The enthusiast press always has turnover. Often, it's people going to work for game companies. Luke Smith went to Bungie. Bryan Intihar went to Insomniac. Alex Navarro went to Harmonix.
Most recently Jeff Green and Shawn Elliot left the enthusiast press for jobs with EA and 2K Games, respectively. Because they were good at their jobs and because they shared their thoughts and feelings and humor with us via the more personal medium of podcasts, they are much missed. Luckily Jeff has a new blog (which contains profanity) and Shawn has his twitter (which contains even worse things, at times), so their fans can stalk them online. :) I wouldn't miss people who hadn't been on podcasts, though. It makes me think about podcasts versus articles.
Podcasts are good for the press because they can spend more time on what they want to talk about as opposed to what they've been assigned. And it makes them public figures, although that can be a mixed blessing.
Podcasts are good for the audience because it makes what people write easier to understand. I know what Garnett Lee's been playing. I know what he does and doesn't like about what he's been playing. I know some of what he thinks about the industry. I know his sense of humor. You could pull almost all of these things out of text, too, but podcasts make it easier, more natural. I guess that's just the nature of the medium.
I'm beginning to think that podcasts (especially ones which have more than one person so that there's someone like Garnett to play devil's advocate) may be the best possible format for reviews.
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