Are they proud of it? Yeah, I imagine so; they got more ad impressions. It's not like Future does any sort of real journalism, so why not take the Jerry Springer route: if you are going to be mentally toxic, go the whole way.

You don't think anything - say - Next Gen does counts as real journalism? Or Edge? Or - say - any of the other magazines of Future you don't read, including many which don't write about games at all?

KG

I don't really see the problem (disclosure, I work for Future, so fuck you Zack). Gamesradar is having a fun at absolutely everyone's expense (including their own, they did a hate video for GR), and it just so happened to have been quite popular.

I was actually surprised with just how tame some of the videos are/were, and how timid some of the commentary on the introduction pages was. I'd have been much ruder.

I've never seen such an elaborate attempt to justify trolling.

I was surprised by how reasonable that Shirley Phelps-Roper interview came off sounding. She was actually fine with people doing whatever they want to do, and saw her duty as spreading the word and setting an example, rather than legislating and forcing others to follow her beliefs.

I mean, yeah, she's rabidly insane, but I'll take a rabidly insane nutjob that protests funerals over a rabidly insane nutjob that proposes legislation any day.

She also seemed to have a sense of humor, but I couldn't tell if that was because she was actually making jokes, or was actually so humorless that she was making seriously humorous statements. It was a fun read. It almost seemed like a failed troll, because it never got all vitriolic and anti-social, and it felt like they were really trying to get her to explode.

Week of Hate is NOTHING to Space Week!

Kieron, obviously I haven't read every issue of every publication of theirs (we get tons of magazines in our office and I periodically page through the Official * Magazines, PCGamer and I used to have an Edge subscription), but what I did read was underwhelming and the same as the rest of the game print-mag industry. For all the praise Edge gets, it's still a should-I-buy-this and what's-new-in-anime magazine. Unless it has changed in the past six months, I stand by my statement. If you would like to point me to some examples from the past year that you think are outstanding journalism, I'd be happy to examine them and retract my statement.

Tim, don't take it so personally. Unless you were responsible for this hate week garbage, then please take it very very personally. If I got upset every time my company put out something less-than-stellar, I'd be a very angry person. You just have to know your role and do the best you can.

I'll never understand this "journalism" argument. I have a journalism degree. I used to be a journalist, first for newspapers and then for ABC as a producer. When I moved to games, I ceased to be a journalist. How many magazines and websites are hitting the streets, walking a beat, performing extensive research, developing leads to ongoing stories or producing content that isn't dictated by another company's available assets? We're constantly under embargoes, told what we can and can't say. We only learn things when they're approved by a group of other people at a publisher.

Granted, having friends in the industry gets you exclusives, but even that isn't "journalism." You're not "scooping" anything, you're regurgitating facts about someone else's product, and even then you're only saying what you're allowed to say. Opinion, well-crafted or not, isn't journalism. Develop an actual story, one that wasn't OKd by some other company, break news that actually makes everyone sit up and take notice and then you can say you're a journalist. Connecting the dots by way of reams of internet rumors or trademark patents or conference calls doesn't count.

I'm not saying there aren't any genuine journalists in this industry. There certainly are. There are a handful of quality pieces coming out each year, but by and large, any given magazine or site is not creating anything that fits into my definition of journalism.

Argue all you want about how crass the articles are or why they chose to link some and not others - that's fine. That's opinion. That's discussion. Go for it. But I swear, if one more person pulls the "zomg graet jurnalizm guyz" card I'm going to twist my head off.

Any other legit journos out there who feel the same way? It's infuriating to even have some of this stuff categorized as such, hence the long post.

I can't remember ever reading Edge discuss anime.

I here you Brett. It's really just reporting, and anyone calling it journalism is either confused or talking themselves up.

GamesRadar is a shithole that for some reason Future want to revive, at least there's some amount of content on there now.

The site seems to be aimed at a decidedly adolescent audience, the type that existed in the late 90s and read Loaded. Who gives a shit about some potted list of weird fighting games, or bad Zero Punctuation rip offs?

Idiots do. And there's lots of them. Ad Impressions++

If you hated the Week of Hate, does that mean you actually like it because if you liked the Week of Hate, you'd agreed with everything they said.

One link I'm surprised you did not mention was "100 Reason Fanboys Hate GamesRadar." You know you can't have a sense of humor unless you poke fun at yourself too.

Here's the link to that one...

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/100-reasons-fanboys-hate-gamesradar/a-20080328102237523049

Zack: I don't need to point at anything. You said an entire company's work was toxic, when it's a big company full of many magazines, not all are about games. Your statement is ludicrous. It's like saying that - say - anyone who works at EA is completely unethical. It just deserves laughing at.

Brett: Oh God. The Wot Is Journalism argument.

To cut to the chase: there's two positions on this:
1) There's the slightly anal position forwarded by people who've spent money on a degree in Journalism and/or work(ed) in News Journalism. Which is basically, We're Wot Journalism Is and anything else is just writing. And that's about as complimentary as it gets.
2) There's those who note there's a second wider definition of journalism, which is basically includes anything written for a periodical journal.

They're both in any dictionary you care to look at. They're both pretty widely used. I can understand News Journalists getting annoyed with the use of their word, but - y'know - nothing they can do about it. People who work for Film magazines with be Film Journalists even if they just reprocess releases, type up interviews with stars in the alloted slots and go to screenings. C'est la vie.

My position is that I'm more interested in the quality of a piece than whether it's official Bona-fide Journalism. Whether or not your believe someone who works primarily as a reviewer is a journalist or not is neither here nor there.

Or, put even more simply, there's bigger matters than the egos of News Journalists to worry about.

KG

You've misconstrued. While I did say that Future lacked real journalism, which in hindsight was too broad of a statement, I didn't say all their work was toxic. What I was referring to was that if they were going to make features for trolls like the one the article mentioned (which is clearly mentally toxic), then why not go the whole way and make it a week-long extravanagaza of garbage.