You may have heard that the next Mario game will be the best thing since sliced bread. Actually, you've definitely heard it if you've seen any articles that quote Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream in saying that the next Mario game was not shown at E3 "for fear that other developers would copy ideas from the game," according to Gamesindustry.biz. Madgamers adds that Nintendo Dream reported the game might be shown in England by the end of August and could be released in Japan by the end of the year, which begs the question... should the media wait to see the game before reporting on any supposed innovations it may contain?
Of course, any bit of information that comes out of the generally secretive Nintendo usually qualifies as big-time news. The Mario series is one of the most highly regarded in gaming, so people want to know as much about it as possible. Those who were wondering why it wasn't shown at E3 deserve an explanation as to where Nintendo is on the project, and Nintendo Dream's reporting fills that explanation well.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the video game media is being used to an extent here. Nintendo knows that anything they say about the new Mario game will be reported all over the internet and video game magazines. Saying that the new game is too innovative to show to the public is a "nice way to gain a bit of free publicity post-E3," as GamesIndustry.biz put it. We have no guarantee that Nintendo isn't simply covering up for a game that was too early in development to show this year.
It's not like this is the first time Nintendo has used this line either: Spong.com points out that Nintendo at one point claimed that Super Mario Sunshine and Pokemon Mini -- two products that were not that well-received -- were "too innovative" to show the public. All this "free publiciity" could backfire on Nintendo by raising expectations for what could well be an unimpressive game (of course, Miyamato always seems to get the benefit of the doubt, which is a topic for another time).
So what's the solution? In truth, it's a tough balancing act between giving the readers the information they need to know and becoming a tool for a game publisher's PR department. News organizations simply have to use their best judgement to determine whether reporting the compay line on a game, sight unseen, is worth the risk. In this case I would say it's probably not, as the game media will be able to decide for itself on any innovations soon enough. Many video game web sites have not covered the story, probably for just this reason. Regardless of whether the game turns out to be as innovative as Nintendo says, these sites deserve praise for erring on the side of caution.
Monday, June 30, 2003
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Game Sites Get Mixed Marks on Fake PS3 Logo
It's been about two weeks since Dutch gaming site DGS Online posted a story about a supposed logo for the PS3 that turned out to be an an old mock-up by European mag PSM2. I must say I'm pleasantly surprised by the way some web sites handled the story. Particular credit goes to GamesIndustry.biz (GI) not only for making "a quick call to Sony PR" to confirm the story, but also for posting a story about the fake logo to help correct the record.
GI could have sat on the information and simply gotten on with their business, but instead they posted a more accurate story for thei readers who may have heard about it elsewhere. This is not only good journalism, but classy as well. Of course, the site loses some of their classiness points by suggesting in their article that "We're not sure where the rumour originated, but we suspect that some chancer has pulled a fast one on giant US game news site IGN, which breathlessly reported on the unveiling of the logo earlier today." No one likes a tattle-tale, GI. Credit also goes to Spong.com and GamerFeed, among others, for waiting and posting correct stories instead of jumping on the rumors (although I must comment on the Spong headline. "A World of Lies" might be taking it a bit far)
But all is not peaches and cream as far as this story is concerned (mmm, peaches). As GI mentioned, IGN was one of the big sites that got fooled by the logo, and their posting quickly caused other sites to perpetuate the lies. Even though a lot of sites were a bit skeptical in their articles (there were a lot of question marks in headlines), their articles were still based on false information, and no amount of skepticism can change that. Enough sites went with the rumor that a lot of people were probably misinformed. On the other hand, many of thse sites later corrected themselves, and a lot of sites posted only the correct story, so most of the misinformed probably found out the truth eventually. Even if they didn't, they probably saw one of the countless message board threads discussing whether the logo was real or not (and whether it was good looking or not. The concensus on the latter seemes to be "not")
An amusing little epilogue to this tale: Mainstream pop culture news site eNewsZone posted a false story about the logo a full three days after GI's correct story ran. Being wrong before anyone knows better is one thing, but being wrong three days after the truth has been widely known is just sloppy.
