Today I gave notice at the Rocky Mountain News. April will be the first month I haven't worked full-time at a daily newspaper in nearly one and a half decades, it feels kinda weird.

Earlier this week the publisher of the newspaper called me into his office to tell me that due to the current economic state of journalism in general and newspapers specifically, the Rocky Mountain News would be shifting a group of feature writers over to the news side to help fill in gaps left by people who had quit over the past year.

I was among the group. My option was to either work once more as a full-time police reporter, something the news editors very much wanted me to do, and freelance my gaming coverage to the newspaper in my own time or quit outright and concentrate on gaming coverage through freelance with the Rocky and my current job at Kotaku.

I thought long and hard about the discussion I had with the publisher. It was, as you can imagine, a very difficult decision for me.

The Rocky Mountain News has been very supportive of my gaming coverage and I think it speaks volumes that during a time when few papers had the insight to invest a full-time beat in the coverage of the culture and business of video gaming, they saw that it was an growing and important part of both pop culture and artistic expression.

As I've spent time working this beat I've come to realize that not only is it something I enjoy doing, it is something that I think needs to be done.

This is a new and exciting medium and in so many ways shapes not only pop culture, but the way people see the world around them.

While I understand the dire nature of current journalism economics and the state that the newspaper is in, I just can't see myself going back to covering news.

I will truly miss working with the great reporters, writers, editors and managers that work daily to make the Rocky what it is, but I came to the conclusion today that I need to concentrate on my work covering the video game industry and the culture surrounding it.

While I am saddened at the paper's necessary decision to cut the full-time beat at the paper, I was very happy to learn that the paper was eagerly, perhaps anxiously, waiting to hear if I would be willing to continue covering the gaming beat for them in a freelance basis. Something I whole-heartedly plan to do.

It was nice to hear from so many people at the paper, from top editors to reporters, that they now consider video game coverage an important part of the newspaper and that my coverage was a small part of why they feel that way.

I can leave full-time employment at the newspaper knowing that if nothing else, I at least convinced the people who work at the Rocky that gaming isn't always just about games. Brian Crecente

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