Comment by CM30 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CM30 | Hacker News Reader

This article seems like it could be describing games journalism almost perfectly, with the sole exception of the whole 'their business affects every aspect of society' thing. In that field you've also got:

1. Reporters acting more like cheerleaders for industry figures than journalists

2. Overly secretive companies with strict control structures.

3. Journalists being stretched thin as they're forced to cover too many stories at once in too many areas without getting the time to research them properly.

4. A lack of coverage regarding actual issues in the industry, or anything resembling investigative journalism.

5. Misunderstanding their audience in general.

But hey, I guess you could say many of the issues are really true of most niche or entertainment focused media.

Gaming journalists understand their audience. The problem is that their bills are paid by advertisements from AAA studios.

You've described the problems of ad-sponsored media. If you actually paid for your news, all these problems would go away.

> If you actually paid for your news, all these problems would go away.

We all did. They were called magazines, and you paid for subscriptions. There were gaming magazines, tech magazines, music and TV magazines, celebrity gossip magazines, etc. Most of them had many of the same issues as modern sites for those topics.

That’s because the subscription basically paid for mailing you a paper copy. Everything else was still covered by advertising.

Some magazines but certainly not all. The publisher I worked for most recently had three sister titles: one entirely ad-funded, another entirely subscription-funded (no ads at all), the third (which I edited) half and half.

Yes, I think that's a good analogy. Tech is treated like a cool toy in the news, rather than as a corporate sector that has real consequences on everyone's lives. Tech should be covered differently than computer games. (Not making a value judgement about gaming, just saying it has less of an effect on society.)

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