Lepus Lepidus

I see a lot of blog posts and forum discussions pointing out what’s wrong with print gaming magazines, and a lot of the same unfair points are raised over and over again. So, fully aware that putting a headline of “Top [Number] [Anything]” on my blog is the currency of online content, I present to you the uninformed, assumptive, and just plain stupid things I see people say when it comes to criticizing print magazines.

“I stopped reading gaming magazines five years ago — they’re horrible.”
This one’s my favorite. If you’re completely unfamiliar with what’s new in magazines, why on earth are you criticizing the current state of magazines today? Five years ago this month, Ask Jeeves was looking to expand globally, John Kerry was running for President, World of Warcraft was in beta. A few things have changed since then, you know? Citing outdated examples makes everything you say afterwards utterly irrelevant. Imagine a game review where the reviewer didn’t actually play the finished game, but reviewed a preview build from nine months before. You wouldn’t listen to their opinion based on that lack of experience — why on earth should I listen to yours? And yet, online, it happens frequently — sometimes with smug self-righteousness, like it’s cool to be so completely out of touch with what they’re judging.

Just because the critics do not (or refuse to) see how magazines have evolved does not mean that magazines have not evolved. If you pick up something current and don’t like it, you have a case. But if you can’t point to an issue of a magazine within the last four to six months and speak intelligently about one of its articles…you shouldn’t be commenting on those articles.

“Well, you know all those magazines are getting bought off.”
I believe in free speech, but at the same time, I do not think that just coming out and saying anything you want whether it’s true or not is not a good thing to do. “Never mind the facts, here’s some allegations!” Generalizations with no examples hurt me way more than they hurt you. Do you have something specific in mind — some sort of proof, some specific example, some smoking gun? Or are you just going to pass around the easy lie and assume the worst?

Here’s what I think is the problem. Do publishers approach print outlets looking for a minimum score in exchange for access? They have in the past; I have been in the room when they come calling. But does that mean that the print outlet takes that deal? No, it does not…but people seem to think it does, despite no proof. They assume the worst because it’s easy (if not downright fun) to do so.

Let’s put it in a more social context: If you walk down the street and a guy asks if you want to buy drugs, should you be arrested for that? If you say yes, sure — but if you were simply the target of someone’s request, no. I’d think the sin here is on the publisher’s side for acting unethically, but I don’t see anybody calling for the boycotting of the publishers; somehow it’s the press’s fault for simply being too tempting a target. “They asked for it, they were wearing glossy paper and colorful ink!”

If press outlets are saying yes to these deals, then you should call them out and call for reform — but you have to call them out specifically. I want those unethical people out of power, too. But to do that, you’d need to know it was happening, and frankly, the average forum poster has no experience with or insight into what they’re criticizing — they only have their own biases to support their fact-free conclusions. As someone who has turned down these kinds of arrangements when faced with this choice, I really don’t like being lumped in with the people who made the opposite ethical choice. (Even some of the “white knights” of the biz are guilty of this — they bring the problem to light, which is good, but won’t name names, so everybody gets hurt…except, conveniently, them.) This ethical issue is an individual thing, and it’s entirely unfair to make a blanket accusation…even if you really, really want an irrational reason to hate something.

“Print is dead. Why would anybody want a magazine in the age of online?”
When I was a kid, I didn’t like my parents’ music. Why? Because it was my parents’ music! Les Paul, who wants to listen to him? I also didn’t want to watch anything in black and white. We have color TV, mom! This is 1982, for Christ’s sake! Live in the technicolor now! I think it’s only natural that the current generation rejects what the previous generation deems valuable. It’s outdated. We have something better now — and why would I even go see an old movie in a theater if I can see it on TV? But as you get older and wiser, you realize, hey…It’s a Wonderful Life, 12 Angry Men, these are fantastic movies, and just because it wasn’t shot in color doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile.

I think we’re at that point with gaming journalism too. Online is new, it’s now, it’s better. And it really is, in a lot of ways, better — or has the potential to be, even if it’s still young and finding its way. But to the readers of online games content, if dad was a subscriber to GamePro, well, it must be ancient and they have no use for it. I understand this logic, because l’ve used it myself…but I was a lot younger and stupider and have since realized that just because it wasn’t created in the last 15 minutes didn’t mean it was worthless. Even in a field like gaming, where innovation is king and new products appear hourly, I believe there is value to covering the new stuff via the old methods. There are so many “outdated” examples throughout art, entertainment, and history that you have probably already thought of three of them. Sometimes, a book or a play or a song is better than a blog or a Flash animation or a video, even if they’re old.

So maybe print isn’t dead; maybe print is simply print. Magazines have accepted their limitations; the key is that the audience also needs to value their strengths. And then, of course, print has to play to those strengths, to do what it does best (presentation, insight, access, tone) even better. As someone who still works in print, that’s how I see what I do, anyway.

I have some theories on why the haters keep harping on these same points and what the source of their hate may be, but I’ll save those for another time.

