Why news? Why now? Well, I should probably back up a bit.
Right around the time we started Giant Bomb back in 2008, I grabbed myself an RSS reader and subscribed to almost every single full-text gaming news RSS I could find with the idea that if we were going to start a site with no dedicated news person, I was going to need to be up on what's happening out there in the world. While we focused primarily on covering the games themselves, we'd dabble in news here and there, reporting things when they came our way and, more often than not, linking out to sites that were doing the legwork that we weren't. Beyond positioning some rugged soldiers like Brad Nicholson in direct path of the press release hose, It felt like it would be crazy to get into news. Other people--like Patrick, for example--had that buttoned up.
These days, I almost wonder if everyone decided that there's no money in news reporting or something. The sites that were fully devoted to it seem a little less focused these days. Some of them broke out and got into other types of content at their news team's expense. Others branched out into so much off-topic coverage that I had to cull them from my RSS feed. Still others straight-up vanished. Point being, I'm not getting as much news from the news sites as I used to, but the post count from these sites just seems to go higher and higher. I'm left with way too much digging to get to the important stuff from the authors that matter.
And we'll probably manage to have a good time while we're at it. That, after all, tends to be our way.
But enough about that. What I want from you right now is two things! First, join me in welcoming Patrick to Giant Bomb. Second, I think we all have some ideas about what an ideal news organization should look like these days, but I want to know what you think about it. How do you want your news delivered? Is text the thing? Should we develop some kind of weekly news wrap-up show? Call-ins? A daily podcast where the day's headlines are delivered directly to your earholes? Should we beam our news stories into space so that aliens can know about updated release dates and the reasons behind their favorite studio's layoffs? Should we rope Patrick into some kind of heinous Tested live show segment where he's blindfolded and eating some kind of awful "food" during his first week here? Like I said, let me know.
(Photo by Becky Pineo)
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