The Road Not Taken (...and where my road has led)

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Where I've been spending quite a bit of time since June. Photo by Doug Bonham

Life throws a lot of curveballs. If I've learned anything in the last year, it's a confirmation that sometimes things don't go to plan, but still work out in the end.

The last post on this site is from April, right after I moved home from an attempt to start something in Boulder, Colorado. In the time since then, I've weighed graduate school options, been accepted into a program to try a whole different direction, made some wonderful friends, re-connected with friends and family in Portland, and generally lived the life.

Since the summer, I've been working on starting up as a member of the new cohort for Portland State's Masters of International Management program. It's a graduate business program, like an MBA, but also focused on Pacific Rim economies — China, Japan, South Korea. It's also a program with a lot of international students; along with a lot of students from the United States, there are Chinese, Taiwanese, and Thai students.

Working first through pre-requisite classes, and since September the first term proper, has been an interesting, eye-opening experience. I never thought I would take to business as easily; I never thought aspects of things like accounting would prove as interesting.

As well, since the spring I've been working along with friends from the University of Oregon journalism school on a video game-themed web site. Myself, Nick Cummings, Aaron Thayer, Tyler Martin and others have joined to work on SiliconSasquatch.com. We've been writing, recording podcasts, and trying to create good, relevant content on a regular basis. Since finding a career in journalism is hard enough work right now, we've decided to strike out on our own and, hey, even if it doesn't lead anywhere, at least we're having fun.

That is really what life has been about these last few months. Studying, learning, making new connections, strengthening older ones, and taking the road less traveled by.

Is print dying?

Why yes, I'm a big enough journalism nerd that I took a photo of the building occupied by both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News while wandering around downtown in November.

"____ is Dead." Whether that's rock and roll, or CDs, or the American auto industry, or anything else...there's a lot of proclamations of death out there.

That print media - from newspapers to magazines, back again - is included on this hypothetical Grim Reaper's list is, frankly, saddening to me. Of course this is because I'm the type of person who does pick up magazines, enjoys the feel of glossy paper, loves flipping through a big Sunday newspaper, and has studied both newspaper and magazine design. So, yes, I have a vested interest.

And, scarier still, the death knell has been ringing out in the newspaper business. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer could close down very soon (in fact, one of the ways it might stay open is by becoming online-only), and the downtown Denver-based Rocky Mountain News is for sale, just short of the paper's 150th anniversary. Newspapers in California and Detroit are also not quite doing so well. It's very likely a major metropolitan area newspaper could close this year, and if debtors come calling on the ownership group of the Denver Post, then a major city could be without newspapers.

Why? Well, it boils down to simply, why buy something that's free? In an effort to diversify online and meet the demands of 21st century media consumers, newspapers and journalists are often putting more on their sites than in the paper. Print advertising is shrinking; therefore, smaller papers, lower circulations, etc. in a downward-circling spiral. Online is the new way to go.

But this doesn't mean the printed word will die out. Arguably man's greatest invention (the printing press) will still be required. Why not? Well, look at the coexistence of radio, television, movies, the Internet, and all other forms of multimedia. When television broke big in the 1950s, it was supposed to herald the end of radio; sure, it's not as popular as before, but the radio business hasn't died. Same with television and the Internet - just because the latter exists (and can, ahem, become the other one some places online).


The future is now - digitally-delivered newspapers and magazines, like Sporting News Today, are the evolution of journalism

As well, a likely next step will be magazines and newspapers delivered digitally to your inbox. It makes sense - most newspapers and magazines use publishing software that can publish a .pdf file simply and easily, and in that case, why not deliver the same goods without the hassle of printing up a few thousand issues? I receive a sports newspaper in my inbox each morning, Sporting News' "Today" (pictured above) which weighs in at 30-plus broadsheet pages an issue. You follow the link and go through their reader, which allows you to click and zoom in on articles.

GP Week, a weekly magazine launched last year that follows Formula 1, World Rally and MotoGP racing, works the same way. So does Winding Road, and I'm sure many others. Other sites - like gaming site The Escapist and 1up.com's "Cover Stories" - also act more like print pieces, but without being .pdf files or using online readers.

But that's significant - all of those pieces of media are nodding back to the tenets of print layout and design.

Things look grim - but, this is also why I say that print will never die. At least, not fully. Just as parents live on in their children and individuals and events live on in recorded history, the lineage and heritage of print media will live on - whether or not it uses ink and paper.

End of a dream

It's been almost a week, and, yes, Electronic Gaming Monthly is still dead.


This won't be showing up in my mailbox anymore. I still can't believe it

On the surface of it, one of (if not the) longest-running magazines in a nascent industry has succumbed to a combination of the terrible economy and "the death of print media." It's a problem that's only exasperated by the fact that, by and large, the tech industries - including video games - have news that happens so fast, printed media is falling behind simply because the tech-happy userbase is getting information online.

That's just the surface, and what anybody outside the industry would see. To the diehard fans of the medium and enthusiasts who follow news online, possibly subscribed to EGM, and are crazy and invested enough to know and care about the people writing about the industry, though, this is a huge blow.

(Okay, that's me. But I'm not the only one)

EGM attracted a huge following for very good reason: It was regularly the best-written piece of media, online or off, about video games. Period, the end. Between EGM proper and its (surviving) online outlet, 1up.com, I had all the steady video game news, views, and discussion I could really handle.

Beyond even that, the death of EGM represents, to me, the death of a dream. That magazine wasn't the first I ever read or read regularly; that honor belongs to the three different car magazines (Car and Driver, Road & Track, and Automobile) my dad used to get. And EGM didn't get me into writing - I'm sure my parents can confirm I wrote, a lot, before I'd even picked up a single copy of the magazine. But it was subscribing to EGM that coincided with becoming "hardcore" about gaming, and - a few years later - realizing that journalism might be what I wanted to do.

My subscription began in 1999 (after picking up a few copies here and there in the summer of 1998), right at the beginning of the year. That was a great time for the magazine - issues that winter swelled to over 300 pages (astonishing for a magazine!), and former editor John Davison has called that a great time for the mag.

And as it looked more and more like writing would become a passion and possibly a career, EGM became a quietly-whispered target. I don't want to hole myself in for fear of ignoring any future possibilities, but it sounded like so much fun - writing about something I love? What a wonderful combination.

That dream is now dead. Oh, sure, there's still gaming journalism, but 1up.com as it was before this past Tuesday was a very special place. I've met many of the writers and editors (including both those who were laid off and who stayed on) and, after reading their work and listening to their podcasts for years, you got the sense of passion, that there was no bullshit, and that they loved doing what they did.

So it's not just the shuttering of a magazine, leaving the January 2009 issue that now heads my magazine stack as the final issue printed; it's the end of a dream. I know those writers, editors, and designers who lost their jobs will find work again; that's not in doubt. I know I might end up joining that industry at some point too. But the mighty magazine that played a part in inspiring me is now gone, and it still hurts.