Investigative journalism

[Reverend]

I'm curious about what a "reviewer" like myself or Anand or Tom or Kyle should be doing.

As I see it, all the reviews (web-based or print) of the latest-and-greatest hardware (3D or CPU or etc) are nothing more than what these independent hardware vendors (NVIDIA, ATI, Matrox, 3Dlabs/Creative, Trident. Intel, AMD, etc. etc) "feed" these folks, save for actual benchmarks.

I do understand a few factors governing such a "scenario" are :

1) Time factor
These websites/print mags are given a "dateline" to reveal what they are briefed on/given. "One-up-manship" and "being-on-time-with-the-rest" are crucial ingredients to the only success that counts (more hits, more mags sold). There may not be enough time to "study" what is "fed" to these websites/mags in order to be "successful".

2) Lack of resources
This means websites/mags do not have the personnel to "prove" (or dis-prove) what is "fed" to them. I don't think neither Anand, Tom nor Kyle (and even myself, as examples) knows how to program (well, I do know how to program but I am just simply out-of-touch as it is), nor do they have the staff that knows how to program. They vannot verify what is "fed" to them. In essence, all their latest-and-greatest p/reviews are really nothing more than "PR material".... yes?

So... what you read on such websites/mags are essentially what is "fed" to them. They repeat what these IHVs "tell" them. It comes out as a p/review. "On time", as it is.

The problem, however, is whether it is necessary to preface every sentence or paragraph with "XXX IHV tells us that..." instead of "The R300 (just as an example) does-this-and-that", with the latter coming out sounding like as though the website's/mag's author actually knows what he's talking about.

Example : Matrox's "FAA" technique. All the reports thus far... are they based on "investigation"? Or what Matrox tells them?

Why this topic? The reason is obvious. I received flak for my CineFX article at VE. Some of the criticism relates to basically a lack of "journalism" on my part.

I'm asking if every latest-and-greatest p/review you read is a matter of " being fed" or actual "investigative journalism".

NOTE : If a website or mag actually says "This IHV told us that..." instead of what you see (i.e. like as though the author of a particular article/review/etc knows whatever-it-is-they-mention as *first-hand* knowledge) in every situation where things are stated to appear as "fact", this topic would not be here.

You want "journalism"? This topic is where you get to state what you think is "journalism". And what a "p/review" is.

Mods, please excuse me if this should be in another forum.

 

[demalion]

As I've mentioned to you, I think two issues were confused in that criticism. For the actual article, I think your handling of the information presented was well done. I do object on principle to the nature of such hand fed articles, but ignoring that for the moment: if you are going to be fed such information your article was an excellent way of handling it...just look at Anand's article for a rather striking contrast. There were details lacking and information that wasn't clear, but that wasn't a fault of the way you handled it, just a fault of a lack of information you had (IMO).

 

[Hyp-X]

I think there are 3 things I'm interested in a GPU / Graphic Card:

1. While the card is unavailable, I'm interested in everything that can be known about the chip/card. The more official the information is the best.
I would like that article if I read this info there first. I'm sure there are quite some people who did.

2. When the card is available, the first thing I wan't to know everything that can be tested fast (information hungryness). So I read Anand even if he isn't testing in high-quality because they present part of the picture, and they do it fast.

3. Later on I'd be interested in in-depth reviews of the card, dissecting every feature as much as possible. Like this article did with T&L.

If you by mean investigative jurnalism to do something illegal, (like get insider people break their NDAs), while I would be interested in the information, I don't really want this to happen.
Especially since the unability to verify the information would put it in the rumors category anyway.
And sometimes insider info is no more reliable as any other.

 

[Kristof]

The question IMHO is about "added value" did you create added value over the marketing information you were given. Adding value can be done in many ways, doing a better job explaining the technology, adding comments, comparing with what a competitors says/supports, adding benchmarks, explaining a feature in depth, doing a good interview, etc etc.

Deadlines and resources are nice excuses to hide behind but in the end "added value" is going to change your article from blind marketing dribble into something good.

So the question you have to ask yourself about your Cg article is : did I add something new, did I add value compared to all the other articles already done about Cg. Your article was not the first, you missed the deadline and I doubt NVIDIA told you you HAD to have material online within X days, maybe VoodooExtreme put up a demand like that. Did you ask the right questions during the interview etc...

More time means more potential for added value... however more time and in-depth analysis can also go horribly wrong if the writer does not have the skills, worse even if he thinks he has the skills but actually ends up writing rubbish... So its all a bit tricky really But thats where follow-up articles come in.