GI could have sat on the information and simply gotten on with their business, but instead they posted a more accurate story for thei readers who may have heard about it elsewhere. This is not only good journalism, but classy as well. Of course, the site loses some of their classiness points by suggesting in their article that "We're not sure where the rumour originated, but we suspect that some chancer has pulled a fast one on giant US game news site IGN, which breathlessly reported on the unveiling of the logo earlier today." No one likes a tattle-tale, GI. Credit also goes to Spong.com and GamerFeed, among others, for waiting and posting correct stories instead of jumping on the rumors (although I must comment on the Spong headline. "A World of Lies" might be taking it a bit far)
But all is not peaches and cream as far as this story is concerned (mmm, peaches). As GI mentioned, IGN was one of the big sites that got fooled by the logo, and their posting quickly caused other sites to perpetuate the lies. Even though a lot of sites were a bit skeptical in their articles (there were a lot of question marks in headlines), their articles were still based on false information, and no amount of skepticism can change that. Enough sites went with the rumor that a lot of people were probably misinformed. On the other hand, many of thse sites later corrected themselves, and a lot of sites posted only the correct story, so most of the misinformed probably found out the truth eventually. Even if they didn't, they probably saw one of the countless message board threads discussing whether the logo was real or not (and whether it was good looking or not. The concensus on the latter seemes to be "not")
An amusing little epilogue to this tale: Mainstream pop culture news site eNewsZone posted a false story about the logo a full three days after GI's correct story ran. Being wrong before anyone knows better is one thing, but being wrong three days after the truth has been widely known is just sloppy.
Sunday, June 22, 2003
Magazine Sorting
I was browsing through the magazine section of the B. Dalton bookstore at Union Station the other day, when I decided to look for the video game magazines. Going down the aisles, I first checked the "Arts" section; there were no video game publications among the photography and painting magazines there. Then I checked the "Entertainment" section; no video game magazines among the movie and music rags in that aisle. Finally, I find a wide selection of video game publications in the "Computer" section, right next to magazines like PC World and Mac Shopper.
Now, I'm not surprised that the "Arts" section didn't have any video game mags. While I do think that video games are art, there are no publications currently in print that fully treat them as such. Surely the audience for magazines like GamePro doesn't overlap much with that for serious art magazines like Found.
But this day and age, I find it hard to justify not putting the gaming mags in the "Entertainment" section. Video games represent a multi-billion dollar industry that millions of people use as their primary medium of entertainment. While the audience for games is not quite as wide as that for movies or popular music, it is growing quickly as those who grew up with them become the ones who control the household finances. In a way, setting video games aside from other entertainment is an insult to anyone who finds them entertaining.
Putting video games in the "Computer" section may seem innocuous, but it is indicative of the way our hobby is perceived by the mainstream media outlets (like bookstores). By putting gaming magazines next to technical computer journals and consumer-oriented buyer's guides, the store sends a buyer a subtle message that video games are either (a) an overly complex medium only suited for nerdy, technically-oriented, individuals or (b) merely a consumer product with no artistic merit, to be bargained on based on technical merits like a computer. While the writing in many magazines only perpetuates these stereotypes, I think that there are enough obvious differences between computer and video game magazines to seperate their sections.
Many bookstores put video game magazines in a seperate gaming section, along with publications like Scrye, Dragon and, ocassionally, non-gaming mags like Wizard. This distinction has some merit because the audience for video games and tabletop/role-playing games has a large overlap, but it also casts games as mere diversions seperate from the more serious entertainment in the "Entertainment" section.
I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is, or even that it is a real problem worthy of a solution more obvious than waiting for society to accept video games as entertainment more readily. It's just something that caught my attention that I thought I'd bring up.
Now, I'm not surprised that the "Arts" section didn't have any video game mags. While I do think that video games are art, there are no publications currently in print that fully treat them as such. Surely the audience for magazines like GamePro doesn't overlap much with that for serious art magazines like Found.
But this day and age, I find it hard to justify not putting the gaming mags in the "Entertainment" section. Video games represent a multi-billion dollar industry that millions of people use as their primary medium of entertainment. While the audience for games is not quite as wide as that for movies or popular music, it is growing quickly as those who grew up with them become the ones who control the household finances. In a way, setting video games aside from other entertainment is an insult to anyone who finds them entertaining.
