Newsarama

Newsarama
Newsarama
Newsarama 15-7-06.png
Screenshot of Newsarama main page, 7/15/2006
URL www.newsarama.com
Type of 'zine comic book
Registration yes
Available language(s): English
Chief-editor Mike Doran
Owner TechMediaNetwork
Created by Matt Brady
Launched August 2002
Current status online

Newsarama is an American website that publishes news, interviews and essays about the American comic book industry.

Contents

History

Newsarama began in Summer 1995 as a series of Internet forum postings on the Prodigy comic-book message boards by fan Mike Doran. In these short messages. Doran shared comic-book news items he had found across the World Wide Web. As these postings became more regularly and widely read, he gave them the title "Prodigy Comic Book Newswire".

In January 1997, Doran began to post a version of the column, titled "The Comics Newswire," on Usenet's various rec.arts.comics communities. The name of the column evolved to "The Newswire" and then "CBI Newsarama" before finally becoming simply "Newsarama" in 1998.

The postings quickly became popular, as the speed of reporting on the Internet meant that Doran could break stories faster than most other comic book news sources, which appeared in printed publications which had to be fully edited weeks before they were released. By the time other online comics journalists came on the scene, "Newsarama" had become an established brand and market leader. Although the column in its earliest forms reported both news and rumors, it later adopted a standard journalistic news approach.[citation needed]

Doran's postings left Usenet in 1998, becoming a "Newsarama" column on such websites as Mania.com, AnotherUniverse.com and Fandom.com (all defunct as of 2007) and Comicon.com before becoming a semi-autonomous site — Newsarama.com, hosted by Kevin Smith's ViewAskew.com network of sites — in August 2002.

Three months later, Doran left Newsarama — by now a webzine — to take a staff position at Marvel Comics. Matt Brady, a writer who had written extensively for the site, took over. Doran later returned to working at Newsarama, with Brady continuing as primary writer. The site left the ViewAskew.com network and became independent in early April 2006. It was acquired by the Imaginova corporation in October 2007. When Brady stood down in July 2009, Doran and Lucas Siegel stepped up to run the site.[1] The site was acquired, along with Space.com and LiveScience.com, by TopTenREVIEWS in October 2009.[2]

Newsarama has been quoted as a source of comics news by the mainstream media, including The New York Times.[3] In 2006, Entertainment Weekly listed Newsarama as one of its "25 favorite online entertainment sites"[4] and the American Library Association lists it as a digital resource in the field of comics.[5] A subsequent Entertainment Weekly update also included Newsarama in their list "100 Greatest Websites".[6]

Newsarama maintains a registered-member forum, talk@Newsarama, with over 25,000 registered users.[7]

Columnists

Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada's column "Joe Fridays" (renamed "New Joe Fridays" in 2006 as a joke regarding Marvel's penchant for relaunching titles with the prefix "new") appeared weekly until 2008, when the column moved to MySpace. Currently, Joe Quesada hosts "Cup of Joe," the latest version of his column, on Comic Book Resources. DC Comics editor Michael Siglain's contributed the weekly "5.2 About 52", and in 2007, DC executive editor Dan Didio announced[citation needed] he would write a column similar to "New Joe Fridays", focusing on the series Countdown. Presently, Didio participates in the weekly "10 Answers and 1 Question" column for the site.

Regular columns include "Animated Shorts" (by Steve Fritz), "Write or Wrong" (by Dirk Manning), "Best Shots" (by reviewers from ShotgunReviews.com), "10 Answers and 1 Question with Dan Didio", "Weekly Webbing", "Right to Assemble" (covering Avengers titles by Troy Brownfield), "Column . . . for JUSTICE" (by Brownfield, covering Justice League titles), "Change of Pace" (by Brownfield), "Friday Flashback" (by Brownfield), "Dial H for History" (by David Pepose, covering recaps on comic book characters and trends) and "Agent of S.T.Y.L.E." (by Alan Kistler, covering the evolution of costumes and designs for different comic book characters). Newsarama also runs a series of "Post Game" columns, offering coverage and commentary of popular genre-related television programs on a regular basis; covered shows include "Lost", "Smallville", "Batman: The Brave and the Bold", "Fringe", "FlashForward", and others.[citation needed]

Criticism

Persistent criticism of the Newsarama has come from Rich Johnston, a rival comic book industry columnist whose career has developed parallel to that of Newsarama. Johnston has repeatedly used his columns to comment on the site[8][9][10][11] and has suggested in the past that Newsarama has an inappropriately close relationship to some of the major American comic book publishers.[12][13]

One incident that has been cited by Johnston involved Newsarama's coverage of a Marvel Comics publicity stunt which sought to briefly mislead comic book fans. While publicizing a new series in 2001 Marvel announced that they had uncovered a previously forgotten character, The Sentry, whose adventures the company claimed they originally published in the 1960s.[14] The company released a press release with this information, which quoted writers and artists and contained a false history of the character's 1960s creative origins. Though the character was in actuality a new creation with an entirely manufactured 'history', Newsarama (and other comic book industry news outlets, such as Wizard) reported on the story and quoted from the release without criticizing or challenging its claims.[citation needed]

