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Week Five

6 Best Sources of Entertainment Information

Number 4 will shock you! I’m just kidding. There’s no clickbait here because we’ve gathered here today to discuss the six most trustworthy sources of entertainment business news in the industry. These are sources that deal in cold, hard facts despite covering things that probably won’t make enormous differences in the lives of most people. Nevertheless, when we go to sources for information about the entertainment business, we want it to be accurate.

We want to know how much Robert Downey Jr. made for his role in Avengers, who was number one at the box office this weekend and when Disney is making its next move toward monopolizing the industry and achieving world domination behind the unassuming mouse logo. Just as a disclaimer, this list is in no particular order. These are the six sources I visit regularly that I know I can trust, and I always look forward to their content and its accuracy. Let’s get started!

Variety

If you’ve been following my blog this semester, first of all, thank you. Second of all, you’ve probably heard me call Variety the New York Times of entertainment news because I can always count on its accuracy, especially in the business department where it matters. I truly believe that, and Variety has never had to reveal its sources because of its history of being correct.

The Hollywood Reporter

I called Variety the New York Times of entertainment news, but The Hollywood Reporter is the 1a to Variety’s 1. In fact, The Hollywood Reporter’s layout actually reminds me of the New York Times, which I think adds to its professional quality and credibility. While it does focus on entertainment, it’s very formal and uses many primary sources. I’d strongly suggest checking out The Hollywood Reporter’s YouTube channel to see just how close they are to the industry’s biggest names. When you can get Tom Hanks, Adam Driver, Adam Sandler, Jamie Foxx, Shia LaBeouf and Robert DeNiro at the same table, you must be doing something right.

Collider

Collider actually had what I would consider to be the best daily source of entertainment news in the video arena, but it was shut down recently, which is disappointing for those of us who love to consume our news that way. Fortunately, the website provides content that is equally enjoyable and equally credible. As far as outlets that participate in interview circuits and  junkets go, Collider is one of the best, as people like Steve Weintraub and Scott Mantz have established the status to hold industry screenings with film authors like Quentin Tarantino.

IndieWire

IndieWire is a popular place to go for reviews, but their news is equally strong. Maybe more than any other site, I love the way IndieWire lays its news out as I can easily see different categories and different types of news. As its name might even suggest, I’ve actually found that IndieWire does an excellent job of giving me information about lower budget films, which is something I always look for as a refresher from all of the sources discussing the latest news about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Vulture

Where Vulture first attracted me was with its television discussions. I think they do the best job of offering episode-to-episode television insight, including fact-based recaps and opinions in the same articles. It even highlights those television recaps

Rolling Stone

Peter Travers is one of the reasons I’m interested in going into entertainment journalism, and other than the fact that Rolling Stone is legendary, he’s one of the reasons I trust the entire outlet. He is one of the industry professionals who has established relationships inside the industry, and I’d never doubt what Rolling Stone has to say about film or other forms of entertainment for that reason.

Overall, I don’t think my consumption of news has changed much since the beginning of the semester. This might be a personal flaw, but I use mostly the same sources I did prior to this class. That said, I’ve taken personal inventory over the sources I’ve used and assessed them for their reliability, which has only led me deeper into my fandom.

One thing I will say is that I spend a lot of time looking at movie news on Reddit, which can lead me to all sorts of sites, and whereas before I used to take a lot of what I read from random sites at face value, I evaluate every single story and every single site for legitimacy.

I’ve become something of an entertainment journalism detective through this class and the assignments. To bring it all back to media, I “follow the money.” Where did the information originate? Who picked the story up? Is it plausible? There are a lot of startup entertainment news websites looking to get any scoop they can, so it’s important to know if those sites are trustworthy or not.

In the case of sites like Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, they use a lot of primary sources, and they’ve established credit over the course of decades. I believe an introductory course at Cronkite used the term “evangelist” when referring to the ideal readers of a news outlet. Well, I’m an evangelist of these outlets, and I’d say those decades of establishing trust and relationships were not wasted.

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Week One

24 Hours of Consumption

Despite what the title might lead you to believe, this won’t be a blog post about food. Over the course of 24 hours, I  took inventory of all of the ways I consumed media. I started when I woke up Friday at 8 a.m. and concluded my  observations when I woke up at 8 a.m. on Saturday.

