LOL all the 'game journalists' on this site were just forum posters at some point. Hell, the entire staff and owner was just a forum poster when I came to this site. (well, ioi was at other sites prior to starting vgc)

I talked to another "gaming journalist" on the plane back from E3 and he said something that I thought was pretty accurate.

He doesn't consider himself as a journalist. He's a critic/reviewer and he hopes he writes up interesting editorials but he isn't a journalist going out and trying to get the next big scoop and delve deep into the industry. I consider myself the same, I try my best to be a good reviewer but I don't consider myself a journalist even when I'm out at a conference like GDC or E3.

As far as if gaming journalists are better than your common forum poster, I'd say no for the most part, we're just willing to put the work in that most people aren't. Any of you could have joined the staff when we had recruitment drives assuming you write reasonably well you just decided you didn't want to.

Well, I must of missed this, due to being distracted and working on a lot of other things.  I just remember seeing Brett's request for people to clean up the data in the database.

As for the first point, it would then seem to be a bunch of people with opinions, who happen to write above average, merely expressing their opinions in different media areas.  Perhaps I have expected a bit much when I would expect to see deep articles on the nature of the industry, and philosophy of what makes or doesn't make a good game, or possible trends out there.

Yep, I'd say the upper 20% here have better prose than the average gaming "journalist."  To me, it seems like gamer journalists are people who were at the right place at the right time and were willing to put in the effort with a large amount of risk involved (will this site work out?).

Pretty much everything has been democratized in the internet era, jeopardizing a number of jobs that were once secure. Professional blogs like Joystiq or Gonintendo are the middle ground there, and hell, those two are my primary sources of news long before i'd ever venture to IGN or GamePro or wherever. Blogs can also more easily cater to special interests

I find game journalists are not as biased towards gaming companies as forum posters are.

I think that is the problem.  Everyone wants to be a critic, and no one wants to go any farther than that.

Generally, the desire to have the world admire your tastes in regard to how things are is what is in a lot of people.  To actually try to be objective and report accurate information, and correct forecasts is really tricky.  And doing such in an area that really isn't important is another.  If someone is THAT doing real journalism, they are likely not covering videogames.

Not really, no. Look at the Feed team. The enormous majority of them, if not all, are not forum regulars.

Review contains a slightly greater proportion of forum posters, but that's because we've actively tried to make it that way. We had applications from inside and outside the site, and far more applications came from outside.

As for the admins, again, not all just forum posters. A lot of the original forum poster admins have left (Talon, Loadedstatement, Nordlead, and so on).

they may not be as fanboy based but its hard to not see their MONEY based.

i mean how many times do you see a game that has their adverts plastered all over the site get a mid 9 score, and then see everyone going "WHA" becuase of how bad the game was glitchy wise and so on.

or wth is with previews.  like EVERY preview makes said game sound like the second coming, and then the game is reviewed and it gets say a 6.  how was the preview so positive?  are they lying in teh preview to ge the game developer to send them the game early? to advertise on their site?  ect.