve never heard of, because they’re entertaining in their own right. Until Yahtzee came along, I hadn’t enjoyed reviews so much since legendary British music mag Select went down the gurgler.
Mr Brosnan proposes a new journalism (sorry, Journalism!), which will be showcased on his website, Player Three. It has at its foundation, Real Journalists. “These journalists don’t necessarily need a vast general knowledge on the gaming industry”. Yes, I can see how that’s a great start for a niche journalism publication. Tell your journalists they aren’t expected to really know their beat. The truth serum will be applied by the editors, who are the games experts. Because people who play games aren’t qualified to write about them. Only Journalists can do the writing, got that?
I haven’t been a tech or games journalist for a couple of years now, which is why my examples are a few years old. There are plenty of examples of rubbish games magazines and websites, granted. And I’ve been highly critical of sycophantic games writers who are in it for the free stuff and don’t think twice about being gladhanded by PR folk in return for breathless ”10/10!…” reviews. The Pollyanna grin was wiped from my face pretty early on when it came to games journalism. PlayStation 2 was launched in 2000 when I was working on a tech news magazine in London. A game reviewer we knew was given a weekend to review 30 games. 30. How many minutes did he get to spend playing each game then, even assuming he didn’t sleep? As a punter who always consulted games reviews before dropping 90 quid on a game, I was horrified.
So no, I don’t expect “objectivity” as Mr Brosnan describes it, because I want my games writers to *be* gamers. But I do expect knowledgeable and fair reviews, and journalism. And you can get it, when you look around. What a shame Mr Brosnan didn’t actually do that, before jumping on his white horse and riding in to save us.
I wrote this post for my students over at our class community on Ning, then realised I really wanted to share it here too. 
I think I’ve mentioned CoPress before, but I’ve just been reading a few of their latest posts, and they just have so much useful info I wanted to mention them again.
CoPress is “a non-profit organization dedicated to providing college news outlets with the technical resources and support network they need to innovate online.” Among other things, they’ll host your student publication for you! And yes, before you ask, they’re happy to work with Australian unis, I already asked them.
The CoPress blog is awesome, packed with useful info and links. Here are two recent posts I thought you’d find helpful:
A awesome walkthrough of a multimedia “deep journalism” website put together by the Amherst Wire. You’ll see they even show you the flowcharts they drew to help them design their site.
A recent “link sharing” post they made looked at the recent big changes in newspaper publishing including the closure of the Seattle PI but it also has some really handy links about how student publications are using WordPress (and some recommendations of good plugins).
If you browse recent posts on the blog you’ll see they constantly mention new web tools (or how to get the most out of existing ones) – this post made me want to check out BlogTalkRadio – a way to record podcasts and then let listeners ‘call in’ with questions.
Hopefully at least some of those links will be helpful to you.
Stephen Mayne’s non-compete clause with Crikey has expired
March 13, 2009
Interesting. I got an email from the Mayne Report overnight which revealed that Stephen Mayne’s 4 year (!) non-compete clause with Crikey has expired (he founded Crikey and sold the biz to Private Media for $1M some time ago).
Stephen has continued to contribute news stories to Crikey since the sale, but I’m not sure if that arrangement will stay in place or not. The expiring of the non-compete clause means he’s free to increase his subscriber base from a cap of 500 people, and he can start covering politics and media for his own project. Here’s what he said about it in the email:
The 4-year non-compete agreement with Crikey expired on Monday so we’re now able to write about politics and media, plus send emails to more than 500 people at a time and freelance material anywhere we like. However, the focus will still very much remain on delivering a strong weekly corporate governance newsletter and this latest edition has plenty of juicy material.
The Mayne Report, for those who don’t know, is where Stephen does business reporting, with a large focus shareholder activism. It includes a fair amount of video reporting too.
Will be interesting to see what he does with the politics/media stuff now he’s off the leash from Crikey.
(I also notice that he’s selling subs to The Mayne Report for $55 until June 30, in case you’re interested. Thought it was worth a plug.)
Laneway Festival responds to critics of its Melbourne event
February 4, 2009
Just a quick one to point out that Laneway Festival has published a response to criticisms of its Melbourne event on the website here. The piece discusses the problems in some detail, and while it stops short of an apology, it “acknowledges” issues and is “deeply disappointed” that the experience was marred for some festival goers.
I liked that it ended by saying “We would also like to acknowledge that we have had personal letters and we will respond to them all next week when we return from the last three dates of the festival.”
Here’s a tip – if you’re the organiser of a (nominally) smoke free event sponsored by Quit Victoria, it’s probably best not to smoke on the night. Oh, and your staff should probably be trained to be able to give people prompt first aid assistance when required.