K-

 

[ram]

Some print magazines would have the ressources (money, equipment, people) to do very cool stuff, but they either target a very wide readership (normaly this means no hard core technology articles and such) or simply limit the size of the articles so that you can't go too much in depth.

Online magazines would have virtualy unlimited room for illustrations, benchmarks and explanations and especialy no press deadline, but most online magazines lack the ressources (low-/unpaid editors, not enough qualified editors, bad or no equimpent (how many online magazines do signal quality [VGA/TV-Out] testing or power requirement messurements or compare benchmarks to a wide variety of cards?) to do realy cool stuff. Writing HQ articles eats up a lot of time, so the few sites doing these only manage to release at max 2 or 3 of these a year, not enough to keep up with the fast rate of new technologies/products out there.

ExtremeTech is a good start to combine the strenghts of both worlds IMO.

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

There is huge pressure when doing reviews in a "different" way when it comes to print publication. The problem is the public *expects* to see standard ways of review/preview. IE. 3DMark and Quake3 graphs. If you do endeveour to something creative, like IQ orientated testing, they will not natually except it and may not feel at easy reading it, hence you may loose readership. Granted, you may also gain a few admirers but that is the minority.

 

[LeStoffer]

1. While the card is unavailable, I'm interested in everything that can be known about the chip/card. The more official the information is the best.

2. When the card is available, the first thing I wan't to know everything that can be tested fast (information hungryness). So I read Anand even if he isn't testing in high-quality because they present part of the picture, and they do it fast.

3. Later on I'd be interested in in-depth reviews of the card, dissecting every feature as much as possible.

I'll second that.

Regarding #1: I think that it is crucial that the previewer states clearly when the info is official and when we're talking about an educated guess or an hint. (So Rev, in you CineFX preview you should have stated clearly what ATI have said about the R300).

Regarding #2: I don't care if reviewers like Anand just toss up some quick benchmarks to get a general idea about the performance out the door.

Regarding #3: This is were we're sorely lacking right now. The in-depth review should make it clear to the consumer what the strenghts and weaknesses of the card/chip is. Then people can decide for themselves what they need. This is were beyond3d has a niche market IMO.

 

[Andergum]

What a tough job it must be to try to write an investigative article where all the information you receive is hand fed from the very people who have the most interest in skewing the article to their favor. Add to that the fact that most if not all of the information is treated as top secret.

I guess the best you can do is:
try to remain unbiased
try to get as much information as possible, from several sources (if possible)
state where and whom the information is coming from
try to get information from "the other side" in adversarial situations

That said, I think you did an excellent article on CineFx.

Don't let a few POM POM wavers bother you.

 

[tamattack]

Since you asked, my two cents:

Cut through the marketing/PR bullsh*t to bring (relatively) unbiased analysis and conclusions which are meaningful and relevant to the intended readership.

A good example is Tech-Reports article on NV30/R300.

 

[Doomtrooper]

*amen*

 

[Matt Burris]

If you ask me, what we do is a bastardized version of "journalism". Whereas, it's not as indepth and critical as something that you'd seen on, say CNN or FoxNews. It's also not something that can relate to newspaper journalism, or even magazine journalism where a paid staff resides in an office and work together as a team.

For the GPU/graphics card crowd, journalism to me is to provide information to the targetted consumer, in this case gamers. What are gamers interested in mostly? PC gaming, of course. What we do, in the case of "journalism", is play lots of games, and provide our experience and opinions on how it plays, how it looks, and if the product is worth the money. Does this mean any gamer can instantly become a "journalist"? Not necessarily, I would say someone who has a broad interest in gaming, and one that has been around for a long time doing it, qualifies as a good journalist.

The IHV's provide us the PR speak, which is basically the underlying technology, which most gamers aren't interested in. The ones that are interested in the underlying technology, the code, and how it works, usually go to EE sites, or this site.

That's just my 2 cents on the matter.

 

[RussSchultz]

I thought that interview/conference call article did a reasonably good job of that. He pointed out the pieces about the R300 presented by NVIDIA that he felt were incorrect based on information he had.

I even re-read the article, just to make sure it wasn't full of PR fluff or whacked out bias, and ya know what? I don't think it was.

The rest of it, excepting a few bits in the conclusion, were facts as presented by NVIDIA, detailing instructions available, data formats, etc.. Hard numbers, essentially and mostly absent of marketting fluff.

