The Hostile Takeover of a Microsoft Flight Simulator Server | WIRED

Interesting article. 

That's one of the worst articles I've ever seen, and maybe even the worst from someone claiming to have been a professional journalist. The author needs to go back to journo school big time and so does the sub-editor, if there even was a sub-editor, which I seriously doubt.

Seriously people, don't click on that link; it'll be five minutes of your life wasted reading some atrociously inept babbling concerning a few people squabbling on a multiplayer server, topped by a misleading headline to make you think it was about something bigger. I'm pretty sure I could actually feel my I.Q. dropping a few points as I read it.

Conceptually, writing articles its pretty simple, but as evidenced by that garbage, we can quite clearly see not everyone can do it. Articles start with a leader; an opening paragraph which is short and to the point, which you then expand on. So: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? then you commence the article in detail, for example:

There was a storm in the ether over xxx town last week, as flight simulator pilots thrashed out who exactly owns the rights to their virtual airspace. But the bizarre battle in their virtual world has now spilled over into the real one.

That's how you open an article on a subject like this. One paragraph, two sentences, covering the basis of the story and inviting you to find out more about what exactly went on.

Not this guy though, we're ten paragraphs in and have scrolled the entire page twice before we even get to the actual topic of the article as he rambles on about irrelevant details and long-winded explanations about trivial minutia. It was absolutely painful, and this guy allegedly wrote for Newsweek. I bet I know how that one went, he wrote for it once as an on-spec freelancer, the editor saw what he submitted, got someone on the staff who wasn't useless to sub it down to one paragraph, which they used as a filler on page 27, and then they never employed that guy ever again. But technically three words of his gibberish survived the edit and went to print, and so he can claim he wrote for the paper.

Edited June 1, 20215 yr by Chock