Putting video games in the "Computer" section may seem innocuous, but it is indicative of the way our hobby is perceived by the mainstream media outlets (like bookstores). By putting gaming magazines next to technical computer journals and consumer-oriented buyer's guides, the store sends a buyer a subtle message that video games are either (a) an overly complex medium only suited for nerdy, technically-oriented, individuals or (b) merely a consumer product with no artistic merit, to be bargained on based on technical merits like a computer. While the writing in many magazines only perpetuates these stereotypes, I think that there are enough obvious differences between computer and video game magazines to seperate their sections.
Many bookstores put video game magazines in a seperate gaming section, along with publications like Scrye, Dragon and, ocassionally, non-gaming mags like Wizard. This distinction has some merit because the audience for video games and tabletop/role-playing games has a large overlap, but it also casts games as mere diversions seperate from the more serious entertainment in the "Entertainment" section.
I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is, or even that it is a real problem worthy of a solution more obvious than waiting for society to accept video games as entertainment more readily. It's just something that caught my attention that I thought I'd bring up.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Kushner Masters Tough Subject in Even-Handed Masters of Doom
Note: This article was originally published on Joystick101.org
"Well you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it's really good
you're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started
sitting in your little room."
-The White Stripes, Little Room
It's hard to come up with a more succinct summary to the saga of David Kushner's Masters of Doom (Random House, 335 pages). The book is a cautionary tale about what can happen when egos and staff sizes get bigger than the ideas and work ethic of those implementing them.
Master of Doom is the epic tale of "the two Johns" (Romero and Carmack) that "created an empire and transformed pop culture," according to the book's subtitle. The book starts with chapter-long summaries of each John's childhood which segue nicely into their first meeting at SoftDisk. The book goes on to chronicle in detail the creation of Ideas from the Deep, which later became id software, and the marathon coding and gaming sessions that went into creating classics like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and, of course, Doom.
After Doom, the split between Romero and Carmack is echoed by a split in the narrative of the story, which jumps back and forth between the development of Carmack's Quake 2 and 3 and Romero's Daikatana. The interoffice politics are broken up by the real-life politics of the Columbine massacre and its effect on the creators of the game many media outlets blamed for the tragedy. In the end, the book takes on a redemptive tone as Romero starts up a new small-time game development house and Carmack looks to break new boundaries in rocket science.
Kushner's even-handed, balanced writing style frees the book from the bitter bias that infects the countless message board posts and .plan files about the two Johns. Kushner lays out the facts as he sees them and lets the reader draw their own conclusions about the people involved. Kushner wisely stays away from the fanboy-esque ranting that often creeps into such discussions, and the narrative is much better for it.
The main draw of Masters of Doom is Kushner's uncanny talent for getting into the heads of his subjects with an amazing self-assuredness. Much like a good Tom Wolfe book, "Masters of Doom" carefully treads the line between detached reporting and personal experience with flair. Kushner's writing style brings out the divergent and symbiotic personalities of the two Johns to great effect, and the highly narrative structure makes the book read more like a good work of fiction than a bland, purely factual history.
Each success and pitfall on the two Johns' road is chronicled with excruciating detail. Kushner has done so much research that it often seems he was an observer to events that he actually just heard about, a fact that he acknowledges in the notes. The reader gets the impression that Kushner is an expert on the subject he's writing about, too, not simply a non-gamer who felt like writing a video game book. Asides about things like the "hacker ethic" and LAN parties show a more than passing interest in the video game subculture.
Masters of Doom succeeds because it is about more than the games that are its obvious subject. It is a story about the circuitous paths of two visionary game designers and the millions of lives that they affected with their most popular work. Kudos to David Kushner for making a book that humanizes a group of people that are too often considered mindless code-monkeys.
"Well you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it's really good
you're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started
sitting in your little room."
-The White Stripes, Little Room
It's hard to come up with a more succinct summary to the saga of David Kushner's Masters of Doom (Random House, 335 pages). The book is a cautionary tale about what can happen when egos and staff sizes get bigger than the ideas and work ethic of those implementing them.
Master of Doom is the epic tale of "the two Johns" (Romero and Carmack) that "created an empire and transformed pop culture," according to the book's subtitle. The book starts with chapter-long summaries of each John's childhood which segue nicely into their first meeting at SoftDisk. The book goes on to chronicle in detail the creation of Ideas from the Deep, which later became id software, and the marathon coding and gaming sessions that went into creating classics like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and, of course, Doom.
