New Journalism?

Is this new discourse really new? or is it an extension and formal presentation of discussions going on between people? I tend to think that there's always been varied levels of discussion between people. The conversations I have with my best friend about videogames and the conversations I have with my boyfriend's gamer friends are totally different. It's not so much because the level of maturity isn't there, but there's a difference in how they approach games.
For instance, there's not much I have to explain to Jeff about videogames (Jeff being the boyfriend's friend). He's one of those people that you hand the controller to when you get frustrated and stuck. Unfortunately he's also the same person who will tell you how much you suck for not being able to get past it. Many times, our answer to any problem goes something like "Well, Jeff can do it" "well yea, he's Jeff".
When talking about games, Jeff and I can start from a better understanding and skip a lot of the overview about what's happening and the mechanics of it all. I don't have to explain Bowser's Inside Story, because he's already played it and beat it. So we jump right into the problems and merits of a particular game with an advanced vocabulary about what we think and how the other one is wrong.
On the other hand, my best friend doesn't play much. I helped her beat Scooby Doo once for the PS2 by finding a jump point she hadn't seen in her months of playing it. Whenever we try to talk about other games, the discussion is completely different because she probably hasn't played it, and if she has it hasn't been at the same level. She's not worried about graphics and sometimes worried about the lag between when you ask the character to jump and when he actually does jump. Because of this, our discussions seem to start at a much lower level and revolve around the "I like it" or "I don't like it" discussions.
Does that mean all this new journalism about videogames is 'new'? No, it just means that people are finding out that there are others out there who can start at that later stage in the discussion. If they refer to Sephiroth, then there are a lot of other gamers out there who will know exactly what they mean and they can skip all the dumbing down of the writing.