All Over The Web: Best Media Sites (2)

Looking for entertainment news? The web has more than you can ever possibly use, but how good is any of it? In a world where there are multiple cable networks doing little more than covering entertainment "news" around the clock, how can web sites compete? The answer is to offer web users the ability to go directly to the information they want, without having to wait through teasers and commercials. With those criteria in mind, as well as general issues of validity of information, and user-friendliness according to the Webby Awards and IMSA criteria, the following sites dealing with media and entertainment provide differing experiences for web users.

The Variety website is perhaps one of the best entertainment sites, with a mix of legitimate news stories on the entertainment industry, a bit of confirmed gossip, and reviews on music, books, and movies. The homepage is clean and well organized, giving viewers some information that many are likely to be seeking, such as the latest box office receipts, along with links to plenty of internal content that is clearly labeled. Forbes.com/media is interesting but unless you are really fond of ads clogging up your computer while you try to get the news, it would be a hassle. With a focus on business aspects of the entertainment industry, as well as gossip, Forbes is easily outclassed by Variety's much cleaner access. Metafilter.com is a "community weblog". Apparently, anyone with a blog can get a link here, which leads to a glut of odd blog "teasers" trying to tempt readers to check out the various stories. Unfortunately, the content is all over the place, from stories about baseball to proposed television networks. Blogcritics.org is another catch-all blog portal, which is much better organizes than metafilter. In many cases, the blog links contain in-jokes references that make it hard to determine what the actual articles are about. Fortunately, blogcritics.org has separated out much of its television and video coverage to a second site called blogcritics.org/video. As the name implies, the site has links to blogs with links to video clips of the movies and television shows being reviewed. Iwantmedia.com is useful site for more pure information, tending toward entertainment business. The focus is away from gossip, and more toward trends in media and technology, taken from a variety of different sources including newswires like Reuters, and magazine-based sites like the Hollywood Reporter. Gawker.com is the exact opposite of Iwantmedia.com, proudly declaring itself a site devoted to "media gossip and pop culture around the clock." The site gives exactly what it promises, in a clean layout. Newsbusters.org can be ignored by anybody except right-wingers who actually believe that there is a "liberal media bias" as the blog title proclaims it 'exposes' and 'combats'. However, to get access to the stories, one has to register and have a password. Finally, there is laobserved.com. Perhaps it is attempting to be unique in Los Angeles by ignoring television and film, but its "entertainment" pull-down menu is limited to "casino games, online dating, karaoke, books, music, concert tickets and fantasy football". The site is more for people in LA to find ways to get in contact with people of similar interests.

The Changing Face of Media: Where Do We Get Our News?

How often do you read a newspaper? How often do you look at the website of a newspaper? What about news sites linked with television stations, or news sites that are independent of other forms of media? The way people get their news has been changing ever since the growth of the Internet. In fact, an article from the Wall Street Journal indicates that some papers have lost as much as 13% of their readership in one year (2004) with most papers losing between one and three percent for the year. Those declines still continue until today. Mainstream news sources have been losing ground against websites that allow access, whenever the reader wants it, often without the reader needing to pay for a paper subscription. Furthermore, by accessing news online, readers can go straight to news they want, unlike with television news, and does not need to cast several unwanted pages, as what they would experience with print papers. Whether a survey reports that readership is up or down, the information on readership can be confusing. One has to be careful of what reasons behind a particular surveys are, and how the readership is measured. Newspaper companies have an interest in making it seems that they still attract plenty of readers, in order for them to attract plenty of advertisers.
But the statistics you get may depend on where you are looking. A PEW Research Center survey, for example, points out that since 2000, readership for online sources have been on decline, at least for mainstream news sources. The survey indicates that most people who use online mainstream sources use it in addition to their daily papers. For example, a person with a newspaper subscription may be interested in a particular story, and then go online looking for stories that are tied to it, or for additional information that the newspaper might offer. So online readership may or may not be increasing, or may simply be part of the same audience for the print form of newspaper.

