From the "Why write an article at all" file

The Gamespot.com headline:

"NBA Jam Ships"



For those who can't be bothered to click the link, here's the whole story:



"Acclaim began shipping NBA Jam for the Xbox and the PS2 today.

[Big annoying advertisement goes here]

NBA Jam is a 3-on-3 basketball simulation that features arcade-style action, including huge dunks, no fouls, and characters who catch fire when on streaks."



Yep. That's all of it.



Here's a new, slightly longer headline (written by me) that would save the reader a click of the mouse:

"New basketball game NBA Jam ships today for PS2 and XBox"



If you're adept at message board-speak you could add a little "[nt]" to the end there.



Now I know even the most trivial of headlines needs an accompanying article to help sell ad space (see [big annoying ad] above), but when the whole article is only two lines long, you have to consider whether what you're linking to (and what you're writing) is worth the effort. The time it took author Bob Moseley to write those two sentences and a headline is time he could have spent writing something that was actually worth the reader's time.



First off, if you're going to write yet another article announcing that yet another video game has finally shipped, you have to put some minimal amount of effort and enthusiasm into it. I know it's hard to get excited about yet another cookie-cutter "Game X ships" story, but you've got to give the readers something. The Gamespot article doesn't even mention that the new game is a continuation of the popular arcade series that hasn't been seen for nearly a decade. Granted, most Gamespot readers know this already, but your job is to assume that the audience always knows less than you do (since you do this for a living, they probably should)



But the writing is not the main problem. The main problem is that shipping announcements like this get treated like news stories at all. When the whole of the information in a story can be conveyed in a one-sentence headline, it's not a news story -- it's a blurb. And when that blurb is about something as frivolous as a new game shipping it amounts to simple free advertising -- free advertising that is biased towards the games you deign worthy of an article. (I suppose you could write a story about every single game that ships for any system ever, but you wouldn't have time for much else. Even if the stories were only two sentences long.)



Instead of clogging up the news section with these types of non-stories, I'd recommend creating a section, (or sidebar, or dropdown menu or something) that simply lists the games that have been released in the past couple of weeks. The list could link to the appropriate preview or review for each game, and leave it at that. This keeps the public informed while eliminating the bias of selective featuring and the need to think of two-sentences worth of new stuff to say about games like NBA Jam.



The other route is to just make your shipping announcements read more like press releases, but unless you're comfortable having no credibility and inserting words like "BOOMSHAKALAKA!" into your writing, this route is best avoided.