The bottom line killed the dinosaurs: Notes from a freelance gaming journalist, year one

wegotthiscovered.com:

Lately, scrolling through Twitter feels like watching the dinosaurs awaiting their demise — the meteor creeping closer every minute, promising to obliterate their very way of life. Were the Triceratops aware of the encroaching catastrophe? Did they spend days mulling over how they would spend their last minutes dominating the Earth — what plants to eat, what streams to drink from, which eggs to protect? Or were they so blissfully unaware that their lives continued unaffected until, suddenly, they didn’t?

It’s easy to believe that journalists — writers as a whole, really — are the newest incarnation of the dinosaurs, not because we are cold-blooded and reptilian (although some possibly are), but because we are purveyors of ancient crafts: thoughtful criticism, honest reporting, and artistic license. We face not one but many meteors, as legacy media continues to reject a reportedly $200 billion industry in favor of hobbyists and influencers who bypass the journalistic boundaries necessary for true accountability. The closure of The Washington Post’s Launcher and Vice’s Waypoint confirmed everyone’s fear that no matter how profitable, award-winning, or respectable a publication is, the writers are never safe from the sword of Damocles dangled over their heads by money-hungry executives.

Since I started my career as a freelance journalist a little over a year ago, numerous publications have shuttered or been gutted, some mere months after publishing my byline. While I haven’t been around long enough to consider these writers “friends,” they were all inspirations, and each successive layoff portended the end of an era. Writers like Imran Khan, Gita Jackson, Renata Price, and Patrick Klepek are only a few of the many who created