An Airing of Grievances

So, this is a bit of a deviation from my normal posts since it is kind of serious…and it’s a bit late considering I am already done with my Journalism 1001 class–BUT I feel this need to dissect a certain portion of my textbook (from that class) anyway.  So, here we go.

Throughout my Intro to Mass Communication class, I read our textbook like a good little boy every single week.  The name of this textbook was Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication 4th Edition by Joseph Turow.  It’s a bit of a strange looking textbook considering it’s hot pink and has stuff like Avatar and the Google.com front page on the cover, but otherwise on the inside it’s a fairly standard textbook.  As with most textbooks, I assumed the information was accurate if perhaps not completely unbiased.  That’s fine.  It’s hard to get rid of biases considering the writer is a (semi-)normal person and every person has biases that are hard not to subconsciously inject into his or her writing.  It’s only natural to “writes the way they sees them.”  Whatever. Don’t care. I have no problem with it, like I said.
However.

Something I have a big problem with is having a textbook that just seems to flatly not try with what it’s writing.  What am I referring to?  The whole book?  No, the book for the most part seems fine (although maybe it’s not and my knowledge on the other areas is simply too lacking to notice).  My big problem is the portion that mentions video games.  It really does feel like like video games were thrown in there simply because he had to include them as a growing media industry, but he really doesn’t know or care about it much.

How can I conclude this?

It just seems lazy.  I mean, you know somebody isn’t trying too hard when they use Wikipedia as source in a research paper.  And guess what?  That’s exactly what Turow did.  He openly states that he used Wikipedia in the portion regarding genres in video games (covering ~2 pages in a ~36 page chapter about video games and the internet).  Is it possible that there was absolutely no research done on game genres in the past?  If so, where the heck did Wikipedia get its info?  He might as well have just done his own research.

Now, the Wikipedia thing is probably the worst offender, but there were plenty more small things that really annoyed me.  F0r instance, he calls the Xbox 360, the XBox 360. It says right on the official live.xbox.com website, “Xbox 360” everywhere–not “XBox” with a capital B.  When the B is capitalized, the whole thing is, ala “XBOX.”   Why am I not happy about this?  Would you like reading a textbook call an “iPod” an “IPod?”  Maybe, or maybe not; but that’s the closest equivalent for me.

What else does he do? Well, he lists several games that could be played on iPhone 3Gs: Need for Speed, Grand Theft Auto and Chinatown Wars.  What’s the problem? Well, sorry Mr. Turow, but Chinatown Wars?  There is no app for that.  It’s all one game.  Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.  That’s just a very silly mistake.  You wouldn’t see anybody list movies like this: Transformers, The Lord of the Rings and The Fellowship of the Ring.  That’s just silly.

Lastly, I’m going to end us with a big nitpick, but this just irks me. He was listing 3rd party publishers for video games, and listed Eidos.  Fine, not the most well-known company, but whatever.  As with other 3rd party publishers he listed, he included a game they were known for.  For THQ there was WWE Smackdown.  Alright, that’s fine, a relatively healthy franchise with regular titles, decent reviews and decent sales.  For Take II Interactive, he lists Grand Theft Auto IV. That’s very good; a very well selling game, for a huge franchise that almost all know about.  Great.  Now, when he lists Eidos, he gives an example of their games as Championship Manager 2010.  ….WHAT!? WHAT THE HECK IS THAT!? I literally have not heard of that franchise up until reading this book and I’m a huge gamer.  If Mr. Turow had looked at his beloved Wikipedia for advice, he could easily see them list major franchises as Tomb Raider (made into a movie franchise), Hitman (again, it has a movie), Commandos, Deus Ex (very well-rated game series), Legacy of Kain, Thief, TimeSplitters, and Fear Effect.  I would have probably preferred any of these to the joke that is Championship Manager 2010.  That’s like listing Nintendo with Wrecking Crew.  People don’t know that game. That’s not what the company is known for.  A movie equivalent would be like listing Disney with The Three Caballeros.  Sure, it’s a movie some people might have heard of, but it’s not a good representation of a company.

Overall, I’m just saying I’m disappointed in Mr. Turow with this chapter.  He slaps video games and the internet together in one chapter and then has so many weird problems in it that is just seems like he isn’t trying, or maybe his editor isn’t trying.  The rest of the book seems well researched (again, to my knowledge) and this section just brings the book down a huge notch for me considering how much I was looking forward to finally reading about video games in a required school textbook.

For the 5th edition, please Mr. Turow, either improve the video game section, or (as much as I hate to say it), remove the majority of it.  If you don’t have anything decent to say, perhaps you shouldn’t say it at all.

(posts should be back to their normal goofy/weird selves with my next post!)

EDIT: Oh shoot! Almost forgot one huge mistake!  He called the E 10+ rating, “E 101 (Everyone 101).”  WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!? E 10+ is simply Everyone Ages 10 and Up.  What the heck does Everyone 101 mean?  Lazy and stupid. That’s what that whole chapter is.