July
26
Comic-Con: Revenge of the Web Masters
The real working stiffs of Comic-Con are the movie site web masters and their staffers, tirelessly filing away at their laptops, before, during and after panel after panel. "We wake up at 7 AM and go to bed at 2 AM," said IESB's Robert Sanchez at Thursday morning's web masters panel, "posting news, trying to link to others' stories. We celebrate our work. The entire online Comic-Con community can be proud we kick ass."
Enthusiastically and profanely moderated by self-styled bad-ass directors Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine (Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage), the panel provided a chance for them to promo themselves, natch, with clips from their upcoming Gerard Butler actioner Game.
All of the ten web masters consider themselves movie buffs first. "Instead of more traditional media, we start off as film fans, not traditional journalists," says MovieBlog's John Campea. "Every film fan loves finding a jewel, which we share with everyone else. I am not a journalist. I don't know what I am doing."
Some seemed to revel in the demise of old media. "The New York Times' profits are down 97%," proclaimed Sanchez. "That's awesome! Our profits are up 2 %. We're fanboys and geeks and proud of it. We appreciate filmmakers like you who reach out to the online community and make sure we reach out to our viewers and readers. We work hard not to be spoonfed by the studios. We have to get scoops."
To his credit, Devin Faraci of CHUD distanced himself from that POV, saying: "The internet is great at getting information out there but the truth is none of us assholes are out foraging for the latest George Bush scandal, and neither is Drudge or Wonkette. We need dedicated people who are funded to go places and report. The death of print journalism is a big problem for this country. I do care if the L.A. Times doesn't have a film critic or is closing its Berlin branch. We're fucked. It's a spooky time. Sure, the same way the studios are taking PR back into their own hands, instead of going through newspapers, the government will have its own bloggers on the payroll."
Faraci was also willing to admit that the websites don't always do their fact-checking. "We end up writing stories that turn out not to be true," he added, "scripts are changing day to day. And people from the studios are planting misinformation, like Chris Carter of X-Files."
When asked how Latinoreview got its hands on so many early scripts six months before they go into production, Kellvin Chavez quipped: "We clean your offices."
Today, these once unassuming fanboys are courted by studio flacks and granted early access to set visits, star interviews and marketing materials. "Studios are paying attention to sites and fans as part of the online community," said Sanchez, who was thrilled to be invited to DreamWorks Animation and meet Jeffrey Katzenberg. "They appreciate us more than traditional news."
"To be honest it sort of makes me jaded a little," said Brad Miska of Bloody-Disgusting.
Clearly, these web masters enjoy their access but are on their own as far as following any guidelines or maintaining objectivity. "I've been to a whole bunch of sets and met cool people," said Faraci. "It's amazing to step on a soundstage and see how it happens, to appreciate how hard it is."
AICN's Vespe admitted that all the access was problematic for a reviewer. "The danger of getting to know people isn't so much that you are willing to give a good review to a bad movie but that you see a mediocre movie and want to like it more." He said that when given access to the Transformers set, he made sure someone else reviewed the movie. "I write off the emotion of the first time I see a movie," he said, "that's what separates us from journalists. We're there because we want to be there, we're not some stage critic on assignment who doesn't care about movies."
12-year web veteran Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons, who says he built his site through word-of-mouth, visited the set of Driven and still wrote a bad review. "You have to tell people if a film sucks," he said, "even if you don't hear from them again."
Of course I disagree with Campea's definition of what a blogger does: "Real blogs don't break news like news sites," he insisted. "Blogs write opinion in editorials."
And the boycott of the trades does not seem to be widespread. "I'm not part of it," said Erik Davis of Cinematical. "We just do our own thing and link to whoever we get the story from."
"We do a lot of hard work," said Sanchez. "We had a scoop on G.I. Joe. And then the trades go out and post without giving any credit."
Cinematical uses fan reactions to trailers like The Terminator Salvation to gauge their interest in certain films, said Davis: "Each of these sites is posting about Dark Knight 20 times a day and it's not stopping."
[from left, Mike Sampson of Joblo (also pictured blogging in Hall H), Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons, Brad Miska of Bloody-Disgusting, Erik Davis of Cinematical and Eric Vespe (Quint) of aint-it-cool-news.]
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As a former print editor (albeit for a niche, genre publication), I'm just as dismayed about this panel as you seem to be. At the same time, I'm just as dismayed by the trades and how deeply into advertisers' pockets they seem to be, having witnessed it when I was working at the magazine.
The Internet has been the great equalizer when it comes to news and the concept of "the people's right to know." However, as the whole Dan Rather story proved, there's really no replacement for good, solid reporting and that's something that more bloggers need to know about before they go off half-cocked.
Posted by: Trisha Lynn | July 26, 2008 at 02:39 PM
You disagreed with me Anne?!?!?! How DARE YOU!?
Kidding! Fact is, you could have called me a pedophile and I'd still be walking around with a smile on my face all day just cause Anne Thompson mentioned me. :)
Posted by: John Campea | July 28, 2008 at 01:01 PM
Hey Anne: Nice to meetcha, and glad you covered the panel and glad even that you mentioned the boycott at Variety. FWIW, full disclosure, I was on this panel last year. I do news for SCIFI.COM. And, for Trisha, I was also a print journalist (L.A. Times, Daily News, Milwaukee Journal) for 17 years. I think the distinctions between Web sites and print journalists has blurred, and you can't lump blogs, fan sites, news sites (such as mine and IGN's film site) and film sites together. We each have our own voices, methods of working, points of view (or lack thereof), ethical standards (or lack thereof), etc. Some of us are more print like, others (like Devin's) more commentary like, but you can't say we don't all do solid reporting. As Robert points out, much of what we all report ends up being "confirmed" by the mainstream media anyway. In my day, that was called a scoop. And a scoop's a scoop, whether it's on a Web site or in Variety or the L.A. Times.
Posted by: Patrick Lee | July 28, 2008 at 06:25 PM
good to meet you too. It was great to see everyone and meet many of you folks during the Con, I learned a lot.
Agree that a scoop is a scoop, but some are more journalistic than others. That is, real, nailed down, confirmed....
a blog is defined by its software and interactivity and linking, while a news site does other things.
fanboys are coming from a place of enthusiasm and boosterism, though of course they express all POVs.
media blogs are very different from sitting at home in pajama blogs.
some are amateur, some professional, etc...
Posted by: anne Thompson | July 29, 2008 at 11:24 AM
John Campea is a douchebag of the highest order.
Posted by: Karnak | July 30, 2008 at 07:37 AM