I'm on my phone - tried to read through everything. Apologies if I missed some of your points, but let me try to address a few:
- I try not to take twitter too seriously, and I have a tendency to joke about serious issues. (See: presidential debates.) That doesn't make them any less serious. Conflict of interest in this field is indeed a serious issue.
- I think today's Silicon Knights story (among many, many others) is good proof that Kotaku is not very concerned with how angry a story might make publishers.
- Again, I can't speak for all of Kotaku, but I can tell you that I wasn't actively thinking "oh shit shouldn't cover this!" I've been busy working on a few stories (like this one, which took me a ton of time:
http://kotaku.com/5954973/as-fans-say-starcraft-is-dying-blizzard-plans-some-big-changes) among many other things. Believe it or not, I don't just sit around all day reading GAF.
I read John Walker's stuff yesterday, loved it, briefly thought about this story, and decided to work on other things instead.
- All that said, you folks bring up some good points. Maybe I should have covered this issue! I really don't know. I think the idea of press covering press is always nuanced, and I don't like the idea of telling other people how to do their jobs, nor do I like being "journalism ombudsman." My mentality in recent months has been to just do my job to the best of my ability, refuse to make compromises, and stay away from criticizing how other media do their jobs, for the most part. Is that the right mentality to take? Dunno. Is there really an easy answer there?
I'm also not sure it fits within our goals of spending most of our energy on stories that could appeal to broader audiences. Again, I really don't know. I think it's more nuanced than has been suggested here.
But I hate that some of you are boiling this down to "site doesn't cover this? They're part of the problem!" Not every site covers the same things, and not every site is necessarily interested in media issues like this one. You're all right that this is serious, problematic, and worth talking about. But there's no dogma that everyone in the gaming industry has to cover every single serious issue. Sometimes different publications just have different goals.