I had a revelation yesterday, covering the WSOP Main Event in my "endurance poker journalist" pose. I was sitting among a row of seasoned media professionals and they were uniformly at their laptop Twitter control centers (Star Trek-like in complexity), frantically messaging and retweeting in a mad scramble for Twitterverse relevance.

What is this?

Poker Journalism is all about looking out for your own long term interest. Sadly lots of real issues aren't discussed if they go against the bottom line of the website. There is virtually no true independent website that I've come across. There was one for a while but in reality the owner was likely billing it as an independent news site to attract viewers and after his membership got big enough he was able to charge sites more to advertise.

"I don't allow adds in my magazines. Once you start down that road you ultimately lose the editorial power to your own magazine while endlessly self compromising your views to cater to external companies"

-Larry Flynt, discussing why he never accepted adds in Hustler.

It's been talked about several times on here how a "journalist", and I use that term VERY loosely, is hired by a Casino, Poker Event, or site to report on things, but they are really only there to give a positive spin for the people that hired them. They're not going to do any true investigative reporting because they would lose their job and never get hired again. Sadly enough there isn't much true journalism anymore. Sites, papers, and shows only care about getting advertising dollars and Americans are so stupid they want to see all of the stuff that is hyped up.

has a poker journalist ever broken an important poker story?

Bring back Subject: Poker

No one cares enough about poker stories to pay for them so it should be no surprise that people that cover events are tied to involved parties (that pay the bills) somehow

Sadly it's about hyping whoever buys their ads.

Chris Grove, onlinepokerreport, has done so many times

DiamondFlush did so many times during the "actual news" portion of the PokerStars judicial saga.

Both also have had consistently reliable content, which is way more important than being first to break to the internets ....

OP, I don't mean to be a dick but you, like clockwork, reference your blog in almost every post you make. Who is to say these guys aren't friends IRL and are supporting their journalistic efforts by sharing them to their network?

You of all people should empathize with that.

Again, I don't have a horse in the race but it seems ironic.

I forgot about Diamondflish. She is pretty awesome.

poker magazines essentially fall into the realm of a trade publication, and therefore shouldn't be compared to publications that fall under the realms of impartial and commercial.

as a journalist, i do understand the frustration and lack of true poker journalism that exists in the US, especially in the print world. that cover above makes me a bit sick.

there are good people out there doing good things online, such as the sleuthing that occurred during the AP/UB and the FT scandals.

at first glance I thought that was Fuat Can (who is super irrelevant in the poker world, *no offense*)


"what a joke"

I was not particularly bemoaning the state of poker journalism. I was just making an offhand observation about something I noticed, that kind of surprised me. I guess I expected my fellow journalists (the paid ones) to be writing long, incisive articles. My point was really about the predominance of Twitter as a self-reinforcing indicator of relevance. I have tried following Tweets at times and found them not so scintillating.

During the WSOP in June I never hung out in the journalist areas, because I was more interested in the ringside reporting elements of coverage. Other days I was playing. At WSOP I had no choice, because (for obvious reasons) we are not allowed within 200 feet of the actual table.

When I reference something that is on my blog it's because I have an article (not a Tweet) that I think people might enjoy reading. For example, I put up a little piece before the November Nine final table and posted a link to it. I have no idea how many people read, ignored, or followed it. Don't particularly care.

For what it's worth, probably 10 percent or less of my posts reference something off site. I personally find it useful when people link to articles I didn't know about, that offer a different perspective. okay. off to ponder the Reality of Fantasy.

Weeeer

Not sure why you would expect anything different. Twitter is easily the best medium for real-time tournament reporting. If a tournament reporter is not tweeting he's not staying relevant.

There is plenty of time for detailed write-ups following the conclusion of play.

Bluff (and I'm sure PokerNews and most other site in attendance for the Main Event) posted excellent in-depth summaries on the eliminations and the hands leading up to them - Full disclosure I write for Bluff, but don't cover the live poker side of things.

On the poker media in general...

