To: Ash
From: Crecente
Re: No, I Was Wrong, THIS Is The Best Service Ever

This morning I posted a hypothetical question on my Twitter feed:

Which would you hire to write about video games? An established journalist with no gaming experience, or a gamer with zero journalism experience.

I included such extremes because I was curious which attribute people cared more about in someone covering video games: Journalism or a passion for video games.

I was surprised at the number of people who responded. It brought up some interesting questions from all sorts of people including journalists, writers, developers and PR folks.

Personally, I think journalism is more important, though I can't imagine I'd hire someone completely new to the world of gaming. As a journalist you are supposed to be trained to tackle all subjects by researching and learning about them. Often in newspapers, the education reporters aren't teachers, the business reporters aren't MBAs and the police reporters aren't former cops, lawyers, or criminals... well, not usually.

Of course, often the music, book and movie critics are devotees of those subjects. Which raises an interesting point: Game journalists are expected to wear many hats.

In a perfect world a person writing about video games would be a business reporter who can cover the ins and outs of the industry, a news reporter to cover the actual news that is connected to gaming, a solid researcher for dealing with game-related studies, serious gaming and all of those other important niches, and finally a devotee that can reflect on the cultural aspects of video games and critique the games themselves.

That's a lot to ask from one person, and the system that asks it results in a pool of generalists with few experts in any one topic.

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