Journalist Job

[Cogwerks]

I think I'll put in a rough little Information Office in arrivals tonight and see how people use it, if they do.

[Tteckk]

You get all the news you want on the headset, by the time you start shouting "New just in" it would be considered old.

[Embolism]

I think it is more for the benefit of people who 1. weren't paying attention, 2. were temporarily braindead or 3. joined late.

The problem is I doubt anyone would do this 99% of the time unless there is some incentive, and even if there were there is absolutely no guarantee people would actually report anything instead of just writing gibberish to get said incentive.

[Readster]

I think it is more for the benefit of people who 1. weren't paying attention, 2. were temporarily braindead or 3. joined late.

The problem is I doubt anyone would do this 99% of the time unless there is some incentive, and even if there were there is absolutely no guarantee people would actually report anything instead of just writing gibberish to get said incentive.

No other job needs an incentive to make you do it. People do most jobs for the sake of doing them, or because they enjoy doing them.

[atomic1fire]

I just think a journalist role could be funny if done just right. e.g Teen Xangacast/Pubbie Comedy hour/Angry guy complains about politics/boring public service announcement guy/etc

[Embolism]

No other job needs an incentive to make you do it. People do most jobs for the sake of doing them, or because they enjoy doing them.

There usually is some kind of incentive. Scentists get all sorts of whacky stuff from their fiddling, as do Geneticists and Roboticists and Botanists and, well, you get the idea.

I did try my hand at journalism though and yeah, it can be fun even without tangible incentives. Using the current system however it is very cumbersome...

For starters, there needs to be a better in-game text editor if journalism is to work. Writing stuff down on paper is fine, but you can't edit them and adding to them is a crude process. Mass production and distribution is also a challenge.

I would suggest a computer-based text editor that allows you to save articles for anyone to browse via computers/e-mails/PDAs and also allows you to print out multiple hard copies, or perhaps allow newspaper vending machines to print them out on demand. Editing existing articles will immediately update online sources and future newspaper printings.

The ability to add photos to articles is also necessary. Perhaps there could be a scanner that allows you to scan photos as files, which you can then insert into the text editor to show/print a photo at the point of insert. Another thing that might be useful would be the ability to take photos through security cameras.

Fun idea: a remotely controlled spy drone. It should only have Assistant-level access (to prevent abuse) but maybe could have the ability to transverse the disposals network. Comes with a camera and audio recorder and can hide under tables and such like a monkey.

[Cogwerks]

You get all the news you want on the headset, by the time you start shouting "New just in" it would be considered old.

Newsy/narrative gimmicks are fun for the people who enjoy doing them.

[Embolism]

You get all the news you want on the headset, by the time you start shouting "New just in" it would be considered old.

Newsy/narrative gimmicks are fun for the people who enjoy doing them.

I've done it for two rounds now and it is quite fun for me, but also quite restrictive: the most you could really do is use the office as a newsboard of sorts, you can't really distribute your articles around the station. And a way to incorporate photos into articles is definitely needed.

I do find however that there's usually so much going it's all you can do to write articles as you hear the news over the radio, much less doing any real journalism work. Of course, if the process of news reporting and distribution was made easier and possibly mobile... the spy drone concept I mentioned might work well to facilitate this.

[Cogwerks]

Why not use the portable security camera viewer? I don't think anyone's gonna code a spy drone for this.
The way I'm looking at this is that it's fun to see people going around doing interviews and narrating things that are happening, but almost nobody is ever going to bother reading or buying paper articles that you've made. I think it probably works better as a radio news thing.

Backend work on scanners and printers should be done eventually, I guess, but I'm still not really seeing this as ever being an official job. Things like persistent articles between rounds would be a lot tougher.

I would however like to eventually set up a way for some of the articles to get logged for possible inclusion into the station email database.

[Embolism]

Well, the rounds I wrote articles in people did read them, and I'd like to think it was helpful for late joiners to get up to speed with station happenings.

I think making it radio only or emails or whatever makes the whole thing pointless, as in my mind the persistence of news articles is important as it allows it to benefit late joiners and others who are genuinely interested in what has been going on.

I didn't know there was a portable security camera viewer, I thought that was just the helmet cam/buddy viewer; but even so it wouldn't be helpful because 1. security camera viewers are very clunky, if you could switch cameras like the AI it would be much more useful, and 2. the reason why you're restricted to the office is because it's the only/best place to lay out newspaper for people to read.

I guess it's the way I approach things. I don't play it so much as a journalist doing interviews and spending lots of time on a particular event (which given the frequency of events on the station means you'll miss most of them), I usually write a few paragraphs (with added sensationalism and questionable facts) about something, give it a catchy title and lay it out on the table for passerbys to read. Hence my desire is to see journalism stuff focused within the office.

[Cogwerks]

I'll look into some of the printer stuff later tonight.

[Marquesas]

I think it is more for the benefit of people who 1. weren't paying attention, 2. were temporarily braindead or 3. joined late.

The problem is I doubt anyone would do this 99% of the time unless there is some incentive, and even if there were there is absolutely no guarantee people would actually report anything instead of just writing gibberish to get said incentive.

yes because everyone ever that goes chaplain starts a cool religion and doesn't just run around making people fart on the bible and hope to get an artbox as traitor.

there is nothing wrong with introducing gimmick jobs because every once in a while someone really makes it fun

[Readster]

Having the news articles from the previous round be available for the next round only would be a pretty sweet way for people to just read up on what happened, even if it would be an utter pain to do.

[mozi]

a quality of spaceman life suggestion--
could the font color of intercom messages be tweaked a bit to stand out from regular radio chatter? A slightly darker/lighter shade of green would make them more noticeable and thus more useful.

this applies to all the job specific intercoms whose messages typically get lost in the general nonsense, but right now the info desk in particular seems to rely on yammering over an intercom as well.

here are some other suggestions (everyone loves suggestions right):

• a time stamp thingy, use it on a piece of paper and it says "This paper was stamped at [9:00 AM + round time].
  
• a generic "news@nt13" email address that goes to the computer in the IT booth
  
• holographic projector? a little pad and you press a switch and a corresponding blue tinted version of you appears on pads in some public areas (bar, medbay, crewquarters, courtroom). if you talk while it's on & you're standing on the pad your holographic version will talk too, wow! probably a butt to code but would be funny to see people constantly fighting over use of the projector pad

[mozi]

people are having fun with this & its making clarks angry, seems like a 100% success to me