Journalism Has A Skill Issue - Jason Coles | Winter Spectacular 2022

Let’s just get this out of the way; I don’t mean journalists are bad at games. Sure, some are, and that’s fine, but most games journalists literally make a living writing guides, which I assure you requires a damn site more skill than most people have. With that out of the way, journalism has a skill issue, and I don’t know how to sort that out. 

This is basically what it is like talking to a games journo sent to CES usually sounds like.

That’s a nice catchy but sort of vague thing to say, so let me be more specific; there isn’t enough progression in this industry; every time a good journalist leaves the field, we lose skills that won’t be replaced; there aren’t enough people doing mentoring in this industry. I could probably keep listing things, but I’ve already been writing all day while suffering from a fever (freelancers don’t get time off, and freelancers with kids even less so). 

Problem The First: Where do you see yourself in five minutes?

Progression is something you find in most jobs in most industries. It’s a way to keep people going in the same job, ideally in the same company, and rewards them by giving them pay raises and new job titles every couple years or so, and theoretically rewards and encourages the acquisition of new skills, and mastery of those skills. Granted, it’s a little less common than it was for our parents and their parents and so on, because capitalism is a Sims swimming pool, and they’ve pulled the ladder up, but it is still something that exists. 

There is the odd outlet that actively trains people up to take on the role above them, and kudos to those sites, but even then, it requires upward mobility at the site, and that requires people to leave the site, which means they need to get a job elsewhere. In essence, while some people may well get a job above their current role, they’re likely to not be 100% comfortable in it because who out there is training guides writers to become deputy editors, or deputy editors into editors, or those people into the mysterious jobs above those that require them to stop writing or editing and start understanding finance, advertising, budgeting, and probably magic. 

Minimum View Rating? Oh, Ulala, you have no idea…

Instead, what you get is people being shuffled from site to site like the weirdest card game in existence, all moving up their careers sideways infinitely and hoping they’ll figure out what to do going forward. You can’t even blame the websites for this, because all of them are either completely at the mercy of Google, and are therefore one update away from being the most stressed group of people you’ve met in your life, or they have a big corporate backer who doesn’t understand the value of good work and, well, basically has them doing the same SEO work of the first group. 

Now, obviously, there are cool indie publications too, but even the owners aren’t making money from them, and will frequently be losing money just to keep them afloat to try and help new writers. 

Problem 2: Problem Harder: Where did the jobs go?

Great work guiding the 180 hour JRPG! Btw don’t bother coming in tomorrow, we all being laid off.

Ah job losses, what a piece of shit. At this point, and keep in mind I’m only 3.5 years into this career, I think I probably know more people that have lost jobs due to restructuring, websites closing down or corporate buyouts than people who haven’t been affected by that. Nearly every games journalist anyone knows has likely been fired from a role at some point in the most unceremonious way imaginable because someone who’s never even heard of them, but still somehow pays their wages, has decided they needed an auto-cleaning cat litter box more than they want to pay people money. 

Every time a site closes it breaks the industry a bit more. Suddenly great people are left without jobs, which means the number of people hunting for jobs goes up, which means the likelihood of someone new getting a role is lower because they’re obviously not going to be as experienced as the person who was literally doing the job until a week ago. You can’t blame the people hiring for those roles either; they’re meant to hire the best person for the job, and taking a risk often isn’t the most efficient way to do that. 

Commander Shepard, a known gamer.

So you get websites filled with all-star staff from other websites that died like some ageing superstar rock group, but there are never enough jobs at the right level for everyone who loses their role. Those people have to find jobs elsewhere in games writing, or games PR, or nothing to do with games because they’re bored of having shitty videos made about them anyway, so we lose incredible talents that simply can’t be bothered with it anymore, and who can blame them? How do you replace all of those people and the skills they have? Fun fact: you don’t. 

Please, Mr Problem 3 Is My Father: Can anyone show me how to use a semi-colon? 

This has been a big old pile of mess, but I think it’s going alright. With everyone so stressed, underpaid, and frankly exhausted, assuming they’ve not just left the field to become, let’s say, farmers in the middle of nowhere with eight love interests, all with their own traumas, is it too much to ask for more mentors? The answer is yes, obviously, but, uh, we kind of have to anyway. 

There aren’t enough resources for people who want to get into journalism. There are some great ones, like the pitching guide for Into the Spine, or the startmenu discord, but not enough people are out there actually doing mentoring. Again, I get it; who the fuck has the time or energy, but we need to find the time and the energy, because otherwise we just get new writers who come in, get taken advantage of by shitty sites, and then leave. 

And you can bet your ass we’ll never be portrayed by Jessie Buckley.

We need more initiatives to try and help people out, and more ways to teach people about what to do and not to do, who to talk to, and how to do this job without setting yourself on fire. There are so many weird little things in this job that aren’t explicitly told to you unless you happen upon the right cat bathed in light at the right street corner at exactly ten past nine on a Tuesday morning, and that’s not helpful to anyone. It’s usually not even that much work either, some people just need a single bit of encouragement or advice and they can find themselves a long-term bit of work straight away. 

I need to do better at this too, I started a whole mentoring program that lasted for like three months, did some good, and then we all got too busy and couldn’t find time for it anymore, so I’ll be annoying people in there until that works again or just starting it anew. This article isn’t meant to be me asking more people to get involved with that, but if you feel like you’d like to, then DM me, and we’ll get it going. 

The TL:DR

You’re all busy people; I’m not expecting anybody to read this or anything else I write, so let’s just sum it all up succinctly. The industry needs to do a better job of looking after the talent that sprouts up within it, the talent that often isn’t given any opportunity to flex and grow because jobs keep disappearing, upwards movement is tricky, and it’s often simpler and less stressful to yeet yourself into an adjacent industry. 

Journalists can really identify with the Beyond: Good And Evil series because, just like that franchise, we have no future.

I don’t know what the answers to those problems are, because I’m not in charge of anything outside of my two adorable children, and even then, I’m pretty sure they’re in charge anyway. So, the only logical thing I can think of is mentoring. It requires more effort from those of us that can, but it’s the best way to make sure we can help new people into the industry, and maybe make sure that everyone’s got a better chance of not only finding their feet, but also keeping them steady when things go to shit. 

Well, that was cheery. 

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year…?