The Age ran a story today about disgruntled patrons complaining about the lack of organisation of Melbourne’s Laneway Festival. But I’m surprised it didn’t pick up the smoking angle. One unhappy punter, jametheil-bane, posted to the Melbourne Maniacs online community today, saying that he (I’m assuming gender here) had an asthma attack because so many people were smoking in full sight of security guards. Worse, he was stuffed around by event staff when trying to find first aid. You can see jametheil-bane’s post about the event here.
The post is a copy of the letter of complaint sent to the Festival organisers and includes the following little gem:
The guard came back and told us that he couldn’t ask the third gentleman to put his cigarette out as the third gentleman was one of the event organizers. Lighting up at a non-smoking event, not 5 metres away from the first aid tent.
Assuming this is true, I’m sure Quit Victoria will be thrilled to hear that.
Update: Ugh, I just had another look at the Laneway website, which proudly proclaims “Leave your lighter at home for Australia’s first smokefree music festival. I think every nonsmoker who attended should ask for their $99 back.
Update 2: The Enthusiast published a detailed story about all the other organisational stuffups patrons experienced at the Laneway Festival including queues and overcrowding. Apparently there’s a petition and a Facebook group for disgruntled patrons to demand a refund. Thanks Angus!
Update 3: Thanks Jason for the link to this awesome Tunebinder photo showing the horrendous queue waiting to see the headline act, Girl Talk. You can read the Tunebinder story here.
Upcoming class for student editors at NEWS09
January 27, 2009
There’s a student media conference coming up here in Melbourne and I’m happy to announce that I’ll be teaching a class in web publishing as part of it.
NEWS09 is a conference for student editors being held over the weekend of 6 and 7 January 2009. This cool sounding event is run by Express Media.
There’s not a lot of info online yet about NEWS09 but I suspect the website will be expanded soon as they’re just finalising the running sheet for the day.
My session is about online publishing, and will cover the basics of getting online, from registering a domain name, to creating an effective web publication, and how to promote and network successsfully. All in an hour, so it’s going to be a whirlwind tour.
I’m really looking forward to meeting some student editors from this century. When I was at uni, the student media types were Dave Penberthy, Annabel Crabb and Sam Maiden. See, lots of student editor types go on to be Real Journalists. 
I’m teaching digital media at the University of Melbourne
January 6, 2009
I’m happy to let you know that I’m going to be teaching at the University of Melbourne this year in the School of Culture and Communications. In Semester 1 I’ll be teaching Advanced Editing for Digital Media, which is basically the web publishing component of the Uni’s postgraduate publishing degree.
This is exciting for me because I’ve been wanting to teach for a while, and it means I get to try to help solve a problem which I became acutely aware of when we interviewing journalism graduates for an online role at Crikey, which was that unis seem to be producing graduates who treat the net like just another publishing platform instead of getting involved with building and interacting with online content and communities. And of course, uni courses tend to lag far a year or two behind what’s actually happening out there in the world – I’ll be trying to overcome this the best I can.
I’ve never taught a formally structured course before – and I’ll be looking around for ideas and inspiration for how to not suck as a teacher. I’ll be drawing lots of inspiriation from Dr Michael Wesch’s Digital Ethnography videos and blog – but any tips, links or suggested reading would be gratefully received.
Olbermann on Prop 8: This is a question of love
November 12, 2008
Olbermann has weighed in on Prop 8 – the vote in California to repeal the right to gay marriage in that state which was only granted in June this year. I only wish he’d broadcast it before the vote, instead of afterwards. 
“You are asked now by your country, perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another – not on a question of politics. Not on a question of religion. Not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand on a question of love.
All you need to do is stand and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don’t have to help it. You don’t have to applaud it. You don’t have to fight for it.
Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand, and maybe you don’t even want to know, that love is in fact the ember of your love for your fellow person. Just because this is the only world we have, and the other guy counts too.
Jobs go at Wired, Six Apart
November 12, 2008
So Wired just culled 25% of their staff (ouch) – mostly techies. Staff writers haven’t been touched apparently – they’ll just have to hold their website together with duct tape.
Meanwhile, SixApart – which sold blogging network LiveJournal earlier this year - has cut 8% of staff (16 people) and its management have taken a 15% pay cut.
I know that a lot more media and new media jobs will go… but there are ways to do it. And the way you treat your staff in a downturn says a lot. My hat’s off to the SA management for taking the pay cut.
LOL President meme, World of Warcraft style
November 9, 2008
Probably only hilarious if you play World of Warcraft, but I certainly LOLed.
Achievement Unlocked: President of the United States (and i loved the name of the album: “dps the skull ffs”, which again, you’ll only laugh at if you’re a dirty warcraft player like me).
