Wow. I'm going to have to damage control for the entire profession of journalism.
Here goes.
AdmiralViscen said:
Last time I checked, all journalists sensationalize news. Especially in their headlines.
No, but thanks for playing. Headlines communicate the jist of the story they run over in a clear, concise way. Perhaps you confuse some verb choices with "sensationalizing," such as using "to kill" very often. That is journalistic style because "kill" is a very accurate -- and short -- way to describe the ending of a person's life. If a headline reads "Terrorists kill 3" then an eye scanning over a newspaper page -- or a Web page, for that matter -- will know exactly what happened without thinking about it. Terrorists killed 3 people. Quick, to the point.
Now, if it reads "Terrorists shoot 3 people" then we have two issues: it may not be accurate, because the terrorists might have bombed, not shot, or they might have done a combination of shooting and bombing and stabbing or whatever; and it's unnecessarily long: the word "people" is unnecessary because we're obviously talking about
people being killed. No one cares of insects get killed; it's naturally assumed that if something gets killed and it's important enough to run in the paper, it's a person that got killed. If there's an important story about an animal getting killed, then the headline will specify the animal.
Another thing to keep in mind is that headlines are
designed to catch people's attention -- when they're well written, that is. Newspapers and Web sites are selling a product, that is, information. If a person scans over a broadsheet, the second thing they look at is headlines (after pictures) and if those headlines don't catch their attention, they won't read stories. If they don't read stories, they don't spend time with the paper and they don't look at ads and the papers make no money. The headlines
must be clear and exciting (as exciting as the story's content allows -- a generic city council meeting might be a little on the boring side) in order to draw readers in to the story.
Now, that's not to say the headline should be
inaccurate for the sake of being more eye-catching. Indeed, that is the very worst thing a headline writer can do. In this case, 1Up committed just such a tragedy. Their headline reads, "Subway Spokesman's Six Inches of Nintendo Hate". It might be witty, but it's also inaccurate. Jared (the Subway spokesman) did not say that he hated Nintendo. Thus, the headline
cannot read that he hates Nintendo. This is an example of poor (nonexistant, really) journalism.
CO_Andy said:
Isn't journalism basically deformed English? They can get away with just about anything.
Journalists actually use a pretty rigid style that emphasizes concise, specific, accurate language. Most newspapers use the Associated Press style in some form or another. We can't get away with
anything and it certainly conforms to the
English language. In fact, one could argue it's more constricted than academic writing, to an extent.
The blogger in question said:
The vidoegame journalism industry has a problem. Actually it has many problems, but the main problem it faces today is that it is not taken seriously - and with good reason. How can you take a publication seriously when it constantly insults its readers, patronizes them, and hypes up games one day only to trash them the next? This is an epidemic that infests pretty much all videogame publications, and we shouldn't be surprised since journalism, in general, has taken a turn for the biased and sensational.
Today I want to talk about 1up.com and a story they have posted about the Subway spokesman Jared Fogle ( The annoying guy in all the Subway commercials ). The Headline reads "Subway Spokesman's Six Inches of Nintendo Hate", and clearly indicates that Jared in some way, shape or form "hates" Nintendo. It also claims that Jared is blaming his weight gain and junk food habit on videogames. The problem comes in when you actually read the source of 1up's story which is actually an article about Jared speaking at a college nutrition class. While Jared does mention that he started getting fat at the same time he started playing videogames, neither Jared nor the article claim that Jared blames videogames, let alone Nintendo, for making him fat. In fact he says that the best birthday present of his life was a Nintendo. So where is the hate in all of this?
At best, we can only conclude, from the source, that Jared is saying that his desire to play videogames helped him get fat. So, why is Dan Dormer of 1up saying that Jared "hates" nintendo? Clearly that is not true from the source and is a tremendous leap from what Jared actually says. Once again I ask why? Could it be the need to spice things up on a slow news day? Could it be that Dan Dormer is simply incompetent at reading comprehension? Whatever the reason, it makes Dan Dormer look like anything but a journalist - which you will see that he is actually an intern at 1up according to him.
This story is even worse for 1up.com which actually allowed such a wholly inaccurate, and probably intentionally inflammatory story to run on their site. Maybe this story got through the cracks somehow, but I doubt it. This kind of sensational, hyped up reporting is evident in just about every videogame publication, and it needs to stop. Videogame publications need to start taking their profession seriously by distancing themselves from the juvenile, rebellious attitude they try to portray in order to look cool to their readers, and start providing objective, intelligent views on the issues. They can also start by NOT posting hype, and outright lies.
At the core, this blogger is right and his example is a good one. Where he goes wrong is when he extends the problem not only to all video game journalists but
all journalists in general. Contrary to his opinion, very little journalism (outside the opinion pages) is biased and sensational. If you'll let me, I'd like to clarify that I mean print journalism more than broadcast -- broadcast can be
very sensational and it
is becoming a problem. Bias is also more apparent in broadcast journalism, especially on
certain channels.
