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	'''''Newsarama''''' is a ] ] that publishes ], ] and ] about the ] industry. In addition, the site hosts an ] for ] fans ~~with frequant censorship of personal opinions, depending if you like the work of Marvel Comics or not~~. ~~Along with the usual spam and unwealthy dose of spyware.~~ The site's main page is updated throughout the day ~~with very few genuine news material~~.		'''''Newsarama''''' is a ] ] that publishes ], ] and ] about the ] industry. In addition, the site hosts an ] for ] fans. The site's main page is updated throughout the day.

	==History==		==History==

Revision as of 01:51, 8 March 2008

File:Newsarama 15-7-06.png

Newsarama.com

Newsarama is a American website that publishes news, interviews and essays about the American comic book industry. In addition, the site hosts an Internet forum for comic-book fans. The site's main page is updated throughout the day.

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.

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.

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

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

Columnists

Marvel Comics & Newsarama 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") appears weekly. DC Comics editor Michael Siglain's contributed the weekly "5.2 About 52", and in 2007, DC executive editor Dan Didio announced he would write a column similar to "New Joe Fridays", focusing on the series Countdown.

Other comics professionals and journalists who have contributed to Newsarama include Chris Arrant, Troy Brownfield, Charles Brownstein, Joe Casey, Alan David Doane, Eric Adams, Steve Fritz, Steve Ekstrom, Joanna Estep, Brian Hibbs, Benjamin Ong Pang Kean, J. Michael Straczynski, Sarah Edmunds, Paul Jenkins, Geoff Johns, Shelby Edmunds,Jim Lee, Vaneta Rogers, Rick Remender, Dirk Manning, Ryan McLelland, Stuart Moore, Tracy Edmunds, Mike San Giacomo, Aaron Weisbrod and Brian Wood.

Regular columns include "Animated Shorts" (by Steve Fritz), "Journey into Comics" (by Mike San Giacomo), "Tilting at Windmills" (by Brian Hibbs), "Write or Wrong" (by Dirk Manning), "Your Manga Minute" (by Troy Brownfield and others), "Super-Articulate" (by Brownfield, The Rev. O.J. Flow, and Jim Beard)," Best Shots" (by reviewers from ShotgunReviews.com), "Justice Socializing" (by Brownfield and Geoff Johns), "It Came From The Quarter Bin" (by Ryan McLelland), "Your Indy Weekly" (by McLelland), and "All-Ages Reads" (by Tracy Edmunds).

Criticism

The most persistent criticism of the Newsarama has come from Rich Johnston, a frequent poster in the news and Talk@ sections of the site and a rival comic book industry columnist whose career has developed parallel to that of Newsarama. Johnston, whose own methods have been criticized by Newsarama's Mike Doran in the past has repeatedly used his columns to comment on the site and has suggested in the past that Newsarama has an inappropriately close relationship to some of the major American comic book publishers.

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. The company released a press release with this information, which quoted writers and artists and contained a false history of the characters 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, despite the fact that the reporter, Mike Doran, apparently knew that those claims were false.

Johnston then criticized Newsarama and the other news outlets involved for publishing information they knew to be intentionally misleading without comment 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.

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. 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. 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).

Other criticism of Newsarama has come from Renaud Bédard creator of Heroes & Comics, an ex-frequent poster that raised the issue of conflict of interest and questioned the neutrality and journalistic independence of Newsarama, with news articles resembling more work for hire repetitive publicity mostly for Marvel Comics, with the creator of Newsarama Michael Doran employed in both places, and assisted by his pawns, one by one of his many user names, Matt Brady. Renaud, a more impartial commentator, spectacularly left the boards of Newsarama after their deliberate spoiling attempts and negative campaign of the 2006 Warner Bros film Superman Returns based on DC Comics, a direct comic book and film competitor of Marvel; and after formally protesting and swiftly criticizing all in charge of Newsarama, he left, but not before removing all of his other participations on their every boards over the years, right down to his very first word there.

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 Lemon-Spam Award for "Biggest spamming stuffed up with spyware conflict of interest censorship Website"

References

External links

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