Joystiq’s Justin McElroy wrote a very fair rebuttal to my last post about the two-week black hole in online news reporting about the GH5 Avatar thing. Not to kiss up, but I actually think Joystiq’s attitude and ethic is as good as it gets online (they cite sources and check facts and everything!) and as a reader who has read a lot of their articles, I trust them as an online news source above most others. But I called them out as a negative example in the story because a) it was relevant to the topic and b) there are two high-profile/influential news blogs in my estimation, and Joystiq is one of them. Just because I like ’em doesn’t mean I’m not going to occasionally criticize ’em. (The fact that Justin wrote back says a lot too.)

Also, a side note: on my personal blog, I’m not wearing my fair and balanced press hat, and nobody’s editing my from-the-hip rants. Justin was right to disagree with my spiteful stretch at the end there. But this being my personal domain does not mean I’m intentionally trying to be a flame-baiting irrational jerk either. I’m personally responsible for what I say here and I accept all criticism; I haven’t spiked any disagreeing comments. It would be tough to talk about things like the importance of respect for multiple viewpoints without actually respecting multiple viewpoints.

But Justin’s note made me think about why I wanted to post the GH5 thing in the first place, and that led me to admit that I’m simply biased and sensitive when it comes to the online/print relationship. I think, in broad terms, the former often devalues the latter unfairly. Many of my mini-rants about the media suggest or illustrate this, so this might not be news to you. Sometimes it’s a small thing, like an offhanded hopeful comment about how print is doomed; other times it’s bigger, like improper/incorrect citing, a lack of original research/reporting, or outright willful ignorance. I know the value of both online and print; I only get my knickers in a twist when someone who doesn’t tries to influence the masses one way or the other. That’s when I am more likely to point out flaws in the new system that do not exist in the old. The difference between evolution and extinction is not being explained, so I often come forward to try, and I usually do it with some venom.

So yeah, having worked in both online and print (I am so frequently a defender of print that I think a lot of people forget that I got my start in online, and most recently helped launch GamesRadar in the US), I get bitter when online sites don’t get the basics right. Maybe I should celebrate more positive examples going forward.

Feel free to call bullshit on this post, but despite my admitted bias, I would like to hear other people’s thoughts on this one.

When I found out that OXM was going to break the news about 360 players using their Avatars in Guitar Hero 5, I realized it was also the perfect time to pay attention to some details. This is exactly the kind of small-but-significant info that the daily blog sites love to report on, so I wanted to see how long it would take between the arrival of our magazines in subscribers’ mailboxes and the appearance of this news on Joystiq and Kotaku. (I was particularly interested to see this after the last time that information from an OXM feature was mangled in transit en route to the blogs.)

The 100th issue of OXM with the GH5 Avatar story (and a blurb on the cover about that particular story element) hit subscribers roughly two weeks ago, and we’ve gotten a ton of reader mail about the issue already. However, Kotaku and Joystiq posted their GH5 Avatar stories just this morning. Why? Simple: They waited until the information came to them, in the form of a PR release and a video (in Kotaku’s case, a custom one). “Xbox 360 avatars will be able to jam in upcoming rhythm game Guitar Hero 5, Activision announced this morning,” reads Kotaku’s story. Well, there you have it: this is a story based on Activision’s press release. And even though the information was reported before Activision’s press release, the content was very clearly fresh news to the commenters.

When an OXM reader brought the print scoop up in the comments on Joystiq’s story, he was roundly shouted down, because on the internet, people don’t like to feel like someone else has more information than they do. Some suggested that OXM had the information first was irrelevant, and that OXM is not a valid news source to the readers of Joystiq. (Of course, that does not change the fact that OXM is a valid source of this information — if the audience accepts it when Joystiq reports the same thing that OXM reports, it’s a reader bias to suggest one is more valid than the other.)

So here’s my actual question: If your job as a “games journalist” is to seek out new and interesting tidbits about videogames, and you get paid by the tidbit…why are you limiting your sources? I would think it makes sense to subscribe to the last few print magazines out there and cull them for information. Instead, I generally see “news” on blogs when PR departments deliver it. It’s clearly what happened in this case.

So if the info is out there…why wait? If it was important enough to report today, surely it would have been important enough to report two weeks ago. Are the blogs being told not to report it until Activision says so? Or are the blogs not actually aware of news happening around them? Either one is bad.

Now, nobody can stay on top of everything, but reading enthusiast magazines on your specialized topic seems like a pretty easy (and dare I say occasionally enjoyable) way to stay on top of how information is being conveyed to different segments of your audience. Sometimes the mags are going to have gaming information later; sometimes they’re going to have it first. All you have to do is read them to stay aware of that ebb and flow. And maybe this is too obvious to mention, but you can blog about whatever you read. And then you get paid more, because those bloggers get paid based on post traffic. (The win for the print mag is that they are cited as a source…or, journo-ethically, should be. Hence my bias.) So, considering that we’re still talking about a form of information that comes to your mailbox as automatically as an e-mailed press release…why aren’t you subscribing?

Information gathering and research defines the role of the news media. If you are not actively seeking out sources of information, are you really a journalist?

UPDATE 8/11: Hello, Slashdotters. It’s probably worth reading the short followup post too.