After Doom, the split between Romero and Carmack is echoed by a split in the narrative of the story, which jumps back and forth between the development of Carmack's Quake 2 and 3 and Romero's Daikatana. The interoffice politics are broken up by the real-life politics of the Columbine massacre and its effect on the creators of the game many media outlets blamed for the tragedy. In the end, the book takes on a redemptive tone as Romero starts up a new small-time game development house and Carmack looks to break new boundaries in rocket science.
Kushner's even-handed, balanced writing style frees the book from the bitter bias that infects the countless message board posts and .plan files about the two Johns. Kushner lays out the facts as he sees them and lets the reader draw their own conclusions about the people involved. Kushner wisely stays away from the fanboy-esque ranting that often creeps into such discussions, and the narrative is much better for it.
The main draw of Masters of Doom is Kushner's uncanny talent for getting into the heads of his subjects with an amazing self-assuredness. Much like a good Tom Wolfe book, "Masters of Doom" carefully treads the line between detached reporting and personal experience with flair. Kushner's writing style brings out the divergent and symbiotic personalities of the two Johns to great effect, and the highly narrative structure makes the book read more like a good work of fiction than a bland, purely factual history.
Each success and pitfall on the two Johns' road is chronicled with excruciating detail. Kushner has done so much research that it often seems he was an observer to events that he actually just heard about, a fact that he acknowledges in the notes. The reader gets the impression that Kushner is an expert on the subject he's writing about, too, not simply a non-gamer who felt like writing a video game book. Asides about things like the "hacker ethic" and LAN parties show a more than passing interest in the video game subculture.
Masters of Doom succeeds because it is about more than the games that are its obvious subject. It is a story about the circuitous paths of two visionary game designers and the millions of lives that they affected with their most popular work. Kudos to David Kushner for making a book that humanizes a group of people that are too often considered mindless code-monkeys.
Half-life 2 Debacle Shows Pitfalls of Pack Journalism
Note: This article was originally published on Joystick101.org
The Puget Sound Business Journal broke the big "story" on June 8 with a gem of a quote hidden at the end of a seemingly innocuous article about Microsoft's rising and falling Xbox fortunes. Xbox Product Manager David Hufford told the Business Journal that Microsoft was getting "mixed messages" from Valve about a port of the highly anticipated Half-life 2 for the Xbox. "As of now, Half-life 2 is not going to be on the Xbox," Hufford was quoted as saying.
It wasn't long before the video game web sites had picked up the scent and were linking to the story with abandon. Evil Avatar was one of the first to post it, positing mid-Sunday that Valve might be trying to get more money from Microsoft by waffling on their implied commitment. By Sunday night, Slashdot had picked it up with links back to Evil Avatar and the PSBJ story. By Monday morning the feeding frenzy was on, with sites from Gamerfeed to GameIndustry.biz to GameSpot and Blue's News all reporting that Half-life 2 would not be coming to Microsoft's console. The full force of the video game journalism conglomerate was now on the trail of this highly important story. There was only one problem...
The story wasn't true.
By Monday afternoon, sources from Valve and Vivendi Universal, the game's publisher, were coming out of the woodwork to re-confirm that Half-life 2 would be coming to the Xbox. GameSpyDaily was one of the first to quote Valve's Doug Lombardi as saying that "Half-life 2 is planned for the PC and Xbox." GameSpot posted confirmation of an Xbox version from Universal's Amy Farris just 8 hours after their original story on had run. The aforementioned websites, along with many others, were quick to post follow-up stories acknowledging that Hufford's comments seemed to have no weight.
There are quite a few disturbing things about this story. The first is that the PSBJ reporter did not realize the importance of Hufford's statement (if, in fact, he made the statement; more on that later). The reporter, Jeff Meisner, obviously didn't realize the impact Hufford's statement would have on the business futures of both Valve and Microsoft, not to mention the futures of countless Xbox owners. Instead, Meisner buried the quote at the very end of the article and didn't bother to check Hufford's assertion with any other sources. While this is sloppy journalism, Meisner can perhaps be forgiven because he writes for a local business publication and not a national video game web site.
