I'm not a "typical" college student. When keggers are "raging," I'm at my computer, hammering keystrokes into what hopefully becomes readable, cohesive, and slightly humorous sentences. When my phone buzzes, it's for work, and not pleasure. When my peers finally wrestle themselves out of bed in the morning (when did 2 p.m. become time for breakfast?), I'm already hunkered down in my chair, eyes fixed at the glow of my monitor. What is this life I lead? Why am I not filling the mold of the "college kid"? It all began when I decided I wanted to become a videogame journalist.

My name is Eddie Makuch, I'm a 20 year-old majoring in Communications and minoring in Writing at Keene State College in the quiet, beautiful little town of Keene, New Hampshire. And I take serious issue with how blogs handle newswriting.

I've interned at GameSpot in San Francisco, attended Comic-Con, PAX, E3 and other industry events, had my work sourced on Kotaku, Joystiq, and countless other blogs, sat at the gaming news editorial helm of BlastMagazine for 13 months, and am the current weekend editor at ThatVideoGameBlog.com. How I got there is a story for another day, but what is imperative is where videogame newswriting is headed, and why it can be a very slippery, ugly slope to slide down.

For as much as I adore the blog style of newswriting, as it currently stands, it is the antithesis of "journalism" (more on that hot topic later). Like any publication, a blog's main ambition is to amass eyeballs, and in turn sells those pupils to advertisers to keep the outlet financially afloat. I'm a capitalist, I know how this works, and so do you. The problem here is the way in which these blogs go about their newswriting practices.

Newswriting on blogs, as I've seen it, is all about speed, having the information before anyone else, and being able to say "we had it first!" The problem with this editorial process however, is that it diminishes the gravity and informational penetration of each story that is written. Further, how often have you seen ugly spelling, grammatical, or glaring factual errors? To conquer these literary atrocities, more time and effort is required on the behalf of the publication's writers. But these gamer scribes are lazy.

I'm a blogger, I know the feeling of the rush when I'm about to publish a story no other blog, site, or forum yet has. It's exciting. Your window of opportunity to have the "exclusive" is tiny. To get the first scoop you've got to have the sleuthing skills of Sherlock Holmes, a sharp and quick-thinking mind, and fingers likes bees on meth. Few possess these skills, and somehow they all seem to be bloggers.  When bloggers write, their eyes are fixed on the "publish" button, when these individuals should instead be more concerned with assembling the most readable, informative, and eloquent phrases.

But that's not the only problem with videogame newswriting.

Additionally, there's the fundamental debate amongst game journalists of how the term "journalism" translates to blogging. Really, how does it? There's no book on the topic, no universally accepted method on the matter. Destructoid's love-to-hate editor, Jim Sterling, cries out every day that he's "not a journalist." But if he unearths gaming news, assembles it into the less-than-300-word template that he and other bloggers so steadfastly cling to, what is he doing? He's being a journalist.

As readers, we wish to consume information in easily-digestible, bite-sized pieces. We want to read a story on the snarling litigious imbroglio surrounding Infinity Ward and Activision, and the next minute divert our eyes to a post on the next Pokemon game. This isn't a problem. The video game industry is a billion-dollar endeavor composed of thousands of companies, each wishing to communicate information every day. This informational onslaught stops for no one, and bloggers are often ostensibly affected by this assault (follow any writer on Twitter and you know what I'm talking about). That said, it's always been, since the Hartford Courant debuted in the 1700s, a journalist's job to communicate the subject material in a way that's easy for the reader. It's a writer's tasks to exert minimal pressure on the reader to comprehend the story at hand. From headline, to body, to conclusion, the reader should simply read line after line and get smarter with each passing phrase. However, blogs often don't let this happen.

I'm not decrying the blogosphere. It's clearly where gaming journalism is headed, if it's not already there. I'm of the blogging breed, and I love my job to death (though my girlfriend would have something to say about what I do all day). I would love someday for my commute to be from the bed to the desk, and eat steak while I write about games. But if I am to embrace this profession, I want the writing community to shape up, take more responsibility for, and pride in, their work. Is that too much to ask?