Esports journalism's institutional memory problem

Hey there, welcome to another mailbag issue of ReaderGrev! You can find the previous edition, about critical reporting and blacklists, here.

As always, if you’ve got questions for me — about video games, esports, journalism, criticism, any of my previous writing, etc. — drop me a line! (A list of good places to reach me is at the end of this post). I won’t have all the answers; I’m making this up as I go along. But if you’re patient with me, hopefully I can be helpful.

Q:

As a former esports journalism editor, one of the biggest hurdles the space will have to overcome is losing institutional knowledge and experience. It’s not unique to esports journalism, but it is quite severe in the industry!

With the inability for esports journalism to support much of anyone, let alone an experienced mid-career person with like… a literal family to feed, how the hell will anyone learn to be an actually good journalist? It feels possible to struggle and make mistakes long enough to get there, but by the time that happens, that person’s time is almost certainly up.

What’s worse, no one can build on each others’ success, either. And that feels necessary to create something close to an actually sustainable outlet.

Do you think this is a hierarchy of needs thing, where this problem can’t be solved until esports journalism addresses the underlying monetization issues plaguing the space in general? Or do you think perhaps old-heads might return one day when there’s money to be made to teach the youngins what’s good?

A:

This is a really good question — and a timely one. The day you submitted this question, GameStop announced that it would stop publishing Game Informer, the venerable 33-year-old magazine. Game Informer is as “institution” as you get in games media, but I have my doubts that all of the people who actually made the magazine will be rewarded with comparable work at some other outlet. There simply may not be enough positions open, or money enough to make those posts tenable. (If you’re hiring or want to signal boost a list of “looking for work” posts from former Game Informer employees, I’d direct you to this Twitter thread).

Esports journalism — and games journalism more broadly, if less acutely — absolutely has a churn problem. The dearth of senior editors and mentors poses a real challenge to young people hoping to enter and excel in the space. The fact that esports is a financially volatile industry means that it’s largely a playground for 1) young 2) passionate 3) independently wealthy or 4) independently successful people (in no particular order or combination). This is fallow ground for a sustainable media ecosystem. Beyond the already-rampant issues of burnout and mismanagement, there’s only so long that most people can afford to work in esports, as you’ve experienced yourself.

Before I really crack into this question, though, I’d like to clearly define the terms of the discussion, starting with institutional memory, which generally refers to knowledge, patterns, and practices within a group that enable its work. I think this idea can be inclusive of history (by which I mean “the history of esports — teams, matches, scorelines, championships, etc.”) but it is not chiefly concerned with those things and neither am I. You do not need to be an esports history buff to be a good journalist. Since we’re talking about “memory” and “experience,” it feels relevant to dispatch with this right away. History can be helpful, or course, but in theory good journalism should obviate the need to know everything about your subject before you’ve written your story.

I also want to define the word “journalist” for the purpose of this exchange. Not everyone who works in gaming media aspires to be a journalist. This isn’t a value judgement. Some people are just fans of video games and/or esports, and their engagement with journalism as a profession ends there. The job, to them, is a staging area for some other, more comprehensive entry into the industry (a career in game development or PR, perhaps). Again, not a value judgement! That’s just not who I’m talking about in this post.

I’m going to address a prospective member of the future class of esports journalists here: Amid all the negativity, there is good news. If you do, in fact, want to be a journalist, there is a wealth of resources available to you (in J-school syllabi that can be found with some creative Googling, in outlets focused on the media and publishing industries, and on professional journalism association websites, for example), and countless professional journalists would be happy to answer your questions (within reason)¹ . In my last mailbag newsletter, I advised the question-asker to seek out professional guidance on a difficult story that might involve legal blowback. This advice also stands for totally banal journalistic questions. In 2015, I emailed media critic and journalism professor Jay Rosen out of the blue to ask a dorky question about something to do with my college newspaper. He answered and introduced me to James Carey’s 1986 essay, “The Dark Continent of American Journalism,” which I still find useful. As I’ve written before: If you’re serious about the work, take it seriously. And please — seek advice outside of the world of esports. If you’re serious about journalism, there’s a chance that at some point your ambit will grow beyond any one field or industry.

I think there are plenty of reasons to feel negatively about the direction games media is trending. The weaknesses and sometimes outright lack of human infrastructure (mentorship programs, support networks, etc.) will make the work harder for new writers in the foreseeable future. And even if the underlying monetization issues facing the industry (esports or publishing; take your pick) are resolved, some endemic outlets will have to undergo paradigmatic editorial shifts away from slop and toward producing content their employees actually want to work on. It can be hard to imagine that happening.