The herd mentality of the practically the entire video game web journalism industry, however, is less defensible. True, the situation was cleared up so quickly that many readers probably missed the whole thing, but this debacle is indicative of the larger trend of lazy link-and-quote reporting that passes for "news" on most video game sites. Rather than calling up sources and finding the news on their own, most web site editors seem content to have the news spoon-fed to them from public relations managers and conventional, mainstream news sources. Had anyone bothered to pick up the phone and check Hufford's comments with someone at Universal or Valve, as GameSpy and GameSpot eventually did, they'd have realized that there actually was no story and that the growing media circus was misguided.
The link-and-quote process succeeds in that it quickly gets many important stories to gamers who might not otherwise see them. But the process fails in that it results in a lack of originality in video game news as a whole. When every site posts the same big press releases and links to the same big articles as everyone else, it becomes impossible to find the smaller, more in-depth stories that bring new information or new angles to light. It also becomes easier for a small bit of misinformation, like that in the PSBJ article, to become a full-fledged juggernaut that can be hard to stop. Even the follow-up articles posted by many web sites simply linked to the GameSpy or GameSpot refutations using a simple, "This site quoted this person as saying this thing," template. This kind of journalism is lazy, sloppy and unfair to gamers who should demand more accurate, original reporting from their news outlets.
In a June 10 story, GameSpyDaily talked with David Hufford, who asserted that he "never said Half Life 2 wouldn't be available for Xbox." Hufford said that he had deferred the question to Valve in the interview. Interestingly, the original PSBJ article has been edited to say that Half Life 2 will be coming to the Xbox (the original can currently be found through Google's cache feature).
Evil Avatar has posted a nice summary of the drama with the apt observation that "the world may never know" whether Hufford or the PSBJ were in the wrong. But what is clear is that online video game journalists as a whole need to follow up on leads for important stories and not settle for echoing the reporting of others. When the actions of many big-name, national media outlets wouldn't even pass muster in a college journalism course, you know something is very wrong.
The Puget Sound Business Journal broke the big "story" on June 8 with a gem of a quote hidden at the end of a seemingly innocuous article about Microsoft's rising and falling Xbox fortunes. Xbox Product Manager David Hufford told the Business Journal that Microsoft was getting "mixed messages" from Valve about a port of the highly anticipated Half-life 2 for the Xbox. "As of now, Half-life 2 is not going to be on the Xbox," Hufford was quoted as saying.
It wasn't long before the video game web sites had picked up the scent and were linking to the story with abandon. Evil Avatar was one of the first to post it, positing mid-Sunday that Valve might be trying to get more money from Microsoft by waffling on their implied commitment. By Sunday night, Slashdot had picked it up with links back to Evil Avatar and the PSBJ story. By Monday morning the feeding frenzy was on, with sites from Gamerfeed to GameIndustry.biz to GameSpot and Blue's News all reporting that Half-life 2 would not be coming to Microsoft's console. The full force of the video game journalism conglomerate was now on the trail of this highly important story. There was only one problem...
The story wasn't true.
By Monday afternoon, sources from Valve and Vivendi Universal, the game's publisher, were coming out of the woodwork to re-confirm that Half-life 2 would be coming to the Xbox. GameSpyDaily was one of the first to quote Valve's Doug Lombardi as saying that "Half-life 2 is planned for the PC and Xbox." GameSpot posted confirmation of an Xbox version from Universal's Amy Farris just 8 hours after their original story on had run. The aforementioned websites, along with many others, were quick to post follow-up stories acknowledging that Hufford's comments seemed to have no weight.
There are quite a few disturbing things about this story. The first is that the PSBJ reporter did not realize the importance of Hufford's statement (if, in fact, he made the statement; more on that later). The reporter, Jeff Meisner, obviously didn't realize the impact Hufford's statement would have on the business futures of both Valve and Microsoft, not to mention the futures of countless Xbox owners. Instead, Meisner buried the quote at the very end of the article and didn't bother to check Hufford's assertion with any other sources. While this is sloppy journalism, Meisner can perhaps be forgiven because he writes for a local business publication and not a national video game web site.
