NYT Circuits: Soon to be disconnected?
According to the NY Post, the NYT is planning to eliminate the Thursday Circuits section and replace it with new section focusing on shopping, fashion and fitness.
While the NYT's Thursday Circuits section has long been an awkward child in appearance and tone, it was a section I actually made a point to read. It wasn't as haughty as the Tuesday Science section (yeah, 45 column inches on something about quasars...Yo Dog,! I'm so on that crazy mad particle physics!) but it did, on rare occation, have some good pieces (I frequently liked the last page of the section where they often had large scale diagrams explaining various aspects of new-ish consumer technology). However, other times you picked up and wondered if they were based in some abandoned missile silo in North Dakota that only got a UPS shipment of items to review every six months….Last year, a big piece on how great this new development called USB was particularly painful to read.
However, I must admit that I loved reading the video game reviews. They were frequently just so clueless to be amusing along with the overall bemusing thought of the Gray Lady spilling ink on zombie games. I somehow suspect that some general staff meeting, an editor asked “Hey, do any of you play video games?” and one writer poked up his hand and one of the editors said “Great, you’re our new video game reviewer in Circuits.” While the reviews were frequently quite earnest and it is pretty amazing that NYT actually had a half page just for video game reviews, the actual output, in my opinion, was fairly lame. The reviewer would review several games (often of vastly different types) in a single piece, often trying to make connections that were weak or fairly tenuous such as here. And while it was nice to read reviews done by an actual adult and written for adults in mind, I found that reviews were often a bit simplistic or that were wrong when it came to certain technical aspects. I was also annoyed when a reviewer gushed about the "innovative" controls on Katamari Damacy when the same two stick control method has been in use since Atari’s coin op tank games from the late 70’s and almost every tank game coin op since then.
However, it is possible that the reviewer might just be moved to Circuits rumored replacement, a very TWP Sunday Source sounding section focusing on shopping, fashion and fitness…which I find some what amusing, since the TWP’s Sunday Source is the only newspaper section that seems to have more promo ad space (ie, ad space not sold) than the NYT’s Circuits section.
While the NYT's Thursday Circuits section has long been an awkward child in appearance and tone, it was a section I actually made a point to read. It wasn't as haughty as the Tuesday Science section (yeah, 45 column inches on something about quasars...Yo Dog,! I'm so on that crazy mad particle physics!) but it did, on rare occation, have some good pieces (I frequently liked the last page of the section where they often had large scale diagrams explaining various aspects of new-ish consumer technology). However, other times you picked up and wondered if they were based in some abandoned missile silo in North Dakota that only got a UPS shipment of items to review every six months….Last year, a big piece on how great this new development called USB was particularly painful to read.
However, I must admit that I loved reading the video game reviews. They were frequently just so clueless to be amusing along with the overall bemusing thought of the Gray Lady spilling ink on zombie games. I somehow suspect that some general staff meeting, an editor asked “Hey, do any of you play video games?” and one writer poked up his hand and one of the editors said “Great, you’re our new video game reviewer in Circuits.” While the reviews were frequently quite earnest and it is pretty amazing that NYT actually had a half page just for video game reviews, the actual output, in my opinion, was fairly lame. The reviewer would review several games (often of vastly different types) in a single piece, often trying to make connections that were weak or fairly tenuous such as here. And while it was nice to read reviews done by an actual adult and written for adults in mind, I found that reviews were often a bit simplistic or that were wrong when it came to certain technical aspects. I was also annoyed when a reviewer gushed about the "innovative" controls on Katamari Damacy when the same two stick control method has been in use since Atari’s coin op tank games from the late 70’s and almost every tank game coin op since then.
However, it is possible that the reviewer might just be moved to Circuits rumored replacement, a very TWP Sunday Source sounding section focusing on shopping, fashion and fitness…which I find some what amusing, since the TWP’s Sunday Source is the only newspaper section that seems to have more promo ad space (ie, ad space not sold) than the NYT’s Circuits section.
posted by O.G. at 12:36 PM
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