The Great Step Forward

[Farther than stars]

Well, this guy's obviously insane. First of all, Sterling, one of the greats, really? For another, it's a bit of a messiah complex to want to be the John Adams to gaming-journalism politics. Moreover, who the hell thinks $125,000 is a reasonable salary to be allotted based on votes and popularity (besides politicians of course). But then, maybe this isn't that much to David Jaffe. After all, he seems to be perfectly willing to to kick in a bona fide $500 for a year of horribly written articles.
Moreover, you would think that an article which denounces editors would be a little better written. The guy misspelled salary. SALARY! If you're asking people to trust writers to write words like 'incongruous' and 'ubiquitous' flawlessly, every time and without an editor, then at least spell 'salary' correctly, a word he must care deeply about at $125.000 per annum.

There's no way in hell Susan would go down that easily.

I'm also amazed that James Portnow and Robert Rath aren't on that list either. Well, maybe it's not that amazing when you account for the fact that Jaffe is obviously insane.

Why is Jim not on the editor's side. He's the Review Editor at Dtoid.

That's really a crime against language. And I feel sorry for the reviewers. They must be tired of getting e-mails back from him that say there's not enough swearing in their articles.

His next line says that the $125,000 would be paying the salary of up to 5 people, making it something more like $25,000 a year salary which is pretty modest.

No, the line is: "125 K goes to pay 1 of the 5 reporters a yearly salarty [sic]." So one person goes home with 125K. The next line talks about how $50.000 would be used for expenses. After that he goes on to say: "Every time we raise another 175K, we pull another name from the hat/vote on the next reporter. Ideally every year we can raise enough that all 5 reporters get to work." That means you would need to raise $875.000 to get all five of them to work. People on Kickstarter won't pay that for good games! They'll never pay it for a site of terrible articles when there are good and popular sites out there for free. So besides being an ammoral grope for cash, the plan is also severely impractical.

I like that David Jaffe mentions Jim Sterling as one of the journalist good guys.

No sarcasm, either, it's good to know a guy like him has got such a widely-heard voice in the industry.

That really depends on what side of the argument you fall and/or what your definition of 'good' is and/or whether you were being sarcastic, in which case that doesn't come across. Whatever the case, if you fall on the opposite side of the argument, it's not only not good, it's also possibly disastrous.

 

[Farther than stars]

As I go on to say, the Royal Charter prevents government from explicitly meddling with the internal editorial affairs of the BBC.

A charter, let's not forget, which is subject to parliament. There's that whole bit about parliament being sovereign, after all. The charter formally being in the hands of a monarch doesn't take away the fact that power technically lies in the hands of parliament.
However, if democratic sovereignty would prove too difficult to implement, you only need to remember that the Royal Charter which regulates the BBC needs to be renewed every ten years. Once that time is up, the Cabinet could simply request Elizabeth Windsor to amend the charter before renewing it.
And through those two mechanisms the government remains in charge of what the BBC can and cannot do.
By the way, I feel the need to mention this in a thread about editing: the way you wrote that sentence, with 'explicitly' before 'meddling' instead of before 'prevents', means that it might be alright for the government to meddle, as long as they don't do that explicitly. And while both sentences might be true, you can only mean one of the two. And I feel like you might have meant the other one, instead of this one. I also feel it's probably the other sentiment which the charter expresses.

 

[Andrew_C]

Now, call me crazy, but isn't what Mr. Jaffe suggesting similar to, but not identical to, what the BBC does?

Of course the BBC has editors and such, but they are bound by it's Royal Charter and Agreement to maintain "editorial independence" and, because of the licence fee providing guaranteed income (i.e. no need for advertisers) they can cover stories in any which way as long as it remains neutral and independent, even as a state broadcaster.

The way I see it, what the hypothetical Kickstarter money would do is give the hypothetical writing team that same level of editorial/writing independence.

tl;dr: make the whole of the BBC a games focused news outlet.

I'm amused that you think the BBC still employs actual journalists and not just underpaid interns who trawl Twitter for stories.

 

[Chrono212]

Now, call me crazy, but isn't what Mr. Jaffe suggesting similar to, but not identical to, what the BBC does?

Of course the BBC has editors and such, but they are bound by it's Royal Charter and Agreement to maintain "editorial independence" and, because of the licence fee providing guaranteed income (i.e. no need for advertisers) they can cover stories in any which way as long as it remains neutral and independent, even as a state broadcaster.

The way I see it, what the hypothetical Kickstarter money would do is give the hypothetical writing team that same level of editorial/writing independence.

tl;dr: make the whole of the BBC a games focused news outlet.

I'm amused that you think the BBC still employs actual journalists and not just underpaid interns who trawl Twitter for stories.

I'm amused you don't cite any sources.

 

[Andrew_C]

I'm amused you don't cite any sources.

I was exaggerating, but only slightly.

I will give you one example of the way the BBC is the total opposite of what you believe it. The way the Saville Scandal broke, with the BBC commissioning a documentary and then cancelling it, leaving ITV to pick up the investigation and break the story. This was caused not by a sinister conspiracy but by the massive proliferation of managers since Lord Birt, all too interested in protecting their own patch, and downplaying of actually creating content or doing journalism, because that's risky.

There was no-one prepared to take the risk of saying "Yes, lets broadcast this" and too many willing to say no, because it was too risky, or it might clash with their own programming (seriously). And nothing has changed since then, the woman who ultimately was most responsible for the whole debacle, Helen Boaden, the then head of BBC News, was even promoted and there has been another round of layoffs in the newsrooms (but only the token scapegoats fired from the managers).

 

[Kermi]

It's a sad day when you have to provide context for the joke.

But seeing as how the last two comics got a myriad of 'I don't it', then I can understand why

I needed the context. Not because I didn't get the joke, but because I don't happen to read every goddamn thing on the internet.

 

[The Random One]

Guy says we should pick the five best journalists.
Guy mentions Ben Kuchera and Jim Sterling.
Realize I'm leaving a blog from an alternate, far worse dimension.