The Company
If they fired Jeff concerning things other than the Kane & Lynch review (and that's a pretty big "if"), then the timing was cataclysmically poor and the exec in charge of the decision clearly needs to go. That kind of failure to recognize not only the expectations of Gamespot's community and reader base, or the fact that releasing a critic so soon after the advertiser changed their advertising plans regarding the game in question is gross negligence and utter incompetence.
Plenty of reporters, in various fields of journalism get let go without the integrity of the entire operation beign called into question. Intelligent media executives don't make decisions on the spur of the moment that make them look like toadies for their advertisers. Stephen Colvin came from Dennis Publishing (Maxim, Blender, etc.), whichare successful rags, but nothing in it is actual "journalism" - it's ads; even the articles are just structured advertising of some sort. His "advertiser friendly" style of publishing does not mesh with a site in which 90% of it's content is criticism of some sort. Firing Gerstmann may have sent a message to the staff to alter their 'tone", but it also sent a message to Gamespot readers that advertisers were enjoying a much cozier relationship with those overseeing the editorial process - wether or not that was truly the case.
It also speaks to Cnet's overall opinion of Gamespot readers. This change was made, with the worst timing possible, and Cnet apparantly didn't expect Gamespot readers to notice or care - they underestimated many of us. Gamespot members have always been tolerant of poor customer service (the mods for instance, have a habit ofacting as if you are beneath them), and stick with GS because of the community that has sprung up from the forums. Maybe Cnet just figured that people will stay regardless of what they do,or maybe they just see games as the "toy dept." and don't care how it's run as long as the site makes money. Either way, it's crass and certainly no way to treat the readers that have supported Gamespot for more than ten years
The Community
I used to post on Gamespot sporadically, and never really got into the "conformist-yet-socially-deviant" vibe that permeates the forums there. The joint is overrun with fanboy larvae, idiot teen agers just this side of dangling in their closet from an herbal extasy fueled sexual asphyxiation beater session gone wrong, and grown men that fantasize about being anime chicks in a hentai flick.
Hell, the only reason I even visited the site in four months was to see what the Gamespot community was going to muster up in terms of a response to the firing of Gerstmann. Not surprisingly, I was dissapointed. There's lot's of platitudes being tossed around, but it's become just another version of "system wars" where the fanboys choose up sides and try to shout each other down without really debating the merits of their position. So the groundswell of indignation has festered into little more than a hershey-squirt of vitriol that Cnet will have wiped clean by sometime next week. Yawn.
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