Well, as long as we're agreeing to drop the topic and then going on to write a couple more paragraphs about it:
Apple doesn't "manage" Gizmodo. They said basically "you guys suck and aren't getting invited to any more press events," and Gizmodo has spent the last year publicly bitching about it and asking "why so secretive, Apple?" That's why Tycho's allusion to the scorpion and the monk was appropriate: they've demonstrated time and again that they value page views over legitimacy; it's in their nature. Unlike the rest of the fable, though, apparently it's not in Apple's nature to keep giving shit like that a pass.

The tragedy of it, and the only reason I've spent this much time writing about it, is that it seems like people are accepting that that's just the way it is. Based on the number of tweets that I've seen from Kotaku writers talking as if they don't understand why their site has such a bad reputation, I'm not 100% convinced that they even recognize why. They (and by the sound of it, you) assume that the relationship is just inherently antagonistic, because their primary motivation is to generate ad revenue and the companies' primary motivation is to generate sales. But my entire point is that for most of the people in the business, the motivation is perfectly aligned: to drum up interest in this topic both sides are enthusiastic about. (If you want to make money, there are plenty of easier ways to do it than game development or game journalism).

I never said that Apple didn't have people concerned about revenue. I even acknowledged that you don't get hundreds of billions of dollars without having people concerned about that. For all I know, there's a Keynote slide somewhere on an Apple server that directly estimates the "worth" of Chinese worker deaths per unit sold. What I'm saying is that it's simplistic to assume that the company is filled with Central Casting Cutthroat Executives straight from a 70s conspiracy movie. Here's exactly what I said: "Of course they’re always concerned about their bottom line, but I don’t believe it’s the one thing that drives every single interaction with the press."

Motivation is everything. To take it even farther afield, it's a lot like the other topic on which you and I completely disagree: Mike Daisey's role in the whole Foxconn scandal. You said that the muckraking was necessary to bring the problems to light. I say that responsible investigative journalism brought the problems to light; if anything, Daisey weakened the argument, because so many lazy people ended up saying "he's a fraud, so Apple's completely in the clear and there's nothing to worry about." And the difference, again, is that the Times's motivation was to report a story, while Daisey's was to drum up attention for himself and attendance at his performances.

And Apple responded by promising stricter auditing of its suppliers. You could say that they did that because their hand was forced due to all the bad publicity, or you could say they did it for completely altruistic reasons because they wanted to do the right thing. Or, you could be realistic and say that it was a lot of column A and a not insignificant amount of column B.

As for the idea that Apple would manage the Times if they could, look at the coverage of the Apple/Samsung trial on The Verge. The Verge got really popular really fast, but I'd still be extremely surprised if it's gotten more readers than Gizmodo. They're reporting all the details of the trial, including tons of photographs of early Apple prototypes that I'm sure the company would rather not have had to expose to the public. They've reported negative stuff about both Apple and Samsung. (It looks like Apple is winning, but I can't tell if that's because of my bias, their bias, or because Apple just has a rock solid case in the first place or else they wouldn't have risked the lawsuit in the first place). And if you believe that The Verge is playing softball, I'd point you to Daring Fireball, where you can see what pro-Apple bias really looks like. (I still like reading Gruber's stuff, but the insistence that he doesn't always find the pro-Apple spin is just absurd).

The Verge is every bit as dependent on access to press events and review units to Apple & Samsung devices as Gizmodo is. It has a good reputation, but it's hardly "too big to fail." And yet I haven't heard anything about attempts from either company to shut them down.

And then the idea that the New York Times's strict ethical policy makes them both unassailable and leads to better journalism: the New York Times' s tech columnist is David Pogue. He's the closest analogue to what The Verge & Engadget are doing; stories like the Foxconn one are rare. And Pogue's articles are generally inoffensive, but he's definitely not the one people turn to for in-depth or insightful tech reporting. A huge part of that, of course, is because his tone is as general-audience as possible, but that's not all of it. (All Things Digital at the WSJ is almost as general-audience, but they've still got a better reputation for insight and depth). The one thing Gizmodo did right is prove that tech reporting can be accessible and entertaining without devolving into an indecipherable mass of acronyms, and without explaining to readers exactly what a pixel is at the beginning of each article.

I know about the Kotaku thing, and yeah, you’re right to be pissed off; that piece was bulshit. By the same token, if those guys wrote for a legitimate news venue, they wouldn’t have been drinking on your tab to begin with. (When you say “But I didn’t pay for it,” do you mean you personally? Or was this a cash bar event where the Kotaku writers paid their own way?)
I mean that I wasn't personally offended because I wasn't paying for drinks. I know that Telltale rented the space, but I don't remember if they had an open bar. I'm assuming they did, or the Kotakuites wouldn't have gotten so fucked up. It did double as a company party for the team, but it'd be disingenuous to pretend it wasn't primarily intended to be a press event.

But as for "legitimate news venue," that's where I go back to the conclusion of my post, the bit about its being "ultimately inconsequential." There was no legitimate news taking place that evening. It wasn't an examination of workers' rights (although I feel sorry for the bartender who had to keep serving those clowns), it was simply, and transparently, selling a computer game about a dog and rabbit in a zombie night club. Frankly, I think the whole notion of anyone refusing to go to a GDC party sponsored by any company, or going and averting his eyes and acting appalled at the very notion of being offered alcohol, is patently silly.

