When Fans Hit the News

Tips for Entertainment Editing

Rich De Atley, entertainment editor at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., offers the following background information to help when editing entertainment stories.

Music sites

     They say music is the second most popular topic on the Internet – and although there are scads of pages for any given band, you have to be careful about which ones to trust.
   Most bands and labels run their own official sites, and the easiest way to find them is to go to the Ultimate Band List at www.ubl.com. Search results generally yield the official sites (which are labeled as such) as well as fan-generated pages. (It’s now part of Artist Direct,
www.artistdirect.com.)
   The UBL now also offers a biography from the very-reliable All Music Guide, but it’s best to go to the site itself – www.allmusic.com – for extensive discographies. Better still, from there you can search by song or album title, and check to see who all has recorded a particular song. (This is also great for settling office arguments.) It’s not an absolutely complete site, but it’s pretty close. It’s also updated on a regular basis,
so you don’t have to worry about missing a new release. There’s a separate reference for classical music, www.allclassical.com.
   If you’re trying to sort out someone’s arrest record or determine who’s dating whom, allstar is the place to go. Editors are former Billboard staffers, so copy is quite reliable. It’s now part of CDNOW, so go to www.cdnow.com, click on the allstar logo and search by artist.
   Other excellent news sites are all linked up at Music Newswire, now a part of Sonicnet; go to www.sonicnet.
com/news/musicnewswire.
   Pollstar, a concert-industry publication, lists artists’ tour routings at www.pollstar.com. Beware; dates listed are often tentative.
   For radio station links, the American Journalism Review has a handy site at www.ajr.newslink.org/broad.html.
Music's top award has a site, www.grammy.com that includes a search engine for winners and their categories.
   If you want to find out songwriting credits, there are three sites that are useful: www.ascap.com from the American Society of Composers, Authors and
Publishers, www.bmi.com for Broadcast Music Inc. and www.sesac.com. Each of these has search engines for songs and credits.

– Cathy Maestri, The Press-Enterprise

Movie sites

     Your best bet for a current or recent movie is to put the title into a search engine and look for the official site – you can usually tell by the studio logo(s) on the bottom. Frequently, movie sites remain on line after their theatrical run has ended. Check out www.rzm.com/pvt.ryan/ or
www.miramax.com/shakespeareinlov/ for instance. You can get cast and other information from these official
sites.
   The same goes for many future releases. Punch "Pearl Harbor" and movie into a search engine and you will come up with studio.go.com/movies/pearlharbor/, the official site for the movie, including its May 25 release date. And while most studios do have their own Web sites, it's easier to search under the film's title than to try to remember which studio is putting out what movie.
   Another important site is www.oscars.org – the official home page for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Academy Award winners can be tracked down in the site's search engines.
   Keeping in mind that the best source is the most direct, there are some well-regarded unofficial sites, including the self-explanatory Internet Movie Data Base at www.imdb.com and www.upcomingmovies.com, which does a good job of tracking movies in the pipeline and their release dates. But I would go there only if I couldn't find an official site.

– R.D.

Television sites

Here are some key Web sites for networks and cable channels. In almost all cases, you'll need to establish a user name and password, but the dividends for a couple of minutes of work are worth it. Keep the user name and password where people can refer to it. These sites generally contain scheduling information, high-resolution photos for downloading, news releases and biographies.
Need that mug shot of Matthew Perry when he becomes late-night news? Uncertain of the name of his character on "Friends?" The NBC media site can help.

ABC network
www.abcmedianet.com
CBS network
www.cbspressexpress.com
The Discovery Channel
www.discovery.pniltd.com/archive/
member/act/navigator/pressnetworks
Fox network
www.foxflash.com
HBO
www.homeboxoffice.com
(go to media relations site)
NBC
www.nbcmv.com
PBS
www.pbs.org/pressroom
Showtime
www.sho.com/pressline
UPN
www.upnserver.upn.com/media.htm
The WB
www.thewbpr.com

– R.D.

Miscellaneous

   It's pretty well known, but we'll say it for the record: www.amazon.com for
book titles and author's names.
   For theater: Most theater companies, including community theaters, have
their own Web sites. Use your search engine to find them. Well-done sites
include cast information, performance dates and times and ticket
information.
   For the performing arts in general: The New York Public Library has a
wonderful site: www.nypl.org/research/
lpa/internet/ with search engines for arts administration, dance, film, music, recorded sound,
television and radio and theater. More esoteric questions often get answered
here.

– R.D.