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.