The herd mentality of the practically the entire video game web journalism industry, however, is less defensible. True, the situation was cleared up so quickly that many readers probably missed the whole thing, but this debacle is indicative of the larger trend of lazy link-and-quote reporting that passes for "news" on most video game sites. Rather than calling up sources and finding the news on their own, most web site editors seem content to have the news spoon-fed to them from public relations managers and conventional, mainstream news sources. Had anyone bothered to pick up the phone and check Hufford's comments with someone at Universal or Valve, as GameSpy and GameSpot eventually did, they'd have realized that there actually was no story and that the growing media circus was misguided.
The link-and-quote process succeeds in that it quickly gets many important stories to gamers who might not otherwise see them. But the process fails in that it results in a lack of originality in video game news as a whole. When every site posts the same big press releases and links to the same big articles as everyone else, it becomes impossible to find the smaller, more in-depth stories that bring new information or new angles to light. It also becomes easier for a small bit of misinformation, like that in the PSBJ article, to become a full-fledged juggernaut that can be hard to stop. Even the follow-up articles posted by many web sites simply linked to the GameSpy or GameSpot refutations using a simple, "This site quoted this person as saying this thing," template. This kind of journalism is lazy, sloppy and unfair to gamers who should demand more accurate, original reporting from their news outlets.
In a June 10 story, GameSpyDaily talked with David Hufford, who asserted that he "never said Half Life 2 wouldn't be available for Xbox." Hufford said that he had deferred the question to Valve in the interview. Interestingly, the original PSBJ article has been edited to say that Half Life 2 will be coming to the Xbox (the original can currently be found through Google's cache feature).
Evil Avatar has posted a nice summary of the drama with the apt observation that "the world may never know" whether Hufford or the PSBJ were in the wrong. But what is clear is that online video game journalists as a whole need to follow up on leads for important stories and not settle for echoing the reporting of others. When the actions of many big-name, national media outlets wouldn't even pass muster in a college journalism course, you know something is very wrong.
Welcome
Welcome to my new weblog, The Video Game Ombudsman. This blog was created to fill a hole in the video game journalism scene. While there are countless magazines and web sites that detail the business, craft and art of video games, I have yet to run into a source that puts the microscope up to the journalists themselves. This column is my humble attempt to put a check on the often sloppy, lazy, biased, and unethical world of video game reporting.
By way of background, I am currently a senior double major in journalism and computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park. I founded and ran my own fan site, Super Mario Bros. HQ, for four years before moving on to write reviews for my college paper, The Diamondback, and more recently for GameCritics.com. I have also written for now-defunct video game web sites such as MyVideoGames and RobotStreetGang, and non-video game web sites TopCoder and J-Lab.
This column will mix original reporting in the form of research and interviews with my unapologetic opinions about the industry, as well as reviews of magazines, books and web sites that cover video games. I will not sugarcoat the issues at hand; I will call things as I see them. I will give both praise and derision where they are due. But most of all, I will listen to my readers.
Consider this column your forum to speak out about what you love and hate about the video game journalism business. If someone writes something that makes you ashamed to be a gamer, tell me about it. If you read a review that makes you reconsider what a video game can be, tell me about it. If you just feel like ranting about your favorite magazine, tell me about that, too. This column is only as good as the readers that take part in it, so do your part by dropping me a line at kyleorl@wam.umd.edu.
By way of background, I am currently a senior double major in journalism and computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park. I founded and ran my own fan site, Super Mario Bros. HQ, for four years before moving on to write reviews for my college paper, The Diamondback, and more recently for GameCritics.com. I have also written for now-defunct video game web sites such as MyVideoGames and RobotStreetGang, and non-video game web sites TopCoder and J-Lab.
This column will mix original reporting in the form of research and interviews with my unapologetic opinions about the industry, as well as reviews of magazines, books and web sites that cover video games. I will not sugarcoat the issues at hand; I will call things as I see them. I will give both praise and derision where they are due. But most of all, I will listen to my readers.
Consider this column your forum to speak out about what you love and hate about the video game journalism business. If someone writes something that makes you ashamed to be a gamer, tell me about it. If you read a review that makes you reconsider what a video game can be, tell me about it. If you just feel like ranting about your favorite magazine, tell me about that, too. This column is only as good as the readers that take part in it, so do your part by dropping me a line at kyleorl@wam.umd.edu.
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