Kotaku, Joystiq et al get punk'd.

[Sol Invictus]

I'll just copypasta this thing from GiantRealm/GameRiot.

According to NeoGAF, CheapyD over at CAG challenged his users to make some awesome fake sh*t up to get a big site to just run with a story. Well, it worked. Obviously, anyone who has followed Kotaku for some time wouldn't really be surprised that they'll run with anything, particularly considering their rate structure for writers and the quality of their work. Both of which are, well, bad. But that's not even the best part, rather their response - which shines like a dying star:

"UPDATE: It appears that this rumor story could be CAG throwing their credibility out the window as part of a contest. Kotaku''s decision to run rumors is always based on the credibility of the site and the information contained within it. In the past CAG has proven to be a reliable site, having broken a number of stories through apt reporting. It appears that may no longer be the case."

I'm sorry Mr. Crecente, there's no amount of spin you can put on it. Kotaku running a rumor based on credibility just reads: "We don't need to check facts, someone else will do it for us." No, you don't check facts because you have a bunch of writers flapping about trying to get the story with the most number of page views to increase their paycheck. Your entire structure is flawed and leads to that sort of unchecked content. Trying to spin it on CAG is just bad taste. This is your fault. No one else's.

You don't check sources. You don't hold your writers to any sort of standard. You've dug your own grave. Here's to hoping the gaming public actually notices this total fuckup instead of assuming you're a legitamate source for anything.

Update: Oh man, it only gets better. Xbox 360 Fanboy/Joystiq and Gizmodo. Wow. Just wow. At this point, it's not really a question of whether CAG made the best point ever or the bestest point ever.

[Cory]

man i love CheapyD. now gizmodo is all bitter about it :) it makes CAG look less credible? really?

[Sol Invictus]

You're damn right. It's amusing to see Crescente try to dig himself out of this one. I've stopped depending on Kotaku on gaming news for awhile now.

[Squee]

Originally Posted by Sol Invictus

I'll just copypasta

No. No. Stop it.

I do like this quote on Gizmodo though.

UPDATE: It appears that we were misled by Cheap Ass Gamer as part of a prank contest. Running fabrications like this one does not help a site's credibility.

[rei]

i like bashcroft's slice-of-life in japan features though. :(

[quatoria]

Awesome. So fucking awesome, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving den of yellow journalism. The fact that Kotaku, a site that sources stories to fucking forum posts, is bitching about CAG 'damaging their credibility' couldn't be more perfect. Hey, Kotaku - get some credibility of your own before you start bitching about the credibility of other sites.

[CalvinGT]

Originally Posted by quatoria

Awesome. So fucking awesome, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving den of yellow journalism. The fact that Kotaku, a site that sources stories to fucking forum posts, is bitching about CAG 'damaging their credibility' couldn't be more perfect. Hey, Kotaku - get some credibility of your own before you start bitching about the credibility of other sites.

This is precisely what I wanted to say, with an almost equal amount of derision heaped on Joystiq and a "shame on you" directed at Gizmodo. Thus I quote. Read quatoria's post.

[aphoristic gamer]

This prank was deserved. The multiplication of gaming sites and the fuzzy news that they still report as fact to get attention has been spiralling wildly out of control for a few years. One only needs to take a look at say, n4g to see the sad state in which gaming "journalism" is.

[Sol Invictus]

I like the time Kotaku wrote about some guy's Fallout tattoo (with art from Fallout 1) and noted that the guy was 'placing a lot of faith in Fallout 3 being a good game' for permanently marking himself.

What? Think about it for a second.

[Matthew Gallant]

Brian's reaction in the update and the comments is pretty funny. Like there's ever been any kind of standard at Kotaku besides "post faster".

50 posts in the last 24 hours.

[Kareem]

This is pure awesome. We did something similar a couple of years ago in our media industry magazine to prove that publications in Dubai didn't fact check and would run anything that gave the city publicity. So we sent out a press release about a factory set up in Dubai that produced pure ice that could never be melted, that it was the only source of sustenance used by a group of 3 guys in a week long hike in Death Valley, and that it was already very successful in Africa.

A few publications, including a major daily, actually ran the story, and the others called us to verify the city's fantastic achievement. A good time was had by all.

[Lake]

Way to call out CAG, Gizmodo. Are you going to have your writers run around CES with their remotes that turn off tvs again?

[Cory]

So, crecente is saying that this damages CAG credibility. Even though the whole thing was just a post on someones personal CAG blog. bullshit, crecente, bullshit. you got your ass handed to you. learn from it.

hell, are crecente and co. members of this forum? if so, we better be careful what we joke about or they'll put it on their front page, call it news, and then trash us when its found out to be just a joke.

