Same Liz. And he defends himself in the comments at the original story. Including such lame lines as:
There was a definite time crunch in getting all six reviews up in 10 days and specifically that Friday, which is why I had to reuse some lines from the preview. I didn’t foresee this to be a problem, although in retrospect, it does come across a bit carelessly. Thanks again for bringing this up—I’ll make sure to copy-edit more thoroughly in the future.
He re-used lines from a preview in a review and decided that getting everything up fast was more important than getting things up right.
Troy
While What José is doing is bad, it’s really overkill to bust out the Jayson Blair references and whatnot when busting a fansite with a few Google ads and no paid employees…
So i see ethics are not taught by podiums.
Just because he isn’t paid doesn’t mean it’s not the same thing Blair did or a good thing to do.
And his comment about making sure he “copy-edit”'s better suggests he’s going to do the same thing in the future, but change some sentences around to make it less noticeable. Great.
The Jayson Blair thing is overkill, but professionalism isn’t just for professionals. He says he had 10 days to play six versions of a game enough to review them all, but couldn’t find time to write original text for the reviews, even though the 360 and PC reviews are, for all intents and purposes, absolutely identical. He rushed to get the first reviews up because this meant traffic to his “fansite”, duty to readers be damned.
Is this a huge story? Of course not. The fact that PGNx is a marginal site (sorry Jose) means that it’s not as big an indictment of “games journalism LOL” as it would be if this was 1up or GamePro.
But Liz was one of us, so that makes it newsworthy here. And Joystiq bloggers have quotas. So they gotta write something.
Troy
Oh yes, I’m not condemming Ricks post. Pointing fingers at Jose is a time honoured tradition and I compliment his find.
It’s the typical ‘Game journalism is doomed!!!’-slant the Joystiq article and illustration follows, that I’m tired of.
You have to be a professional (ie paid) to act unprofessional - otherwise you’re just a bad amateur and the internet is full of those.
Also, his site layout is all scrunchy.
edit: Hey, he watermarked his screenshots! I understand taking screenshots from another site, but watermarking your “borrowed” screenshots? Ebaum’s world called, they want to offer you a job.
Hey at least it’s not as bad as plagiarism…I think?
You forget that he’ll be making more money than chet in a few years.
I’m sure the internet is also full of people making more money than Chet… actually I have no clue how much money Chets makes.
Hanzii: Before he was banned, Liz bragged that he would be making more money than chet in a few years. The post took some finding, because the search function was shitting itself on me for ten minutes, but here it is, in all its glory.
I know. I just didn’t find it relevant to the point I was making.
I’m sure Jose didn’t mean as a games reviewer, but as a … whatever it is you become after all the podiums at Wharton.
I worked on free sites before my time as a paid reviewer, and I’d have been fucking mortified to have done what Liz did there. What in the hell is the point if writing a review in the first place if you’re cutting and pasting your own previous work just to try and get it up on the web first? For what? It’s not as if you’re rushing to beat a publication date here.
Stick to writing reviews of podiums, Jose.
I am intimately familiar with someone who is in Wharton and according to them the podiums should be enough. The podiums shall not be questioned.
He gave it a 9.5? Goodness!
In his defense, that’s just above average at PGNx.
Troy
9.5 on the 9.4-9.9 scale?
