Item Type question: how would you categorize this site?

whuber

Hello,

Much of my work involves the study of the game industry. Gamasutra is a digital-only, free publication which is the de facto leading trade publication in the sector.

They host an open blog platform, but also have news and features by staff writers and guest authors, including some which one might describe as research-adjacent. How would you classify the various contributions? While I understand that many of these item types are awkward fits for various modes of online writing, I am curious as to how others use Zotero for this. How does one distinguish between blog, newspaper article, magazine article, and generic web page for online writing?

bwiernik

Blog or magazine article would probably work well for citation purposes.

adamsmith

Agree. I'd probably go with blog on these, but I think it's an increasingly blurry line (e.g. we import Slate as a magazine although it doesn't have any volume/issue information; we also don't have a clear rule for what to do with online only articles of print publications such as The Atlantic or The New Republic)

whuber

I don't think blog is really accurate: in some cases, these are staff writers who are reporting on the news with journalistic standards; in other cases, its feature writers. A "blog" can't simply be any originally-digital bit of writing: it refers to a specific approach to writing, a specific work-flow, and a relationship with the act of publishing (the apparent lack of accountability to an editor, the voice of the author, etc.)

We are trying to fit new realities into creaking ontologies, and no one answer is going to be "correct." Just curious as to the practice of others.

adamsmith

Newspapers like the NYTimes and the Washington Post have pieces that they explicitly label blog posts that certainly have journalistic standards, have editors, and are frequently by staff writers. I really don't think I'd overthink this -- it's not like "book" is a particularly well defined category either.