IGNN–The Imaginary Game News Network

By Anson McFlinton, The Times

As I watch my traditional newspaper staff dwindle on a daily basis–victims of a business model that hasn’t kept pace with the technological realities of modern life–I contemplate what this means for the future of reporting. Clearly, dissemination of the news will be completely electronic. Print no longer can compete for news: it’s too slow, too expensive, and it smudges. (I’ve always hated the smudges but when that’s all you’ve got you live with it.) The future of journalism, to many, looms bleakly, like a dark, ominous presence overshadowing the world, but I for one have decided not to dwell on the dark side, but to seek the light, and I think I’ve found it in the dynamic world of video game journalists.

Indeed, many of my colleagues would scoff at the use of the hallowed term “journalist” to describe this unkempt, unschooled, undisciplined tribe of scriveners, but in many ways they are the model we must now follow. A journalist friend of mine (who has been out of work for some months) has been studying the game industry media, and he’s discovered literally thousands of media and blog sites catering to the millions of gamer fans. There are sites focused on single games, such as World of Warcraft, and others that report nothing but news about a single platform; and the dedicated surfer will find a million opinions for every bit of news, from the rumored release date of an upcoming game, such as Final Fantasy XIII, to the daily hirings and firings of industry staffers. Contrast that to the daily demise of entire newspapers without so much as a mention on Google and you can begin to see where I’m headed. There’s enough energy in any one of these gaming media enterprises to power a small city. But that passion doesn’t exist in the abstract as a motivation to reveal the truth. Their passion derives from their engagement with the subject.

How many times have I gazed about the newsroom here at The Times and seen my reporters yawning, scratching themselves, inserting pencils in their nostrils to see how much of the shaft they can bury in their sinuses or playing wastebasket ball? Are they engaged? Are they participating? There was a time when it was thought that reporters required distance to maintain objectivity, but the truth is that distance often results in a lack of detail and understanding. Objectivity is another word for disengagement. Game journalists are active in their field, playing, writing, cursing, celebrating. That’s engagement, and that’s what I propose for the future of journalism.

And so I can announce today that The Times Online is turning to this model for engagement. Henceforth, all of our reports will be written by passionate experts in their field, by participants in the great news stories of the day, by the men and women who are shaping policy or committing crimes or being murdered by maniacs. Those are the people with stories to tell, but since many of them wouldn’t speak to us if their lives depended on it, or maybe they’re dead as a result of being overly engaged in the news, then we will take a page from that most-enlightened of all journalistic bastions–The Imaginary Game News Network, where gaming journalists have gone even further than their brethren by relying entirely on their own imaginations to report whatever the hell they want to report. IGNN is absolute and total engagement, and the truths they believe themselves to be sharing are no less profound for being untrue. It is passion. And passion is truth, at least to those who share the passion. Come, embrace the future. And tell me how it feels.