For my two cents, perhaps getting more of an official side by side would be useful (or a side by side by side) to really show who's got what and who doesn't. Of course, it might be that nobody except the winner wants that, as it won't show their product as best (even though some of the items are pretty damn useless).

 

[Joe DeFuria]

What a tough job it must be to try to write an investigative article where all the information you receive is hand fed from the very people who have the most interest in skewing the article to their favor.

I agree completely.

Since I was one of the people who gave rev some "flak", it's only fair that I respond here.

Just to be clear, I repeat, the article was worth the read, and Rev did a better job than most at putting in a PR "filter". (By questioning "Nvidia's view" of R-300 capabilities.)

Which brings me to the main point: to "add value" to some PR presentation and post an article on it, some "translation" of PR to "real-world" is desired. The particular issue I had with this article stems from the fact that this was the the "worst" kind of PR to start with...by "worst" kind of PR, I mean this PR contained comparisons to some competitor's product. Such PR is almost always misleading, doesn't tell the whole story, and ends up leaving more questions unanswered.

This kind of PR requires the most "research" to translate meanigfully.

For me, a "valuable" article based on such PR would include the following at a minimum:

1) Verification from the competitor IHV about the claimed "deficiency" of their hardware.

2) What advantage, to the target audience does the difference mean in the "real world". (Not just PR claims, but some input from other sources, or at least the Author's own thoughts).

It would also be valuable to have the competitor's views about their "deficiency", but that would go beyond what's really needed, and would be just more PR to translate.

 

[LittlePenny]

Anyone can read numbers, and IHV fans can make their own comparisons. I am only interested in functionality. What can these features do for developers?

 

[Doomtrooper]

My only complaint is why there is only one IHV interviewed constantly at Voodooextreme...I also see the VE3D members are becoming more aware of the 'workings of the business' by looking at the comments.

I recently finished a mechanical packaging solution for one of our products and worked with our marketing people..we are very large company and compete in the top 10 companies in the world under constant pressure..I saw how it works with the PR..don't have anything to compete with their product release lots of PR to downplay the competitor.

This article is only telling one side of the coin and like Joe stated one IHV is talking 'smack' about the other product (the worse kind of PR) and there was no one there to refute or defend these accusations from the other IHV.

It was just another advertising campaign IMO...I'd much rather see a Tech Report style article...and so would gamers.

 

[Reverend]

So I assume it is alright then for any website to present a preview of a next-gen hardware using the NDA'd materials given to them (probably) prior to receiving the hardware (i.e. which is the current case with all such next-gen previews anyway)? Instead of a scenario such as :

"ATI says that the R300 supports <insert bullet list of features>. In our own testing, using the specific programs we have, we can confirm that all these features are indeed supported."

?

I'm sure tha latter is preferred but I assume you guys are happy with the first (and existing) case. Correct?

Note : ATI/R300 is just an example. Don't go ballistic about my using them as an example.

 

[Reverend]

This article is only telling one side of the coin and like Joe stated one IHV is talking 'smack' about the other product (the worse kind of PR) and there was no one there to refute or defend these accusations from the other IHV.

Re "no one to refute".

I refuted certain stuff presented by NVIDIA. Or didn't you read the article?

 

[GetStuff]

Anyone can read numbers, and IHV fans can make their own comparisons. I am only interested in functionality. What can these features do for developers?

Good point. It would be nice for some devs to comment on CineFX's featureset (vs R300) as far as what it can possibly do for games.

Something like that would have rounded out Rev's article nicely, but maybee NVIDIA has certain guidelines (When they provide the material) for what you can do with your articles?

 

[LeStoffer]

So I assume it is alright then for any website to present a preview of a next-gen hardware using the NDA'd materials given to them (probably) prior to receiving the hardware (i.e. which is the current case with all such next-gen previews anyway)? Instead of a scenario such as :

"ATI says that the R300 supports <insert bullet list of features>. In our own testing, using the specific programs we have, we can confirm that all these features are indeed supported."

?

I'm sure tha latter is preferred but I assume you guys are happy with the first (and existing) case. Correct?

Correct. You don't have the time to do the latter approach most of the time, and people should be intelligent enough to understand that paper is not hardware (so to speak) since you don't even have a benchmark to show.

It is a given that someone will always do the paper-launch ASAP, and the first official statements about a new chip is really the first and only way to know which of the rumors that are correct and which that are not.

 

[Qroach]

Rev,

Obviously he didn't read it. it was pretty clear that you sought explanations from someone at ATI to make sure you weren't spreading wrong/incorrect info. I personally thought that was the right thing to do.