How should RPS report the news?
Please tell me how to do my job
Hello everybody! This is Edwin, your resident news-wrangler. I've been in this glorious job for a whole two weeks now, and alas it is time to say goodbye... because I'm off on holiday. Genius-level journostrategist that I am, I managed to book a week away walking in Scotland during Gamescom before landing the gig, and I can't rebook without incurring the everlasting hatred of Caledonian Sleeper. I do have a few under-embargo stories and a review going live next week, but beyond that I'll be up a mountain somewhere until 29th August. Apologies - if you're up that neck of the woods and we happen to sight each other on opposing hillsides, I'll try to bellow something about Starfield.
Before I go, though, I wanted to check in about this whole "news" concept that's doing the rounds. The past two weeks have essentially been an exercise in tentatively pressing buttons and apologising to Katharine when half the website backend catches fire. I've tried to put together a fun mixture of stories - I particularly enjoyed the chat below yesterday's musings about pacifism - but I've mostly been settling in, and dealing with such evergreen journamalism questions as whether companies are singular or plural, and what proportion of any given article should consist of begging Blackbird Interactive to reveal something else about Homeworld 3.
It's not till today that the RPS editors have had a chance to gather together (think of the opening scene from Macbeth) and discuss what the site's approach to news-gathering should be. What specifically should we cover, and how should we go about it? There are some obvious broad directions we'd like to take: more original, interview-led reporting; more posts about unusual, or undiscovered games; good quality editorial on current events. But above all, we'd like to hear from you.
So, if you have time and energy after a hard week spent playing Baldur's Gate 3, or being at work while wishing you were playing Baldur's Gate 3, or losing your temper because every game website is fixated with Baldur's Gate 3, please consider lobbing a few ideas into the howling comments-void below. I should add: I am having enormous fun writing for RPS, and a significant component of that is writing for the ancient and incredibly storied RPS community. I'm very intrigued to read what you, specifically, want from a games journalism outlet in 2023.
Anyway, the mountain calls and I must away. Stay safe! I'll see you all on the other side of Gamescom.