@RiccochetJ I've been running this place for about 16 years and I'm still running it...aren't I? *checks for corporeal body*
Yeah, while I don't pay much attention to games journalists, Jason seemed to do good work, friends and folks here say good things about his book, etc. He had been a gaffer regular for a long time. We had a rapport and he invited me to do an AMA on Kotaku some time ago (should be searchable in our archives) which was handled fairly well and protected from coordinated trolling attempts launched against it (phew, that internet...) by their AMA mods there. Kotaku used to be banned as a source on GAF for a long time, but I unbanned them when they seemed a little more legitimate, I personally cooled off our community on the Kotaku hate to give them a chance and not hate for hate's sake and established friendly relations proactively.
And then the above. I don't think I said anything on the boards at the time about this (couldn't realistically), but it was rather disappointing behavior that stood out as one of the most cowardly and duplicitous from a public name in the gaming scene at the time.
Happily shilling his book on Neogaf one day, a regular here for years, and asking me favors at the time ---> getting ahead of all the legitimate outlets (who actually took some kind of time to research and fact check and source properly at least) so Kotaku could run a trashy smear article first w/ Jason's "should have seen the warning signs sooner" a couple days later?
Kotaku's story was the first main press coverage and fueled the fire of the *intense* witch hunt undoubtedly. That witch hunt went after a bunch of people, and did harm all over on personal levels and no doubt damaged NeoGAF tremendously, setting the public narrative in place from that point. People were called at their jobs to try to get them fired, businesses were threatened, all sorts of harm spread around to anything seen as remotely associated with NeoGAF. Jason vouched for the piece though and claimed extensive fact-checking had been involved. He has some interesting standards if that's the case.
All things considered, I don't see a reputable, ethical, honest person there. That's sub-Daily Mail class work, while trying to retcon himself out of the picture on NeoGAF to get out of the way of his own team's hatchet job. Any awards for that, maybe?