An article in USA Today, though claims that online readership went up by nearly a third in 2006. That article was taken from a survey by the Newspaper Association of America, an organization that may have an interest in supporting the view that plenty of people are still consuming both print newspapers and online newspapers. That is, the NAA wants to support its members by suggesting there is still a huge newspaper audience in print and online, to encourage more advertisers to spend more money with the newspaper companies. Furthermore, some of the statistics are questionable. For instance, The Washington Times measures total readership using the "average weekly print audience and the net 30-day website audience". In other words, the readership for the print version is calculated based on estimates, and then the traffic to the website is measured by how many times people visit the site, not necessarily how many unique visitors use the site. An article at Editor and Publisher claims that "If you count Web traffic, newspapers are actually more popular than ever." This is in an article about the metrics used to determine readership of newspapers. That is, for years, newspapers have used a measurement of readership that suggests that for each newspaper purchased, several people will actually read it, as it is passed along. This metric, however, was never really backed up with clear, legitimate data. So newspapers companies are trying to devise new ways of figuring out how many people are reading newspapers, either the print version, or the online version. This can be tricky, as many of the people who use particular news websites may be consumers of the print paper as well. In other words, "hits" on a web site may or may not be unique users, which is important to advertisers.

Beyond the advertising money, some suggest that there is much more at stake with the decline in readership of newspapers. For example, the Readership Institute indicates that in addition to the decline of readers of newspapers, there has been a decline in "social capital" or the involvements that people have in their local communities. For example, author Robert Putnam indicates that membership in local PTAs and even in local bowling leagues has declined as well. The connection between newspapers and these other elements of society, according to Putnam, is that they signal that people are more absorbed in their own concerns, and less involved in their communities in ways that would put them in frequent contact with their neighbors for common causes. Newspapers, because they were traditionally community based, could have an impact on how involved people are with their communities in this view.
Whatever view one takes, the indication is that newspaper readership for print edition is declining. It takes some clever manipulation of statistics and surveys to suggest otherwise, or to suggest that readers have moved directly from print newspapers to the websites of those newspapers. People have so many ways to get news these days, whether it is in print, over the radio, television, or Internet, there is no clear way to measure exactly where news is being consumed and by who, and to what effect. Sorting this issue will likely take many years, and see more people shifting their news selections about in very personal ways.

All Over The Web: Best Media Sites (1)

When searching the media for information on the media, the Internet has plenty of options, ranging from right wing to left wing, and everything in between. While it is possible to find support for virtually any idea or any position on the web, some sites are simply more legitimate than others according to the Webby Awards and IMSA criteria.
A sampling of different media-oriented web sites reveals where to go for particular kinds of coverage, as explained in brief synopsis of several sites. The links to all websites are provided under the Linkroll menu on the right side of this blog.

The first one is the American Film Institute website provides visitors with its picks for top movies and other valuable pieces of film. It takes film and television seriously, like a more sophisticated and smart version of Entertainment Tonight. The second website is called Editor & Publisher. The information on the site is generally devoted to citing the best stories in journalism, as well as awards going to various writers and editors, based on the quality of their work. A website called Media Matters is definitely a liberal organization, as it even attacks the New York Times for being too conservative on some stories. Still, it is hard to argue with many of the positions Media Matters takes when it analyzes how the media is often lazy in its approach to covering issues, and allows simple ideas to dominate, as well as presenting falsehoods in many cases. A blog called Media Shift provides essential comments on "new media" like blogs and "citizen journalism". It provides interesting look at how the Internet is causing changes in information and news around the world. Another blog called The Communication Blog. It is useful for some important, but sometimes obvious comments on the media. The down side is that this web site contains a huge amount of text, extending over time. Moreover, a blog called the Rocky Top Talk is very interesting to read but sometimes it provides unnecessary information about the media. Some comments seems counter to the idea of having independent media. Another blog called Reportr.net provides commentary on whether the "gatekeeping" role of media should be extended to blogs and websites. If the existing media get the means to legitimize blogs and unofficial media, then it seems that blogs could end up doing nothing more than repeating official stories, or losing their status as "legitimate". A website called News Watch provides reader with many interesting articles about the media. The downside is that the lay out of the web is rough and messy, but the information provided is valuable. My favorite website is called Media Channel. Here, there are connections to everything from clips of The Daily Show, to links to numerous other blogs and media sites. With the number of logos, photos, and links, it is somewhat difficult to tell what the particular angle is for this site. What is most interesting is a link to a commentary by Walter Cronkite, one of the most respected men in the history of television journalism, discussing the MediaChannel site as an important place to go for valuable news commentary.