"Says who?"

It's not just a petty response to a schoolyard taunt – it's the heart of good, solid journalism. Raw information is only part of the story – who's providing the information is often just as important. A simple reader might think they just want to know the facts, but a discerning reader also wants to know how you know the facts so they can know what they think about the facts being facts or just things you think you know. Unfortunately, finding out the original source of a news story on the major gaming sites is often as hard as parsing that last sentence.

The news business is not just about getting the right information, but about getting it first, which is why it can be pretty galling for a news site to have to cite a competitor as the source for a story. The speed of the internet makes the problem worse – nobody wants to be chastised for posting an "old" link to information from two whole days ago. The glut of sites devoted to the relatively narrow niche of gaming exacerbates the problem further – with so many sites and so little real news, it's common to see essentially the same information appear in dozens of places in slightly different forms.

Not that this is a problem in and of itself. As long as reporters do their best to reference and link back to the original source for their information, a curious reader can confirm for himself/herself whether the secondary reporting is accurate. Most sites have trouble living up to this ideal in reality, however. "Among the major sites, proper credit is probably given something like 90 percent of the time," Game|Life's Chris Kohler says, "but that other 10 percent is a hell of a lot of stories."

1UP News Editor Luke Smith knows what it's like to be burned by part of that 10 percent, and he isn't very fond of the experience. On his personal blog, he launched a salvo against competitor IGN for failing to provide proper credit for a story he broke about the Stamper brothers leaving Rare.

Talking to Media Coverage, Smith said he understood why a site might not want to link to a competitor, but that he thought the practice showed insecurity. "It's trying to erect a facade that 'X information is only available here,'" Smith said, "And for the most part, it's not. Why would you want readers who believe that 'X site is the only place for Y information'? It seems like they aren't using the full power of the Internet, then."

IGN, for their part, later updated their story with the proper source and IGN editorial director Tal Blevins told Video Game Media Watch that it was "always our intention as reporters to cite relevant sources." Other bloggers and news writers I talked to said without exception that their outlets had similar linking policies to ensure that credit was given where it was due. But even with a policy in place, providing a link back to the source is not always as simple as it sounds.

When essentially similar information is being reported on numerous sites, figuring out which version to link to can be tricky. Gamasutra's Simon Carless says his writers "make a serious attempt to work out who actually broke the story... if it's original reporting. More to the point, we go back to the original press release or statement if that exists so as to work from primary evidence." Failing to perform this due diligence can lead to problems, and Carless pointed out in a GameSetWatch post on a questionably-sourced Joystiq post that turned into a public gaffe.

Even when the correct credit is given, the person who originated a story is not always the one who ends up getting the benefit from it. Carless notes that web users would often rather read a two-paragraph weblog summary of a ten-page interview than the interview itself. "There's often little incentive to click through to that external site, yet the external site conducted the interview or originally reported the fact," he said. Game|Life's Kohler summed up the frustration involved with this misplaced crediting. "When people link to my stuff, but they link to Joystiq's coverage of it or whatever, well, that pisses me off," he said.

Indeed, the peculiar nature of news aggregators and the questionable linking policies of smaller, less scrupulous sites means a bad copy can often become more popular than an original story. 1UP's Smith pointed out a recent example where his story on Xbox 360 matchmaking got little attention from news aggregator digg, but a heavily quoted copy on GameStyle got boosted by over 800 diggers. "This is why there's no such thing as 'videogame journalism'," Smith said.

The quick spread of facts revealed in interviews and press releases is one thing, but the rampant cross-linking on the internet can also allow a rumor to get around the world before the truth has a chance to buy a pair of pants, much less put them on. The decision to run a rumor being reported elsewhere on the 'net is not an exact science. "Sometimes, there's enough smoke around a rumor to safely guess there's a fire," said Joystiq's Christopher Grant (who I work with as a blogger for the site). "Often, we'll play the role of debunker when a rumor is too stupid to go on living. Case in point: the rumor that Sony was planning on removing Blu-ray drives from PlayStation 3s -- if so, every PS3 game shipped to date wouldn't work on future PS3s!"

Sometimes, the best way to report on a rumor is to actually do some legwork to determine the truth behind it. Kotaku's Brian Crecente said he always tries to get a response from the company involved in a rumor if he thinks one might be available. "A blog, a true blog, is essentially opinion, so I can understand not calling someone, but as larger sites like Kotaku transition from blog to something that mixes original content with hard news and reporting, then more calls need to be made."

This gets into the best way to set your news site apart in a sea of seemingly random links and endlessly repeated information -- original reporting and content. "I think it's important to present content which people do have to read in depth to understand," Carless said, "because that will differentiate you and attract people to your site." Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean you have to uncover secret information in every story -- a new angle on an old story can be just as good. "We all, I believe, get the same press releases. The difference is how we analyze those press releases and write the story," Crecente said.

Of course, that original content isn't worth much if it isn't noticed and linked to by the other sites that make up the largely incestuous world of online gaming news. But in the end, those who refuse to link to outside sources are probably hurting themselves more than anyone else. "The creation of a walled garden of information is ultimately an attempt to deny the reality that there are a host of outlets out there where your readers could go," Smith said. "As an editor, you shouldn't be afraid about your readers reading somewhere else. You should be confident that the product you're putting together will bring them back."

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Got something you'd like to see on Media Coverage? Send it to kyle.orland@gmail.com.

Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.