Johnston then criticized Newsarama and the other news outlets involved for publishing information they knew to be intentionally misleading without comment[15] and this prompted a vigorous defense of Newsarama's coverage from Doran and his colleagues who pointed out that their reporting was technically accurate and insisted that readers did not require their guidance to see through the deception.[citation needed]

In November 2005 The Comics Journal published a study of Internet comic book industry news sources by journalist Michael Dean which evaluated Newsarama's journalistic performance.[16] The study praised the site for the depth of coverage provided in some articles but also criticized its reliance on press releases and the "softness" of the questions asked in its interviews.

Dean also focused on one story in particular "DIAMOND CHANGES THRESHOLDS" by Matt Brady.[17] Though he found that the piece qualified as "journalism," Dean also found that it "contained factual inaccuracies, failed to get multiple points of view and sucked up to its corporate subject" (the Brady story itself was eventually corrected of its factual inaccuracies by its author after Rich Johnston and others pointed out the errors).

In June 2008 the site underwent numerous visual and content related changes,[18] and decreased its traffic compared to the previous months.[19] Subsequently, under Siegel, the site's traffic has risen above that of many close rivals.[20][not in citation given]

The new format launched with multiple articles on comic books, television shows, movies and video games. These changes have been questioned by readers in the comment section of some articles[21][22][23] Editor Matt Brady defended the recent changes by saying "Also (3) - finding the content is as easy as ever. It's all under the Comics tab. I'm not meaning this in an insulting way, but if you're so frustrated with not finding as much comics news as you'd like when you go to www.newsarama.com, re-set your bookmark to www.newsarama.com/comics . That, for all intents and purposes, will still be the "old" Newsarama that you knew and loved, without that pesky movie and television news."[24] Some users have commented that this requirement of filtering content or bookmarking sub-pages to continue receiving comic book related content is indicative of the lack of focus on comic book news.[citation needed]

Awards

The site has been the recipient of a number of awards and award nominations, including:

  • 1999 Eagle Award nomination for "Favourite Comics-Related Website (professional)"
  • 2000 Eagle Award nomination for "Favourite Comics-Related Website (professional)"
  • 2004 Eagle Award for "Favourite Comics E-Zine"
  • 2005 Eagle Award nomination for "Favourite Comics-Related Website"
  • 2006 Eagle Award for "Favourite Comics-Related Website"
  • 2007 Eagle Award nomination for "Favourite Comics Related Website"
  • 2008 Eisner Award for "Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism"
  • 2008 Project Fanboy Awards for Best Comic Book Website.[25]

References

  1. ^ Brady, Matt. Matt Brady: Hello, I Must be Going, Newsarama, July 17, 2009
  2. ^ http://www.livescience.com/technology/091026-ttr-acquisition.html
  3. ^ The New York Times (March 8, 2007): "Captain America is Dead; National Hero Since 1941", by George Gene Gustines
  4. ^ Entertainment Weekly (posted June 14, 2006, published issue #883, June 23, 2006): "Internet: Bookmark This Page!", by Eric Kohn and J.P. Mangalindan
  5. ^ Bussert, Lesley (February 2005). "Comic books and graphic novels: Digital resources for an evolving form of art and literature". College & Research Libraries News 66 (2). http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crlnews/2005/feb/comicbooks.cfm. Retrieved 2011-04-13. 
  6. ^ Entertainment Weekly
  7. ^ Forum.newsarama.com Member List
  8. ^ Comic Book Resources - Comic Book News, Reviews and Commentary - Updated Daily!
  9. ^ Comic Book Resources - Comic Book News, Reviews and Commentary - Updated Daily!
  10. ^ Comic Book Resources - Comic Book News, Reviews and Commentary - Updated Daily!
  11. ^ Comic Book Resources > Lying In The Gutters - 6-9-2008
  12. ^ Comic Book Resources - Comic Book News, Reviews and Commentary - Updated Daily!
  13. ^ Comic Book Resources - Comic Book News, Reviews and Commentary - Updated Daily!
  14. ^ [www.brokenfrontier.com/lowdown/p/detail/the-startling-story-of-the-sentry the startling story of the Sentry], www.brokenfrontier.com
  15. ^ All The Rage: Turn Of The Sentry
  16. ^ The Comics Journal: Newswatch
  17. ^ Diamond Changes Thresholds - Newsarama
  18. ^ Newsarama.com: Comic Book News, TV, Movies
  19. ^ Alexa traffic details for Newsarama.com
  20. ^ newsarama.com - Quantcast Audience Profile
  21. ^ All-time Top Ten Members of the Fantastic Four | Newsarama.com
  22. ^ Newsarama.com:
  23. ^ Newsarama.com : Tapped Out on TV Remakes
  24. ^ Community | Newsarama
  25. ^ 2008 Project Fanboy Award Winners

External links


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