Compared to what it was in say 2006 or even 2010 I think poker reporting and poker media have made considerable progress. Media is less tied to affiliates and by extension the poker sites themselves. The cord is still there but poker media no longer exclusively relies on it for sustenance.

There is also more of a mutual respect between poker columnists and the industry execs and PR people, and I think we do a much better job of communicating with each other and keeping them honest. For instance, what were the chances that in 2009 I could sit down with the CEO's of top gaming companies and conduct an interview on my terms and receive candid answers? I can do that now.

That's progress.

Go to PokerFuse or OnlinePokerReport (disclosure: I also contribute to OPR) and tell me the reporting there is being externally influenced by the industry. Then there are people like Marco Valerio and Chris Grove running around to every iGaming conference, and plenty of people like myself offering up informed commentary on the industry.

There is a lot going on in the poker media world, and there is a lot of good reporting in my opinion - still plenty of bad reporting too.

+1 this does explain a lot. Hope I didn't come across as too down on Twitter - I do see it as a valuable tool for reporting live events, although with broadcasts on a 30 minute delay I would think that many home viewers would turn off the Twitterfeed to avoid spoilers.

Some Tweets are insightful. I am thinking particularly of a Lex Veldhuis Tweet yesterday, pointing out that Esfandiari was phrasing his television analysis in such a way that he could have it both ways. Since Veldhuis is one of my favorite player-commentators I am very interested to sit down and watch the ESPN broadcast at some point, see what he was observing. FWIW I thought Esfandiari's analysis in 2010 was unscripted and spot on, and wasn't as impressed thereafter.

PokerFuse was actually where I went to publish my Ironman article, when I realized that the poker media simply hadn't covered the event in more than the most rudimentary way. They are indeed legit. I would also say (2+2 plug) that Nate Meyvis and Andrew Brokos' Thinking Poker is consistently excellent.

This thread actually relates to a little discussion that arose on Thinking Poker this summer between the hosts and Olivier Busquet, related to poker media vs. poker journalism.

Hi shulenberger:

We do have "no self-promotion rules." So while I believe your intentions are most likely good, it's probably best that you don't put direct links to your own blog.

Think about it. If I was to violate no self-promotion rules, I could hire a staff of people and literally put thousands of links in a short period of time to numerous web sites, probably including yours, and I suspect that you would not appreciate this.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Steve:

I agree with this, but also keep in mind that the starting point, pre-2006, was quite low. Also, even though things have improved a fair amount, there are still a lot of problems.

For example, a few months back your employer did an interview with Dutch Boyd that was nothing more than a direct attack on me and was not even close to truthful. Fortunately, Bluff did take it down and their editor did send me an apology.

In addition, and I won't get into specifics here, there was another incident about two years ago that you're familiar with where we were falsely smeared. That too was retracted.

This I don't buy, and those interviews could have been done well before 2009. Perhaps not by you since you're better known today, but by others.

However, given the bad events the past few years, and this includes events like the cheating at Ultimate Bet, it's my belief that many top industry people understand better the need for more transparency and integrity when dealing with their customers. This might be what you are observing when you state " more of a mutual respect between poker columnists and the industry execs and PR people."

I do agree that these two sites and the people associated with them such as Marco and Chris Grove are doing a good job. In fact, you can find an article by Marco in our current Two Plus Two Online Poker Strategy Magazine.

http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...poker-pros.php

as well as our previous edition:

http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...aming-fate.php

where Marco is critical of one of our advertisers.

I would change this to:

There is a lot going on in the poker media world, and there is some good reporting in my opinion - still plenty of bad reporting too.

Best wishes,
Mason

You have no idea what you're talking about. I seriously wonder sometimes if you're some high-level troll or if you have some agenda, because I know you know this industry very well, yet sometimes you write absolute nonsense.

I don't know what you are referencing with 'there was an independent news site around for a while'. Pokerfuse is the original 'independent poker news site' It was around before Subject Poker and Diamond Flush (both great work), and it's around after. And it has been for almost four years - since Black Friday 2011.

