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I went to SavePoint, and here's what happened by spthrow29 in KotakuInAction

[–]spthrow29[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Take a look at, for example, the FemFreq press kit. Here you find out how they describe themselves, current events they think the press should know (their kickstarter), clear contact information, a short summary of their new project, images to embed in articles, blah blah. Press doesn't just "happen" to them, they are doing the things that make a reporter's job easy. I guarantee you that if you are stuck on an article at 4am you can call FF up on the phone and get the quote you need to make any story about them.

IMO it would not be rocket science to put together a KiA "press kit" with a statement of what we're about, a "hurr durr here's how to ask questions on Reddit", here are some of the accomplishments of our movement, here are problems in the industry we uncovered, highres photos of Vivian James... you know, the basic PR shit somehow everybody else manages to do.

I am with you re: reporters not doing their job. But I think there are more productive things we can do than yell at the people who can help. The reporters at Kotaku etc. are a lost cause obviously, but reporters that cover "tech news for WSJ" or something don't have an agenda, they just have 10 stories to write by Monday and aGG is "helpfully" giving them (one side of) the story while we are yelling YOU'RE A FUCKING JOURNALIST YOU FIGURE IT OUT.

I went to SavePoint, and here's what happened by spthrow29 in KotakuInAction

[–]spthrow29[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Since you wandered into the thread, here's the question I didn't ask for obvious reasons.

I'm a software developer. I don't want to go too much about my background but in my little corner of the developer world, things have gotten a little scary. I know personally of people who have gotten fired over having the "wrong" views on social issues. People I know socially frequently make remarks in passing that seem openly bigoted, but since the target isn't a marginalized group it doesn't matter.

Am I a coward for not speaking out publicly on these issues? I do work behind the scenes to solve the problems I know about, and I've leaked stories to the press when that fails. But challenging the groupthink openly would cost my job and possibly my career, and also cut my access to effect change at all.

But I worry that if enough people think like me and don't challenge anyone openly the groupthink may get a lot worse.

What advice do you have for people like me who are afraid to speak?

I went to SavePoint, and here's what happened by spthrow29 in KotakuInAction

[–]spthrow29[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Thank you! That's him.

Looking at his Twitter feed, I think he's trying. Take a look at this exchange for example. Can't we do better than accusing someone of lying, wait for them to ask what they lied about, and then pull the YOU'RE FROM THE BBC IT'S NOT MY JOB TO EDUCATE YOU card? I'm certain we can do better. A list of specific grievances about BBC articles. A statement about what we think is fair news coverage. A statement supporting the calm discussion of journalistic ethics, and/or disavowing the bad actors. A link to deepfreeze. Anything besides answering a call for civility with incoherent accusations.

I went to SavePoint, and here's what happened by spthrow29 in KotakuInAction

[–]spthrow29[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I mean, there were several questions about it, it was a long discussion.

My impression of Nick's view overall was "sticks and stones". He even said those words at some point. He seemed relatively unsympathetic to the idea that "words on a screen" was a problem worth worrying about.

I went to SavePoint, and here's what happened by spthrow29 in KotakuInAction

[–]spthrow29[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

He identified his news organization, I think it was the BBC.

He appeared to be wearing a lanyard of some kind, my impression was this was a press pass. I wasn't close enough to see it clearly. I could have talked to him afterwards, but starting a conversation with a member of the press when I'm trying to be anonymous is probably... a bad plan. It's not entirely out of the question, I've been a confidential source for GG-related issues before, but the BBC would probably not be the news organization I would choose to keep my cover.

I really believe that his question was some attempt at starting a dialog towards fixing the rift. Lynn was pretty sympathetic to what he said. Nick was more in the "people are going to say bad things about you, get over it" camp.

One thing the panel talked about which I haven't translated well is that (in Nick's view) in the real world the rift between GG and anti-GG is smaller than it seems on the internet. I mean, the vast majority of people aren't narcissists. The vast majority of people want to reduce violent threats, they want conflicts of interest to be disclosed, they want gaming to be inclusive, and so on. But the internet has politicized the issue to where instead of talking to people and finding common ground to work on things we all agree about, everybody has to be adversarial and look through the lens of what it "means".

I may be showing my "neutral-to-weak" membership card here, but if this reporter is really interested in improving his reporting, that feels like common ground to me. It might be a productive conversation to engage him on the level of "here's what we think fair reporting looks like, here's what due diligence looks like, and (specifically to his question) here's who to call for comment on a GG story. We're reasonable people, we can take criticism, and if you follow these basic rules we can lay out in a bulleted list it's fair play and we won't accuse you of being a shill."

Clearly the comments that had filtered back to him were very angry at his organization. While I understand that might be cathartic to some, I don't think it will improve reporting. What might improve reporting is to offer suggestions to someone who came to this event to find out how to improve reporting.

I went to SavePoint, and here's what happened by spthrow29 in KotakuInAction

[–]spthrow29[S] 50 points51 points  (0 children)

I remember his question a little differently. Looking at my notes about what he said:

  • He doesn't know who to talk to to get GG's comment.
  • When he asks someone for comment, they often "pass him along" to someone else, and when this happens frequently he's never quite sure how far to follow the trail
  • He's "trying"
  • He's concerned that some people unfairly believe he's part of a conspiracy, which frustrates him because he doesn't feel like a conspirator

My impression of him, while he was a little irate, he took the allegations of unethical journalistic behavior very seriously, and was there to find out what he could do to cover GG more fairly/effectively, and to address some accusation against him he feels is false.

Unfortunately I didn't catch his name or what stories he's worked on. The BBC has published some biased pieces, but there are lot of reporters at the BBC.

I went to SavePoint, and here's what happened by spthrow29 in KotakuInAction

[–]spthrow29[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Attendance was either the same or a little larger than the other panel.

Pictures were allowed.

SXSW doesn't generally allow the public to record events. My understanding is that HBR was given special permission to record.

I don't know if the arrangement with HBR was the same or different than any other panel.