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Kotaku publishes article criticizing their own terrible ads, Kotaku owners later remove it without consent of the staff.
- Thread starter Lant_War
- Start date
To all the people calling for Patreon, who exactly are these investigative journalists (not limited to gaming) who are thriving on Patreon and doing reporting outside of a large corporate umbrella?
What Jason or Cecilia does is not the same as your YouTube personality that gives you his or her hot take on the weekly hot topic.
What Jason or Cecilia does is not the same as your YouTube personality that gives you his or her hot take on the weekly hot topic.
This sadly
I think Jason is great - and he gets great stories - but the guy has just had a baby and has a family to provide for. That's not easy.
Especially coming up on an election season , just pure genius. I think the new owners are actively sabotaging the media group and they'll put it in bankruptcy and strip the parts for profit.
I don't visit Kotaku often and understand why bad ad experiences could turn off new and old users from the site. However, I think the staff should have done something different about it. Not that post.
Maybe they're desperate and well... you got to pay the bills.
Maybe they're desperate and well... you got to pay the bills.
Same. He is by far that site's strongest asset. The other writers I followed have either been moved to other blogs within Kotaku that I don't follow as much or have been forced to change their coverage style so much I can't help but feel like I'm being duped by clickbait even though I took the time to visit their site *manually*. That, or they left altogether. Video games are my favorite subject under the Kinja group by a significant margin but I've noticed I visit Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and Deadspin more often now.
Edit: I Totally forgot about that.
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They said in the deleted post that they've been trying to get through to the management other ways, and according to this post they were already profitable.
That he wouldn't be fired considering that deadspin didn't used to fire people for spurious reasons?
That version of deadspin ceased to exist the moment that new ownership came in. See ESPN under their new CEO.
Textbook "putting the cart before the horse, egg on top of the hen" business decisions
Deadspin and their writers are full on revolting right now on their homepage, curious if kotaku will follow suit or if they will try to stay out of this
It will, which is astonishing. These sites have (had) some fantastic writers and good content. They seemed to be mostly profitable because their content was quality, entertaining, or both. Fucking private equity vampires are a blight on our existence.
Hey now, deadspin's reporting on Vigo the Carpathian is some quality writing.
Man Jason was my only reason for visiting Wired, then my only reason for visiting Kotaku. He is one of a handful of games journalists I've ever cared for. I hope he's okay. The rest of the staff, too, of course, but this seems very confrontational and I'm worried.
yes, George Weidman is my YouTube personality who gives me my weekly hot take but he is also an entirely legitimate investigative journalist. he's the only one like this that I am aware of though. But, it's not as though this one example proves that Jason could definitely just get up and go, so your point stands. But it would be great if it were a good omen for the future.
Much respect to Kotaku and Deadspin workers defying their shitty owners. I hope they'll eventually land safely.
Solidarity with the GMG Union
it's not Kotaku specifically but the network of gawker sites. They're owned by a PE firm called G/O who bought them from Univision. They immediately put out a handbook that challenged the existence of their union rules many months ago. A day or two ago Deadspin was told to "stick to sports", with pretty much every other site getting the same mandate to...whatever their interests are (games, tech, entertainment, etc). So they'll do what every PE firm does, saddle it with debt and try to bleed out the last few dollars before it goes under, then move on to the next one.
It's not easy building a media empire from scratch. Klepek already mentioned the lawyers part of it, but there's no money in it unless you have investors. Shreier has a new baby, he can't afford to take that kind of risk right now.
Kotaku can't just be easily replaced.
Same. He is also the only person I follow on Twitter that is in the industry. He is like the Ken Armstrong of gaming
Kotaku should start reporting sports. Let Gizmodo do celebrities and Jezebel tech.
Fuck you and everyone that thinks like you. There are a ton of great writers on Kotaku and none of it would be possible without EiC Stephen Totilo. So sick of this shit.
Oh yeah Stephen Totilo is good people too and so is that one girl who broke the riot news. Anastasia(?)
Cecilia D'Anastasio. They also have Mike Fahey, Tim Rogers, Gita Jackson, Luke Plunkett, Chris Kohler, and lots of others I'm forgetting right at the moment. Honestly it's a killer lineup. I love hearing all of them when they guest star on Splitscreen.
I too sometimes fantasize about people losing their jobs.
What are you on about?
The worst part is that you can never really tell when things could go south, if you're not the only owner. Hell, even when you are the owner. Take a look at what happened to the Gothamist network of sites, for example. The original owners sold the whole thing to a terrible company, then as agents of that company, tried to bust up a unionization effort. When that failed, the parent company closed everything down. Three public radio stations ended up acquiring Gothamist after the closure and worked with the original founders, but there were questions about whether the unionized writers who contributed to the site's voice would still have a place.
Digital media is in a weird spot. On the one hand you have publishers large and small running into the standard issues with trying to stabilize advertising and subscription revenue streams and finding more and more predatory players (hello Facebook). On the other hand, anything that does become successful eventually becomes a target for private equity, who comes it promising to grow the business further but then destroys the company's value and abandons the husk when it's no longer convenient to have around.
Not historically a fan of Kotaku (some of the things Brian Ashcroft posts... eeesh)
But it's still my go to news site. But the stories have 0 comments mostly. They're hidden away beneath half a dozen "YOU WONT BELIEVE THIS WEIGHT LOSS!" click bait ads.
But it's still my go to news site. But the stories have 0 comments mostly. They're hidden away beneath half a dozen "YOU WONT BELIEVE THIS WEIGHT LOSS!" click bait ads.