Inspired by Joseph Epstein's convincing editorial predicting
the inevitable death of the newspaper business, we figure it's about time someone asked exactly when the same trend
might visit the games magazine business.
Epstein duly notes declining readership trends in the newspaper business. The figures are dismal. People are simply reading less print. That's a negative factor for the future of printed games journalism.
He also points to lower reader trust in all media. Aren't readers and viewers saying something when Jon Stewart and The Onion are more popular than "real" news outlets? And when was the last time you read a single review in any gaming publication and based your purchase decision off of that review alone? Nowadays, most smart gamers check MetaCritic, RottenTomatoes, GameRankings (or all three!) prior to making decisions.
Growing reader impatience might have something to do with it as well. Writes Epstein, "The critic Walter Benjamin said, as long ago as the 1930’s, that the chief emotion generated by reading the newspapers is impatience." In this age of instant blog updates and RSS readers, most of us want news and information immediately. There's very little that a print publication suffering from weeks-long lead times can print before it's out of date. (This dilemma, by the way, may be at the heart of many editorial conflicts of interest. Given this dilemma, print publications must cultivate relationships--that is, kiss ass with candy-coated reviews--if they hope to extract information out of publishers weeks or months before the rest of the world learns of it.)
And finally, reader feedback on blogs is sometimes so insightful and so high in quality that reader value-add often exceeds the contribution of a single author.
Epstein concludes with a prediction: "if I had to prophesy, my guess would be that newspapers will hobble along, getting ever more desperate and ever more vulgar."
