Videogame journalists have come under fire for misleading the public, taking bribes from publishers, and hiring uneducated morons as writers. Whether or not this is all true is pure speculation, the type of stuff that sours message boards populated by conspiracy theorists and immature fan boys, but the damage has been done. Want to know why the average journo can't get any respect? It's largely because...
Nobody writes exceptionally well
Let's just get right down to it. Most journalists are awful writers, and this is true from top to bottom. Videogame journalism is rife with grammatical errors, historical inaccuracies, plagiarism, run on sentences, cliches, and plenty of bullshit that's entirely irrelevant. We often take the reader on bumpy rides through several pages of shoddily written garbage, so it should be no surprise when people call us out by dissecting entire stories and bashing us in forums.
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Part of the problem is most of us didn't go to college to study journalism. That's not to say that some didn't, but even they suck. There's just this enormous lack of excellent copy editing in our industry. We've managed to dodge constructive criticism and have been allowed to run amok with the English language. There are just not enough editors telling the writers that what they've done just isn't good enough
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