Irick said:
Well, to be fair, this is true of journalism in general. Investigative journalism has been dead for quite some time, there just isn't the money there for it. The simulacrum of hard hitting news is enough for most people, those who really want well researched articles are niche.
Certainly. A perusal of most newspapers reveals an awful lot of repackaging of reports from Reuters, Associated Press, and the like. I think the best bet for acquiring people with a willingness to do investigative journalism would be to hire from local papers and journalism graduates and post-graduates. It would requiring carving out a niche in the space which it is entirely possible the audience for does not exist, at least on a large enough scale, containing enough people willing to pay for the content.
The 24-hour cable channel news cycle has done a lot to reduce the quality of what most people are willing to accept as news, and the Internet has done its own share of damage. In an odd way, the alleged triviality of video games might be its best hope for more rigorous journalism. The potential sources for information that could make a good investigative report aren't necessarily as guarded as those who might be referencing government policy or law enforcement.
Could the viability of, say, the more popular YouTube commentators scale upwards? Are there other sources of income than advertising for video games themselves, and products like Mountain Dew that consciously link to video games and gaming culture? Perhaps not, I recognize.
At the end of the day, a professional journalist is a professional journalist. In the world of the professional, 'Real artists ship'. It is a rare company, a rare industry and a rare audience that is willing to wait for something more than good enough. In general, it is time and not the whims of the market that end up distinguishing between good enough and high quality. Consider for a moment your involvement with news media. Can you, off the top of your head, name the top ten news articles you have read in your life?
That depends on how broadly you set the terms. There are reviews and editorials I remember, and pieces on particular events (The Tianmen Square uprising, the death of Mother Theresa, Newsweek's final interview with Charles Schulz, the Challenger disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall) that remain vivid in my memory. Could I remember, say, the authors of those pieces? Usually not.
Journalism is a lot like good industrial design. It's beautiful, but it's the background of your world when it is done right. It isn't something that most people stop to really consider, to learn the language, and to appreciate on a deeper level. Consider the design of the telephone. Consider the design of a door. These have mountains of theory, years of practice, millions of dollars put into them. There are true works of art in these fields, but to most people, it's just a phone. It's just a door. They may enjoy the better crafted experience but at the end of the day, they are probably not going to want to pay a premium (without serious social incentive to).
And yet, we notice when these things
don't work. When a door doesn't close flush without exerting extra pressure, when a phone produces a background buzz. And arguably, when journalism no longer serves to inform, or to create an informed public/consumer base.
We may not have reached a level of frustration yet that demands better, let alone is willing to pay for it. But wouldn't it be wonderful if we did?
In somewhat of a unique dichotomy... the hard hitting stuff, the investigative journalism... that's the most expensive to produce and it's no more expensive to consume. Let us consider the traditional TV journalism. The real break winner there are the easy, cheesy, approachable and minimally investigated morning shows. They fund... everything. For the longest time it was the expected state of things. Your hard hitting, important stuff? Doesn't make a dime. It's that cheezy, feel good show that funds your whole operation. You do the other stuff for the love of journalism.
To me, it seems this mindset has faded. These days, if it doesn't make bank it's going to fade. The real solution here is... to value the reporting.
If we want games journalism to be better, we have to support it. We can do that by taking up the mantel ourselves and producing quality content, or by going out of our way to appreciate the good journalism we have. While debating ethics, or what we want to see helps us set up these formal metrics, what we have to do after that is... act by them.
We can't forget that part
I think we agree on that.
Zachary Amaranth said:
The short of it is that I don't think they can investigate in any meaningful sense, given the way the publisher can shut people out or down, you'd have better luck with state secrets. And with ad buys and such. I mean, there's little actual investigative journalism these days as it is, and it's in no small part because of the shift in "legitimate" journalism to a similar set of practices. Hell, it's not even new. Look at cigarette controversies right until they weren't allowed to advertise everywhere. It's worse in gaming, since games are the primary interested industry.
Maybe if everyone rose up and refused to deal with the industry, but I don't think you're going there. I don't think a publication could be built ground up on a major industry scale as you suggest. And I don't think legit journalists would adapt well here. Actually, I think they'd be forced to adapt too well.
You might be right. Part of my idea, as I mention above, is hiring from new graduates and "local paper" journalists who are actually used to the idea of investigative reporting. However, I grant that it's entirely possible the mission itself would grind them down over time, even with the best support.
I like to think that interviewers asking unusual questions could catch even the usual PR flacks off-stride, and highlighting when they're trying to bring things back to scripted messages might even serve to embarrass them and serve notice that the usual tactics weren't going to cut it. There are also instances where people closer to the actual production have gotten to speak to interviewers, even if those PR people later swooped in to "clarify" the statements of their excessively candid charges. We haven't
quite gotten to the point where everyone involved in a game is buried under five feet of NDAs.
Of course, an organization attempting more investigative work might just end up blacklisted, officially or unofficially. It could be that overcoming such a blockade would require a far broader reform, rather than a single organization, and that goes from mere optimism to a truly pie-in-the-sky sort of naivete.