Part of it is just simply the size of the studio. If a company like Blizzard or Valve throws a party with first access to a game, there's an implicit threat of "if you miss this event, your site will lose BIG." For a smaller studio whose releases aren't automatically assumed to be front-page news, it's just an attempt to increase awareness. And I think there's a big difference between implicitly coercing someone to write about your product favorably, and coercing them to write about your product at all. Again, I wasn't demanding a positive write-up; I was just annoyed that it was barely even mentioned.

Would you say that the parties that Sony, Microsoft, Valve, et al at shows like E3, GDC, or PAX should also be off-limits to games press? Obviously I'd have a problem with a reviewer getting a free cell phone or console at an event, and then keeping it past the review period. But drinks and bad food in a noisy bar, or being stuck in a hotel room with a bunch of other poorly-compensated journalists, doesn't seem like bribery so much as hazard pay.

Regardless, there's an enormous gulf between that and buying glowing coverage outright. That non-review of Beowulf that you linked to is just gross. But I have to say, my first thought was, "Well, yeah. It's UGO." I already said that there are always going to be offenders, and I still believe that they inevitably end up shooting themselves in the foot. There's a reason that UGO and IGN lost their credibility a while ago; it's from pulling stunts that proved where their priorities lie. It'd be a mistake to act as if there's no difference between a public acknowledgement of deviating from established review practices, and complete ethical bankruptcy.

I guess my larger point here is that the reason the Times gets respect is not because they “earned” it by not pulling bullshit scams, it’s because they have a clear policy and stick by it. […] The people who handle advertising don’t talk to the editors and vice versa, period. That’s the only way to do it. That’s not a rule against “fraternization” or saying it has to be “antagonistic,” that’s just basic journalistic ethics, the kind every respectable publication since time immemorial has had to have. It may not guarantee objective reporting (and I’m not saying an individual reporter can’t write objectively after going to a junket or whatever) but I think it makes it a great deal more likely.

Complete separation between advertising and editorial: yes, absolutely, 100%. But I believe that's the one absolute rule. Everything else — when you're talking about something as subjective as entertainment writing — is tangential.

Where it turns into "rules against fraternization" and "antagonism" is when you become more fixated on the statement of policy than on common-sense, responsible behavior on the part of the writers and management. When you impose this artificial image of objectivity onto a category of writing that is inherently subjective.

Last night I was reading a thread on NeoGAF — which is not the venue for carefully considered, nuanced opinions — titled "Who is your favorite games reviewer?" There was, predictably, just a list of names with no explanation. But there were just as many cases of "No one" or "Message boards" or "Word of mouth." And there were plenty of mentions of IGN reskinning its entire site for advertisers. And plenty of mentions that the poster would never read GameSpot again after "Gerstmanngate", even though Gerstmann & the rest of the Giant Bomb folks have already gone back to CBS and said that the management responsible for the debacle had since left the company.

That one thread kind of sums up how we've ended up with broken games journalism:
1) Plenty of magazines and sites have broken the absolute rule of separating advertising from editorial.
2) They don't get away with it. Once it comes to light, their reputations are irreparably damaged.
3) The "average gamer" distrusts game review sites and magazines, and cares more about individual writers, usually ones that agree with him.
4) If a review has a score attached, the "average gamer" will automatically scream "THIS REVIEWER IS BIAS!!!!" if it's even a fraction of a point lower than what they think it should be, or scream "fanboy" if the score is a fraction of a point higher than it should be.
5) To over-compensate for this, both readers and writers have grown more and more insistent on the idea that their writing has to be completely objective to be taken seriously.
6) Everything except the most abominable piece of crap, or the foregone-conclusion-it's-going-to-get-a-10 game ends up getting scored in the 7-9 range.
7) Reviews end up being filled with meaningless qualifier phrases like "a mixed bag," as the reviewer doesn't want to be too critical or too effusive.
8) Game reviews fail to demonstrate any genuine insight, so readers argue that the reviewer must be in the company's pocket, and stop trusting the source. GOTO 3.

Reviews like that Beowulf one are indeed gross. But I don't even consider them to be the real problem, because they're so easy to identify and dismiss.

I think this illusion of objectivity, the insistence that previews and reviews of artistic works are actual news, is the bigger problem. The reason is that it's completely counterintuitive to think that a journalist trying to be objective is a problem. When management censors a writer, it tends to come to light pretty quickly. But when a writer censors himself, it just results in mediocre writing. And on the flip side: when a writer just becomes focused more than anything else on "keepin' it real" so as to have absolutely no signs of bias, it turns into shallow, cynical writing.

That's what I meant by "enthusiasm" in relation to AICN. Again, I said there were a billion things to complain about there — my acknowledging that there's one positive aspect of it isn't an endorsement of AICN, any more than my saying up higher that Gizmodo made tech journalism entertaining and accessible means that I'm suddenly a fan of Gizmodo. And the stuff on AICN may not be well-written, but at least it comes across as sincere. (Or at least, it did years ago when I last read it).