Pay To Play

GameSetWatch brings up the interesting question of how to pay gaming journalists (I’ll forgo the use of “incent,” which is an abomination of the language).  The discussion is predicated on a recent Gawker memo, which informs writers that they will be paid in a combination of salary plus bonus based on the number of pageviews they receive. 

GSW rightly points out that this payment method might encourage sensationalization of news stories, although I’d also be concerned about the incentives to write stories aimed only at the largest gaming demographics (do we really want a site consisting of nothing but shooter posts?).  But that said, I’d actually suggest that this is probably the most reasonable compromise between editorial freedom and site revenue enhancement.  Salary-only payment schemes are all well and good, but I’m sure journalists would love the opportunity to make more money and site owners need traffic to survive.  Assuming that the base salary is reasonable, it seems eminently sensible to pay people for writing posts that others want to read.

 I don’t see much compromise to editorial freedom either.  If a journalist wants to write one mass-audience post for the additional income, there’s nothing preventing them from also writing another piece aimed at their personal niche interests.  If it fits the site’s profile, it will get published.  More to the point, it will also raise their eminence within the industry, encouraging people to further absorb their other writing and creating the kind of gaming journalist personalities that the industry largely seems to lack.