The Game Site Slump

Two articles this morning looking at two different problems a lot of game news sites are having. FragLand's Game Sites Doomed? looks at the problems the game news sites are running into now that advertising companies are going either out of business, or cutting their pay to the affiliate. They have an overview of all the events, and also tries to give some suggestions as to how to get extra income on the site. In more turmoil news, Eurogamer is reporting that another large UK game server / e-commerce provider, Wireplay/Gameplay, is one the verge of shutting down with many jobs already cut.All the News That's Fit? is an article at The Adrenaline Vault, with the author offering his opinion on the bad journalism that plagues some sites nowadays. Examples of course being Andy Smith's reporting of the Duke4 screenshots "announcement" which wasn't an official announcement at all, and the rather biased reporting of an alleged assault at the Babbage's CPL event in December.

Personal websites will always have their polemics and rants, and discussion boards are always going to be free game for the flamers and antagonists. And there should always be at least a few sites devoted solely to unsourced gossip and muckraking. But the websites "of record" have to start rising above this, just as print papers rise above their crazy mail. If online journalists are going to claim the same professional status as those other kinds of writers--the muckraker, the tabloid reporter, the city daily or the newsmagazine hack--then we are going to have to try to conform to at least one of their ethical principles. By that, I mean the one belief all those other subspecies share in common: the steadfast conviction that just because something may be a good story doesn't always mean it's news.