Differing gamer styles ...

Ditto. (Tritto? I might be at least the third person to agree. Anyway ...

At this level ("this level," meaning mid-sized daily), we expect serious candidates to be able to write gamers. We're looking for features and trend pieces. Those are the candidates who will stand out.

Sometimes it helps to send a short piece along with your clips that explains how you got a story. I'm not a mind-reader, which means I have no idea that you wrote 30 inches in 10 minutes on your Blackberry while driving 70 mph down a two-lane mountain road in a snowstorm unless you tell me. Otherwise, it's like, "Eh, another gamer."

Here's a tip for you, Platyrhynchos: When we had a community sports writer, and she wrote a story about a team, she'd run the names of all the players and coaches in a break-out box that ran with the story. It's a very efficient way of getting names in the paper. Maybe that's something your ed will go for.