Still, I also believe young people² are resourceful, thoughtful, and audacious. No matter how conditions change — and I tend to believe that downturns and upswings are cyclical — I have a fundamental optimism about their capacity to learn on their own without the old-heads swooping in to save them.

If you are a young person in the space, I would not recommend staking your success on access to the outgoing generation of writers and editors. Seeking out mentors is smart, but it is also merely one step of many that you can take if you’re serious about becoming a “good journalist.” You should read your peers’ work — and other journalistic output — and think about the things you liked and didn’t like. (I’m not just talking about ideological stuff. I mean: Did the opening paragraph hook you? Did you find yourself stumbling reading a sentence, or bored half-way through? Why? What would you do differently? What questions were left unanswered by the reporting?) Write often. Find your voice. (Are you a pugilist? A just-the-facts news reporter? Something else?) Learn how to pitch articles, pitch widely, and — given the ecosystem we’re in now — pitch beyond endemic esports sites that don’t care about your big idea and won’t pay much for it anyway. (Here’s one good big-picture resource for aspiring young freelancers, which links to yet another resource).

If you’re a media professional reading this and have advice you’d like to share, get in touch. The bottom of this post includes some easy ways to reach me. I’d love to get other folks’ opinions, and maybe even put together a short compilation of takes.

That’s basically my answer, but as an aside, I want to briefly address the idea you raise about people “[building] on each others’ success” — and try to suss out a maybe-tenuous connection.

We are in something like a mini “era” in gaming media, wherein a lot of high quality and compelling journalism is happening in newsletters³ rather than in traditional publications. I’m grateful that there’s a willing audience out there for games newsletters. (Thank you, in particular! 🙏 ) But that shift toward decentralization — which is not entirely willful; it is in some obvious ways related to the broader aforementioned sustainability issues — also poses major challenges. For example: Every time an individual reporter advances a story by unearthing some new information, other journalists who want to chase that same story need to start from square one. Reporters competing for subscribers aren’t passing along tips and sources amongst themselves in the same way they might if they worked for the same outlet and were all figuratively rowing in the same direction.⁴

So when we talk about people building on one another’s work, the landscape we’re in now makes that more difficult in very specific, tangible ways.⁵ That lack of coordination also obviously extends to mentorship, growth opportunities, and other things.

That’s all I’ve got. Again, if you’re a media professional or have some kind of input on the question above, I’d love to hear from you! With your permission, I’d gladly share your response in a future newsletter.

Cheers.

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If you have a tip, I can be reached on Twitter at @LeaderGrev, or via email at mikhail (at) readergrev (dot) com.

1. A few guidelines if you’re reaching out to a professional journalist seeking advice: Know the work of the person you’re contacting. (Don’t ask a politics reporter about games media, for example). Write a short and to-the-point email. (They don’t need your whole backstory). Finally, be respectful of a person’s time and capacity. (Do not email the editor-in-chief of a major publication to ask for a phone call and expect to hear back).

2. This feels a bit corny to write as a guy with … 4 years-ish(?) of combined experience in video game journalism. I’m 29 … I’m too young to be saying “young people.” ☹️ Take it or leave it I guess.

3. I am not gassing myself up here lol. I recently started paying for Stephen Totilo’s Game File newsletter. I’m also a big fan of Ryan Rigney’s Push To Talk. I’m a paid subscriber to Max Read’s Read Max, which isn’t a gaming newsletter but which shares a tone and curatorial approach with a lot of the more roguish current video game outlets. Jason Schreier also appears to have recently published a major report relating to the video game studio Bungie as a newsletter (though it looks as though a lot of his recent work has gone out in that format).

4. Fwiw, I think most of the senior journalists in the space who have gone independent are still accessible to younger people and would probably help an early-career journalist seeking advice. Still, reaching out to someone who isn’t literally on the same team as you is just an extra mental hurdle.

5. There is one way I can think of to build on each others’ success that is a bit more floaty: namely, building a community of exchange, where one person creates a piece of work and other people respond with their own comprehensive texts. This builds community, starts dialogue, and elevates individual works. It also feels entirely missing from the esports and video game journalism space. Maybe I am too nostalgic for blogging (an era that I was only barely media-conscious for).