I was willing to play along with this and have it be fun and games, but it stopped the moment people started holding every reporter to this unrealistic expectation of accuracy. That their entire reputation and career hinged on whether or not they got this right and how dare you report this version of a console I don't like. That an entire YouTube and Twitter subculture sprang up and it got to the point they were trolling Zelda Williams. I didn't hate Nintendo for taking their time to announce NX but I now resent them for allowing this cesspool to keep growing to the point where no person reporting on Nintendo news is safe from an unwarranted attack. **** that.
Those reporters deserve every ounce of scrutiny, though. Believe that. Don't report rumors as facts, plain and simple. He should not represent his rumors as invalidating her rumors, and her rumors shouldn't be her justification for invalidating his rumors. So on and so forth. These people are total amateurs.
When I did work as a journalist covering Nintendo, we were careful never to present anything as news if it didn't come from the lips of someone willing to print their name as the source.
It's a cesspool, but they created it for themselves. It's about getting the early scoop. It's about being the source for everyone else's news. It's about printing stories to attract a lot of attention in a time with very sparse details. Worst of all, it's very little to do with actually reporting news.
On the topic of the NX, if it's the way Emily Rogers describes it (ie. "good for Nintendo games", "Japanese 3rd party support", "Not much Western support") then my interest is nil. They will have to work extra hard to sell me another Wii U.