Good or Bad....?

[UKJAY]

Ive seen a few unheard of Newsposters come out of the woodwork lately. Where even on the forums they have little post's

Do the newsposters get paid per so many words whilst they wait for people to submit them something to write about. I was wondering what they got out of other people submitting internet links?

Is it people like Nofear360 & SneakySnake lining someone elses pockets to write copycat style news. Because this site has news post's submitted of news written elsewhere already?

Or do the newsposters do their own internet trail hunt of research and write their own material on their own findings?

[_Chris_]

You in a bitchy mood today eh?;)

[UKJAY]

No...it aint meant that way. I was just wondering about it. I mean where are they coming from? Are they friends of friends - someone putting cards up in shop windows...I know I am asking what a few other people are thinking.

[TRIGGER M4N]

I was under the impression they aren't paid.

[Rossko_UK]

Ive seen a few unheard of Newsposters come out of the woodwork lately. Where even on the forums they have little post's

Do the newsposters get paid per so many words whilst they wait for people to submit them something to write about. I was wondering what they got out of other people submitting internet links?

Is it people like Nofear360 & SneakySnake lining someone elses pockets to write copycat style news. Because this site has news post's submitted of news written elsewhere already?

Or do the newsposters do their own internet trail hunt of research and write their own material on their own findings?

I'm not about to discuss payment of any nature because it's not my position to do so, but there are new newsposters coming in to fill the holes of those that have left us, but you will have to ask Curry where they were found, but AFAIK they are not friends of friends or anything (Curry's a loner :P).

With regards to the news items themselves, you have to remember that other than the original deep source, every website re-writes the news. We provide links to the source whereas other sites do not (IGN, CVG to name two). nofear360 and others do a great job at submitting the news and it is forever appreciated, but we as Writers also find the same news from other sources that may have different information on the same subject.

Two examples of this I will outline. Take the Burnout news (http://www.xboxic.com/news/2826) for example. A submitter is likely to submit the news from say, 360Fanboy, but we will conduct our own research and find the original press release to garner more details from it. This allows us to have longer, more in-depth posts than that of 360F, which hopefully you all enjoy reading :).

The second example is the Elite post (http://www.xboxic.com/news/2814) that I myself wrote. Quite a few people submitted information on the topic, which I took note of and included in the post. I also looked elsewhere for other information to see if there is anything else that may be worth including. In the end all the news was collated together and presented to you, which again was hopefully an enjoyable and informative read.

We don't sit on our arses (ass' for our American friends) for people to submit news, we do look ourselves through the wonder that is RSS feeds and other sources. Often, Writers will submit something, and within minutes other people have submitted different sources and what not, which is great. The final product of each article is always our own original material, unless quoted.

If you feel there is something that you'd liek to see differently, whatever the subject so long as it is about Xboxic, let us know, it's the only way we can improve ;).

Sorry if that's long-winded, but the above is purely from a Writers perspective that you hopefully appreciate. I'm sure Curry will return with something even better, but you will have to wait for that :P

[Chris]

We provide links to the source whereas other sites do not (IGN, CVG to name two)

Isn't that because those sites have actual sources that let them in on information? If you called Microsoft up and you conned someone into letting you know the name for the next Xbox, you wouldn't name sources because you didn't have any, just some Microsoft rep.

All news originates from somewhere.

[Rossko_UK]

Isn't that because those sites have actual sources that let them in on information? If you called Microsoft up and you conned someone into letting you know the name for the next Xbox, you wouldn't name sources because you didn't have any, just some Microsoft rep.

All news originates from somewhere.

Yup that's true, but there have been countless times when IGN and (in particular) CVG haven't cited sources when it has been blatantly obvious they didn't get information from a rep or anyone. When we had the PGR4 cover, CVG didn't link to us, for example, when they definitely used us as a source.

[Chris]

They suck.

[Curry]

I'm sure Curry will return with something even better, but you will have to wait for that :P
Lol no I think you kinda said most of it :D

There's only a limited amount of news on any subject, and so many publications to cover them. Newspapers for example do nothing more 'glorious' than we do: they 'sit on their ass all day' waiting for press bureaus like AP and Reuters to produce news on their feeds, which they then rewrite for CNN.com or the NY Times. There's nothing wrong with reusing information from other source. Most sources (including us on game news) try to be as complete as possible, and that means we use a lot of information posted elsewhere, and some of our own unique content, including exclusives from our own contacts within publishers and the like (random (http://www.xboxic.com/news/2666) examples (http://www.xboxic.com/news/2737)). The total mix is that all sites present all information, sourcing eachother out of mutual respect, and thus maintaining the stable status quo that everyone has a full newsfeed. The differentiation is mainly in writing style and ways of presenting the specific content: we tend to be faster, more bloggy and more opinionated than for example IGN or CVG, while pure blogs like 360FB frequently outrun us in speed, but have far shorter posts with less details. End result is that every gamer can choose the specific mix he wants: reliability, speed, detail, professionalism.

As for the recent new writers: yes they are paid, although 'compensated for efforts' is more reasonable since it's near impossible to run a fulltime job based on what we can pay for the time being. Recent new addition Matt Jarosz is definitely active in the community too tho under the name of UncleGuito, you may have seen him ;) And we try to encourage all the writers actively participating, although it's not mandatory. But in the end, yes, they do the research and the writing, spending an actual half to full hour on a newspost, and I don't think it's more than reasonable to compensate them for that, if only to allow them to be able to afford their gaming habits. Compared to that, submitting news is merely a matter of dropping a link from something you saw elsewhere, which is highly appreciated, but timewise of course not comparable to actually having to check it for reliability, deepest sources, postworthiness, interest to our audience, finding good images to go with it, writing a good piece about it, finding proper quotes, spellchecking 5 times, and finding good previous articles with more information to link to.

Yup that's true, but there have been countless times when IGN and (in particular) CVG haven't cited sources when it has been blatantly obvious they didn't get information from a rep or anyone. When we had the PGR4 cover, CVG didn't link to us, for example, when they definitely used us as a source.
IGN gets their information from the same sources we do: press sites, press mailing lists, and other sites on the intarwebs. They just appear to be more self-powered because they usually refuse to link to other sites. I found one exception (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/773/773526p1.html) in the past year, while it would've been appropriate for them to source us in at least 5 more cases.

To be fair, they are the de facto standard in online game news reporting, and thus have a responsibility to their users to only use reliable sources for their news. Just like us, we also frequently see news in our queues that comes from extremely shady sources, and then we rather miss the scoop than post something we have to retract later on.

[UKJAY]

Thanks for responding. It was quite interesting to read all the background workings behind this site...

[TwoXist]

Ukjay bringing to light the dark alleys of Xboxic.com

[Chris]

You'll get cut.

[TwoXist]

i dont have hobo stab insurance :(

[Chris]

;(

[TwoXist]

Im glad you share my pain.