Sometimes I think that people don't keep up with the interesting goings-on in the game journalist world, so it's good to see that Tor Thorsen pointing out some notable shifts on the GameSpot News blog - relatively unread by media types, I think.

Firstly, on the San Jose Mercury News' Dean Takahashi: "Speaking with GameSpot at the D.I.C.E. Summit, the longtime newspaperman said he had decided to devote himself fulltime to blogging on VentureBeat, a new site dedicated to Silicon Valley finance." And indeed, there's a note on Dean's blog and on VentureBeat, where the site's editor notes: "Yes, Dean will be doing games. But he’ll be doing lots of other fun stuff too."

Secondly: "This afternoon, popular game-news destination Shacknews announced the departure of veteran game journalist Chris Remo, who had been its editor-in-chief since 2005. Remo told GameSpot he hasn't decided on his next position yet, but is actively pursuing opportunities in game development and publishing." (For those not seeing the Shacknews announce, apparently it was a confirmation in comments of a G4 interview in which Remo was called former EIC for the site.)

It's testament to how vicious the anti-GameSpot corps have got that a bunch of the GameSpot news comments ignore the story - which also references the recent 1UP editorial shuffle which has James Mielke (pictured) assuming the EIC spot - to requestion editorial integrity yet again. Which is a bit of a broken record, to be honest.

One thing that _is_ interesting, though, is that these two folks are transitioning out of full-time game journalism (actually something Dean had done a few months back when he became more of an active tech columnist for the Merc News), and it brings up a good question - how many brand new, full-time game journalist jobs have been created in the last couple of years?

With the exception of GameTap's staff - whom I still think are a bit of a dubious value add for the service, despite being v.smart folks - there's just about no new jobs out there, because volunteerism and contracting rule the day. Not necessarily bad, but definitely a radical sea change.