Originally by: Nuala Reece

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Edited by: Nuala Reece on 07/07/2011 13:04:48

Originally by: riverini

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Start me paying top bucks for coverage and we'll get pro :P

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No one's expecting you to be professionals, just competent amateurs. So far you're just amateurs and what you produce isn't news.

News is fact checked. News seeks comment and offers a right of reply to those it covers. News attributes opinion and makes a clear distinction between opinion and that which can be verified as fact. Maybe you have been doing some of these things (even if it is via someone not related to EN24 talking to someone not employed by CCP ) but if you're not including that information in your articles then you're just publishing unsubstantiated speculation and biased opinion, not news.

News is not just releasing a leaked newsletter with a bit of commentary about what you think it means - news is finding out what the context of the newsletter is, finding out why someone wanted to leak it and why they leaked it to you, finding out what CCP think of the fact it was leaked and how they see the newsletter themselves, and then printing all that with the newsletter (assuming that it's still newsworthy by that point, which in my view it wouldn't have been). You printed a very inflammatory 'man bites dog' story about a leaked newsletter showing [your opinion of] how CCP planned to introduce all sorts of game breaking stuff into Eve, and the community went predictably nuts. If you'd taken the time to send and read a handful of emails in the days or weeks you had the newsletter before Incarna you might have found you had a much different 'dog bites man' story about how CCP encouraged it's employees to brainstorm, debate and discuss ideas before making policy decisions. But with that perspective, gained from being competent at producing news, you might have been able to see the real story about how upset people were at the unexpected high price of items on the NeX Store and how the CSM felt they'd not been properly consulted. You could have covered that. That would have been news.

Oh, and news owns up to its mistakes and prints corrections when they've been made. When CCP blogged about the newsletter and what it was for you had the opportunity to own up to your mistake - you could have printed a correction noting how you'd released it without finding out what it really was. You could even have saved face by covering it again with comment from CCP as if you were just continuing the story you'd started but doing it better that time. But instead you just released another unverified leak accompanied by more unsubstantiated opinion and just made the situation worse. And when Eve Tribune pointed out that the date stamp on your leaked email showed it was sent before the 'Fearless' newsletter was available to the community Linkage you could have printed a correction again, but apparently chose not to as the flames of growing rage rose on the official forums and in the game itself.

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