L.B. is very close to being right. He's making his categories a little hard and fast. Journalism encompasses everything from newspaper reporting to criticism. The example he gives of a popular film critic, Pauline Kael, is really regarded as a journalist--as opposed to an academic. Kael never did scholarly work and wrote for a weekly.
But, yeah, these round tables of Names in Game Journalism are a bit silly. Look at the discussion that went on at Slate last week. There we have Real Names in Game Journalism--a circle even more exclusive than the Shawn Elliott one L.B. is skeptical of.
Yet, when Chris Suellentrop and N'gai Croal and the NYTimes game critic and a couple of other dudes swap e-mails, you end up with, essentially, a discussion about a few places in the year's top ten list.
Who gives a shit?
I don't know how anybody can get through compiling a Top 10 list and not feel like an asshole. And these are the guys a cut above Dan "8.9" Hsu! I can't even imagine what's going to happen in Elliott's exchanges.
So; L.B. is right to call for a different approach--and right to call for the approach he specifies. Let's make it clear, however: there's nothing all that new here. It's just cultural reporting and criticism.
This doesn't mean to say that any of the people involved in the Elliott symposium or the Slate round table do cultural reporting or criticism. The few of them who have done this sort of thing haven't done it often. For the most part, they're news reporters and reviewers who occasionally write editorials.
All of those occupations are fine, of course, but L.B. is right to point out that a discussion among them is hardly likely to lead to the sort of work he's talking about.
I mean: Christ, look at the comments section of the Kotaku article. Everybody ignores the point about criticism and starts talking about how to do good reviewing. Fucken, what does it take?!
-Joe