I started my Friday as I always do and as I imagine a lot of people my age do: pulling the covers tighter around myself as I reached for my phone that sits less than a foot away from my head while I sleep. It’s probably broadcasting cancer straight into my brain for eight hours every night. Nevertheless, I’ve become so reliant on it for all of my communication that it sits so close to me acting as my alarm and my way of knowing if my manager needs me to come in earlier than I’m scheduled.

man with a beard standing on the street looking at his phone

I opened my phone and went straight to where I get most of my news, which is actually Reddit. I think I prefer Reddit over something like Twitter because of the security blanket it provides if I say something dumb. If I say it, there’s not a soul in the world who will know that it’s me. I also think its “News” tab is a good, up-to-date way to see what’s happening right now. I sleepily scrolled through it just to see if anything important happened while I was asleep.

Maybe it’s because of what I tend to look at and interact with on Reddit, but I found a lot of baseball news about the recent Houston Astros scandal. I like to think I’m caught up on the situation, but I do find it interesting that I found fact-checked information in the comment section. I’m a Twins fan, so I’m not personally affected the way I’d expect Yankees and Dodgers fans to be, but when I saw that the Astros were using buzzers to know which pitches were coming from opposing pitchers, I grabbed my pitchfork and lit my torch without second thoughts. Luckily, I took a step back and realized that I should probably do some deeper investigating. I went down in the comment section to see that tweets accusing the Astros of using buzzers were from an account that does not actually belong to the niece of one of the players involved in the scandal. Really, the information was mostly baseless, so I was able to calm down a bit.

I then went to the source of the news I personally like to consume, which is YouTube. I’m interested in going into entertainment journalism, so I like to consume as much entertainment journalism as I possibly can. In this day and age, my favorite sources of entertainment news come through YouTube. I’ve followed the same person providing movie news, reviews and opinions for many years now, and I actually follow him because of how trustworthy I believe he is. Yes, a lot of what he does is opinion-based, but movies are art, and art is subjective. That said, he has made videos to trace information to its source and judge that source’s validity. His showing of his dedication to finding the truth earned my trust.

Image result for john campea

His daily live show typically lasts two hours, most of which I’m able to catch before heading off to work for the day at 10 a.m.. I mostly stay busy at work and away from my phone, but I arrived back home at 5 p.m., and as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, I didn’t consume any hard news. Honestly, it was Friday night, and I had spent most of the week looking into articles about America’s involvement in the Middle East and the impeachment trial, so I decided to go see a movie at the movie theater. 1917 was the final Best Picture nominee I had yet to see, so I saw it at at a nearby Alamo Drafthouse.

George MacKay in 1917 (2019)

As I waited for the movie, I went back onto Reddit to check the latest movie news and discussion. I saw that Bad Boys for Life was on pace to make $70 million, which I thought was pretty impressive. I also saw a Variety article stating that Disney would be dropping the name “Fox” in its acquisition of the former studio’s properties, another Variety article stating that Netflix plans to spend $17 billion on content in 2020 and a Hollywood Reporter article about the American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Awards nominations.

Most of my use of media was for soft news, but I think I do a pretty good job of reading the headline from one form of media and proceeding to the primary source. For example, though the headlines initially caught my eye for both Variety articles, I went on to read the articles themselves before reading comment boards that might skew my thoughts. Variety cited sources it has inside studios as well as estimates from BMO Capital Markets, so I could trace their information back to where they received it from. Hollywood Reporter cited American Cinema Editors as the source of its story about award nominations, so I believed the news because it went back to the primary source of the information.

Variety News

Overall, it was a pretty mundane day in terms of news consumption, but it still made me think about the way I consume news and the type of news that I generally consume. I’d probably rate the baseball news I took in on Reddit a 5/10. I initially received incorrect information, then dug deeper to find the truth. I’m just happy that the truth existed so that I can continue to be skeptical and on the lookout for the facts in these scenarios. I’d rate the YouTube movie pundit’s show an 8/10. Again, this particular personality has gained my trust by either tracing the sources of his information or being very straightforward about the information’s level of validity, so I feel quite confident believing what he says. I’d rate Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both a 9/10. I don’t think I’d ever give a 10/10 because you just never know what’s entirely truthful and what isn’t, but I believe that they have industry sources giving them information, and I’d say that they’re correct 90% of the time. I also don’t see any bias in their reporting. They have no reason to have an agenda when it comes to reporting on Netflix’s spending or on Disney’s branding affairs.

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