To those who doubt if its truly independent - we haven't taken take rake-based affiliate money since the day it launched. We've never taken money to run a story or bury one. We've never run thinly veiled 'promoted content.' We've published over 3000 news articles on pokerfuse, free, which have been truly independent, entirely free of bias, critical of some of the biggest advertisers and sponsors of online poker, and pissed off a lot of people.

"After his membership got big enough he was able to charge sites more to advertise" is a complete joke. We've left hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue on the table because of our policies - every single year. We've haven't received a dime from some of the biggest names in online poker because of our editorial policies (i'm sure you can guess them).

I don't think most of you know what it was like four years ago. Online poker journalism was a joke. We launched pokerfuse because basically there was no where you could read anything accurate on any website about online poker. News sites didn't consistently cover the scandals (think UB, AP, Microgaming/Tusk....) because of their affiliation, and NVG was the only place to read anything you could trust. NVG is still great for that, but now you're spoilt for choice on places to read good quality, accurate information.

Things have changed so much since then. Yes, pokerfuse, then S:P and Diamond Flush, but everyone's game rose. People now don't shy away from topics. Then Marco at QuadJacks and the WSOP, Chris Grove at OPR, the 4cubed sites, even PokerUpdate now under its new owner (and a bunch of old writers) are doing a great job. Poker News does some great stuff now, and it covered the PokerStars rake, and the protests, as did some of its other mega-affiliates. It wasn't like that even 2 years ago (ask yourself - who covered the changes to weighted-contributed, and the resultant protests, in 2012, like it did last week?).

To the person saying 'has a news site ever broken a story' - i mean, it happens every day. Just last week we 'broke the story' that Dan Fleyshman was the new CEO of Ivey Poker and he was forced to go on twitter and say 'oh that wasn't meant to come out til 2015', ha. This week about PokerStars' delays in NJ. Sites 'break stories' every day, and on top of that there's some excellent analysis done by some very smart, knowledgeable people.

But ultimately, it's quite clear the 'independent' thing has run its course. People are going to believe nothing is independent regardless - as this thread demonstrates - despite four years of grinding away at it. Pokerfuse is one of the most read poker news sites out there, but its not because it has 'independent' in its strapline; its because of the content.

I think over the last two years we've seen that even sites that are supported by affiliate revenue can be critical of its advertisers. We're seeing it all over now. That just didn't happen back in the 'golden years', where affiliate contracts were so lucrative that they couldn't risk pissing anyone off. It's different now.

For those of you that say you want "independent poker journalism," I ask you, what do you do to support "independent poker journalism?"

Do you subscribe to premium services on these sites, do you patronize their advertisers, do you spread the word, or do you take the lazy way out and share the first link you come across?

Stop pointing fingers and start pointing thumbs. In the end you the consumer are responsible for the products on the market.

We see it all the time here in NVG. People promote/share articles from affiliate-based poker news sites when "independent" sites have the same coverage or better.

People also promote/share links to mainstream media outlets when when "independent" poker sites have the same coverage or better.

The truth is nobody cares about independent poker media enough to do a damn thing to keep it around, and that includes the all facets of the poker community from players to operators.

Subject poker with noahsd and diamond flush was the nuts, but theyre outliers obv

Hi Rat:

Why are they outliers. Many years ago you would have said the same thing about 2+2 Publishing when it came to good quality poker/gambling books, but today we have a lot of competition, and there's no reason the same thing can't happen in other areas of our industry.

Best wishes,
Mason

I am speechless.

I have a blog post I wrote months ago but never published that covers this point of view and a few other issues. Maybe it is time to dust it off.

I wonder just how much people actually want this type of info. For example, I started a thread here about how a site with former UB management got into NJ. It got about 15 posts before it died. Haley wrote an article on it that looked about exactly how I would have written it so I tweeted hers instead of writing my own and it got 0 RTs.

Most major news outlets, including many poker ones, failed to mention the connection at all. This would appear to be the type of independent news OP wants, yet the story had nearly zero interest.

Some of you may be mad at certain news sites, but don't make a blanket statement about everyone in the industry. It certainly isn't true. Maybe this will motivate me to finish that post about what goes on behind the scenes.

Nice. OP is enthused.