As if the realm of gaming journalism wasn't already on shaky ground in 2024, Kotaku's Editor-in-Chief, Jen Glennon, has resigned in protest after the site's owner, G/O Media, apparently indicated it wanted Kotaku to de-emphasize news reporting and skew more towards game guide creation. Glennon's letter of resignation offers a scathing rebuke of the current management and ownership at G/O Media:
After careful consideration, I have concluded that the current management structure and decision-making processes at G/O Media are not aligned with my values and goals for Kotaku
I firmly believe that the decision to ‘invert’ Kotaku's editorial strategy to deprioritize news in favor of guides is fundamentally misguided given the current infrastructure of the site
In its reporting of the situation, Aftermath indicated that one source still at Kotaku indicated that G/O Media indicated a guide creation goal for the remaining staff at around 50 guides per week. It is important to note, that in November of 2023, G/O Media hit Kotaku with redundancy layoffs amounting to twenty-three people which reduced the site to under ten paid staff members. Furthermore, G/O Media has joined Red Ventures in exploring using AI to generate content on its subsidiaries, which includes Kotaku, Gizmodo, Quartz, The A.V. Club, and The Onion, against the protests of editors on those sites.
If there is some good news, it is that it appears that the remaining staff at Kotaku have been in unison about resisting this change and G/O Media may be balking at their original plan. Senior editor at Kotaku, Alyssa Mercante shared this on Twitter:
Nonetheless, if G/O Media's efforts are successful, it would be another devastating loss to the gaming journalism profession and the loss of yet another source of gaming reporting.
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