[quatoria]

Isn't that great? "They should have known we'd steal this story and publish it, goddamn it, and they had an obligation not to let us humiliate ourselves by not writing it to begin with!" Pretty great sense of entitlement for a place that thrives on getting hits by poaching other people's insights and effort, adding a pithy quote or two, and calling it a day.

[LeSquide]

Wait. People use Kotaku for anything resemble news?

I have always regarded it as a fantastically frivolous den of rumor and myth, where stories about Japanese games that May At Some Point In All of Time been seen on the American continent dwell next to bizarre, pointless ramblings by their 'writers,' and pointless forum driven speculation.

People use it as news?

...It's the cheerful color scheme, isn't it? Builds trust on a subconscious level. Must be it.

[nabeel]

Originally Posted by Cubit

hell, are crecente and co. members of this forum? if so, we better be careful what we joke about or they'll put it on their front page, call it news, and then trash us when its found out to be just a joke.

They've made news based on posts here so yeah, they read the forums at least.

[Tankero]

Sounds like a good way to wag the dog.

[Kareem]

Didn't they pick up and publish a rant that Tim Partlett posted here about developing games in Germany a while ago?

[MSUSteve]

I personally don't hold Kotaku, as a glorified blog and nothing else, to any real journalistic standard. I mean, when they post a rumor, it's tagged as such. The blog is really just an aggregator of news and rumors and I've always figured it was up to the reader to realize that nothing on there, save Kotaku's own features, had any kind of stamp of authenticity simply because it was posted on the blog. So yeah...I guess I don't really understand all the hoopla and I really don't understand why someone would intentionally post a made up story in order to get Kotaku (and whoever else) to pick it up.

[BigWeather]

To be fair, however, I do enjoy a couple of the weekend posters, like Maggie Green. She (I assume she, but you never know since there is that Hilary fellow =)) finds some pretty interesting game design-oriented material that I overlooked.

[Woolen Horde]

Originally Posted by Lake

Way to call out CAG, Gizmodo. Are you going to have your writers run around CES with their remotes that turn off tvs again?

God, that still pisses me off to no end.

Originally Posted by Gizmodo

UPDATE: It appears that we were misled by Cheap Ass Gamer as part of a prank contest. Running fabrications like this one does not help a site's credibility.

Oh, come on guys, where's your fucking sense of humor now? Oh, that's right, they ran around CES with that remote to "teach" those companies a lesson to tape over those damn IR sensors or some crap like that. We'll, consider this the metaphorical equivalent; someone just tried to "teach" you about posting shit willy-nilly. Fucking hypocrites.

[Pentadact]

Originally Posted by BigWeather

To be fair, however, I do enjoy a couple of the weekend posters, like Maggie Green. She (I assume she, but you never know since there is that Hilary fellow =)) finds some pretty interesting game design-oriented material that I overlooked.

Ditto, plus she sometimes links me. That's the trouble with dismissing a whole blog - with enough contributors, there are always some good people. Happily, though, it looks like most people are pinning the derision on the person who deserves it here.

-

[RobotPants]

This is just hilariously awesome. :)

[Royal Fool]

Originally Posted by MSUSteve

I personally don't hold Kotaku, as a glorified blog and nothing, to any real journalistic standard. I mean, when they post a rumor, it's tagged as such. The blog is really just an aggregator of news and rumors and I've always figured it was up to the reader to realize that nothing on there, save Kotaku's own features, had any kind of stamp of authenticity simply because it was posted on the blog. So yeah...I guess I don't really understand all the hoopla and I really don't understand why someone would intentionally post a made up story in order to get Kotaku (and whoever else) to pick it up.

The person who made the story up got a free game out of it, heh.

[zabuni]

Shades of NeoGAF's Triology.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=137707

[DennyA]

If people who made a living writing for money on the web had even taken a freaking Journalism 101 course... 101, people, not even a degree... hilarious stuff like this wouldn't happen.





(As often.)

[Rob Beschizza]

Sensible bloggers put it in the headline. "Rumor: bla bla bla"

That said, Crecente was clear in his post that it was an unsubstantiated rumor, so some of these criticisms ("fuzzy news that they still report as fact") are trivially inaccurate except as complaints about poor writing in general.

Crecente's "update," criticizing CAG because of what one of its diarists wrote, is being used here in the service of attacking something only incidentally connected to it: the reporting of rumors.

[Sol Invictus]

Originally Posted by DennyA

If people who made a living writing for money on the web had even taken a freaking Journalism 101 course... 101, people, not even a degree... hilarious stuff like this wouldn't happen.





(As often.)

It's too bad 'real journalists' commit mistakes like these as often as tech bloggers do. Some even go on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

[merryprankster]

This prank was great, nice work CAG's!

[Kunikos]

Originally Posted by Sol Invictus

It's too bad 'real journalists' commit mistakes like these as often as tech bloggers do. Some even go on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Making up stories and trying to pass them as real is a little different from just reporting things without research.