Comment by slg

Having a byline on a piece is not an indication he edited the piece, in fact, it's an indication he didn't edit it. That byline is simply an indication that he was one of two people responsible for writing the piece. He obviously didn't write every line or else there wouldn't be a second byline.

There is also a huge difference between trusting a coworker and falling for a lie of a source. Journalists deal with sources with a certain level of skepticism that just isn't productive or conducive to being a good coworker. Have you ever dealt with a coworker who didn't trust people to do their jobs? It's incredibly offputting.

I'll also point out that I said blame the "editorial process", that isn't the same as blaming an individual editor. This type of basic fact checking is either funded by the business or it isn't. This is very unlikely to be a failure of an individual rather than an absence of fact-checking at all and the decision for that is very unlikely to be made by the "senior gaming editor" (and it should be noted this wasn't even a gaming story).

There seems to be a disconnect between the way journalism generally works and your expectations for how it works. I believe Orland got duped by behaving the way most journalists would in a system that is less able to catch issues like this due to general industry cutbacks.