Reuters Second Life Bureau Officially Closed

"We're still reporting on Second Life, but only as part of our usual tech and media coverage," a Reuters spokesperson told The Register. It's been some time since Adam Pasick reported as Adam Reuters, though Eric Krangel had since taken over as the lead writer. Even so, the last story filed by Krangel for the bureau came at the end of September, before he left to join Silicon Alley Insider. Reuters be maintaining its corporate presence in Second Life, says the spokesperson, but ceasing to report on the daily happenings.

Writing at SAI, Krangel offers his own thoughts on what's wrong with Second Life and how Linden Lab can fix those problems: "The very things that most appeal to Second Life's hardcore enthusiasts are either boring or creepy for most people: Spending hundreds of hours of effort to make insignificant amounts of money selling virtual clothes, experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers from around the world, or having pseudo-nonymous sex (and let's not kid ourselves, sex is a huge draw into Second Life). As part of walking my "beat," I'd get invited by sources to virtual nightclubs, where I'd right-click the dancefloor to send my avatar gyrating as I sat at home at my computer. It was about as fun as watching paint dry."

Comments

[Dusan Writer]

I'd love to hear why you connect the closing of Reuters with Eric's article - what's the connection?

The article by Eric doesn't explain why Reuters left, it merely explains that he found it boring. Are you saying that Eric finding SL boring is why Reuter's pulled out?

Eric doesn't give reasons - he gives a "stating the obvious" list of things that would improve SL. His ennui, boredom - whatever it was, if that's connected to why Reuters pulled out, maybe they should have found someone for the position who didn't have to grit his teeth (by the sounds of it) to log in.

I followed the Reuters feed since Eric's arrival and it reported, um, not much. It was sporadic and superficial.

With other blogs like Wagner Au at New World Notes, Reuters wasn't offering anything to the community that they couldn't find, more frequently, and at greater depth, and you guys were scooping them on things of interest to the wider world.

Sorry. I frankly found it offensive that a so-called journalist would spout off like Eric did. It's kind of like someone covering the White House and then getting yanked out because they don't report anything interesting and then saying "Well, the damn press secretary was obnoxious, I hated the President anyways, politics is for losers, and there was nothing interesting to report."

Hopefully Eric will find something more intriguing to do.

In the meantime, his article arrived at the same time as an interview with Mark Kingdon which gives a slightly different take on what's working, what's not, and what's next:

http://tinyurl.com/5wjrtb

In any case,

[Joey Seiler]

Thanks for the thoughts, Dusan. And nice interview.

As for the connections, I put Eric's article together with Reuters' bureau closing because his headline is "Exclusive: Why Reuters Left Second Life, And How Linden Lab Can Fix It."

[Dusan Writer]

Thanks Joey. I didn't mean to sound like it was your column I was criticizing but rather theirs - they promised to answer why Reuters left, they didn't, other than to demonstrate that the guy who was supposed to be uncovering useful stories didn't like it.

[IntLibber Brautigan]

I have to say that I found the rate of publication at secondlife.reuters.com to be pretty low. I can't help thinking that Eric's been doing other stuff to keep busy most of the time, or else the editors at Reuters were nixing most of his work most of the time.