On the New Journalism

Tenkar has a post recently about EnWorld (RIP), and how it has gradually degenerated from a useful news-source in the 3.0 release era into an advertising-delivery vehicle.  Unfortunately, I'm having issues commenting on blogs, but my unposted response was effectively "welcome to journalism in the internet era!"  News is advertising is news.  Somebody has to pay to produce it, and there's no money in subscriptions anymore.

But then I got to thinking...  EnWorld is already Old Media.  Its integration of advertising is ham-handed, in much the same way that rpgnow's featured reviewers are.  Internet forums?  Very 2001.  There's room in the market for a more 2016 RPG newsvertising site, after the buzzfeed model.  Here are some sample headlines that I wrote instead of sleeping:

• Eleven reasons you drive your DM to drink
• Five pictures that explain why Dark Sun was the best goddamn RPG setting every published
• The seven dumbest monsters in the Monster Manual V will leave you wondering what the author was thinking
• Six amazing games and why your group will never play them
• Five terrible fantasy novels that we all love anyway
• The nine most underrated magic items in the DMG, and why they're actually awesome
• Six terrible OGL splatbooks that you might remember nostalgically
• Six phases every new player goes through, in Conan the Barbarian gifs
• Top ten D&D villains of all time
• These seven derpy dragons will make you chuckle
• The six types of weird people at gaming cons, and how to survive dealing with them
• The five worst Forgotten Realms NPCs and why everyone hates them
• Six heavy metal albums you should base your next campaign on 
• These five cats just want to play too
• Eight ways you know you're an old-school gamer

I could keep going.  This shit writes itself.  I already have pictures of cats and pictures of dragons on the agenda; all you need now are reaction buttons and gifs from Game of Thrones, and it'd be a hit with "the Millenials."  Even if it weren't a commercial success, it'd be pretty funny to write.