In this episode of Dialogue Tree, Eric Brasure interviews Stephen Totilo, editor-in-chief of Kotaku. Totilo discusses his approach for developing Kotaku, criticism of the site and the ongoing fascination with game journalism standards.
(Originally broadcast April 16, 2012.)
Contents
02:55 “I’m happy to be able to offer readers voices from all those different places.”
04:20 “But I would say we didn’t do the best job we could to explain this to our readers.”
09:15 “…we have 2.5 million people reading the site every month.”
17:30 “We came up with a simple question: should you play this game?”
20:50 “I don’t see what’s different between us and Rock Paper Shotgun.”
22:50 “I don’t look that much at what Joystiq is doing or IGN or whatever – I look at what Gawker and Jezebel and Deadspin are doing…”
25:10 “Our responsibility is to make everyone feel welcome.”
25:20 “We had a misstep with Sonic the Hedgehog bed story…”
30:40 “It’s the transparency of not settling for bullshit.”
33:20 “Most media organisations these days don’t have full-time copy editors.”
37:10 “I don’t care that much that Kotaku is ultra-widely known.”
38:50 “People have this notion that journalism in other fields is, like, so different… it’s not that different, actually.”
40:00 “It feels weird for people to care about game journalism as they do.”
Download the podcast MP3 or play it right here in your browser:
References
- Featured music: The Just Jones – “Stuart Had a Dirty Book”
- Kotaku statistics (Quantcast)
- Richard Goodness vs Kotaku “Kotaku’s Greatest Bricklayer” (Second Quest)
- Sonic bed story (Kotaku)
- This Gaymer’s Story (Kotaku)
- Why We’re Not Protesting SOPA Today (Kotaku)
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