Covering the videogame industry is no easy feat, especially when thousands of readers criticize you for a plethora of reasons. It's not uncommon to be accused of "being on the take" or failing to be impartial. Hell, even the title "videogame journalist" comes under scrutiny for being somewhat of an oxymoron.

Even with the backlash, writing about games for a living can be a very enjoyable profession. But like most jobs, it's important to keep yourself in a constant state of improvement, so if you're just starting out or a veteran spiraling out of control, here are some helpful tips on how to become a better journalist.

Become an avid reader

Stephen King says that if you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write and that's as true as statement as has ever been made. If you're not regularly feeding your brain on a daily basis you run the risk of becoming stagnant. You'll just be reusing the same old and boring words and phrases. And on top of that, you'll be shutting out your competition. Not that it's always important to keep looking over your shoulder as you're dashing to the finish line, but it's a great idea to see what sorts of ideas other writers are coming up with. You shouldn't flat out steal them, but something that catches your eye may give you inspiration to come up with something truly stellar, so with that being said, always pay a visit to competing sites as well as news aggregators such as Digg.com.

Like most forms of entertainment, there are healthy and unhealthy things for your brain and it's important that you distinguish between the two. Certain magazines such as TIME, Newsweek, and Wired are perfect for studying how actual journalists report the news, and the same can be said of various news-related websites such as CNN.com. Then there's the good old newspaper. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and even your local paper are great periodicals to digest on a daily basis. However, I also encourage you to run through People Magazine, The National Enquirer, and similar magazines. They're not necessarily the source for new words, but their writers are allowed to get away with bold headlines and more creative pieces of content. Ingesting all of this will provide you with a solid foundation on how to seriously report the news while at the same time giving you inspiration to add some spice (and humor) to your special features.

As for videogame journalism, I strongly recommend that you read as much of it as possible, but refrain from mimicking it. Instead, pay close attention to what various magazines and websites are doing wrong. Most videogame journalists are part of the problem, so don't go to them for the solution.

Take measures to improve your writing

There's a lot of different ways to do this, the best being:

Purchase a style guide: Pocket books such as White and Strunk Jr.'s The Elements of Style are great for learning proper word usage and improving sentence structure. But studying one of them doesn't mean that you should back away from being creative. As much as some people would love to think that there is only one way to write a respective language, the influence of slang as well as pop culture cannot be ignored, which is probably why it's a good thing that various entertainment industries aren't covered by old and crusty English professors.

Take a writing class: If you're truly desperate for help, it might be a good idea to take classes in journalism and/or creative writing. At the very least (in theory), you'll have the opportunity to get advice from a true expert (all bets are off with adjunct professors).

Always accept criticism: Being rejected and having to rewrite are just part of the process, so instead of shying away from hateful eyes, always welcome advice from your peers, because if it were up to most writers, they'd be award-winning novelists their very first try. But it usually takes a few different pairs of eyes to tell people just how bad they are.

For example, check out this sentence, taken from a recently-published article about Capcom's Dead Rising:

After all, who doesn't enjoy running over 50 zombies with a lawnmower? Nobody. Except communists.

Wow Mr. Journalist! Way to keep up with 1980s humor!

I'm not sure how many people at the company read this article before it posted, but I'm willing to bet that it wasn't many. At least I hope it wasn't many, because if several people think that's funny then games journalism is more screwed up than I originally thought. But as you hopefully see, those three sentences are not only poorly strung together, but the end result is mildly offensive. I'm not defending communism, but I'd like to think that a few communists enjoy running over zombies with lawnmowers just fine.

As a side note, humor is a very difficult emotion to convey through writing, and failed attempts may produce hazardous results.