Except that it's not their job. It's a reporter's job to be accurate and to do research.
Then the story shouldn't be printed until there is time to do it right. Otherwise, why not just make up the entire article?Without knowing how much work the reporter had on his plate or how long he had to throw the story together, who can honestly say he had time to Google search individual video game forums, sign up on them and hang around long enough to get all the right names and numbers? Yeah, the guy is still a hack, but not every reporter out there has the luxury of writing stories at their leisure, nor are they afforded the necessary weeks/months that some stories require to properly research.