We began this series with the idea of assessing the state of online comics journalism. Unfortunately, as we've progressed one-by-one through the most prominent comics news sites, we have yet to find anyone who will own up to practicing comics journalism.

Comicon.com proprietor Rick Veitch (TCJ #264) a vocal proponent of upgrading the standards of comics journalism, regretted he didn't personally have the time to pursue that goal on his defunct Splash site or the resources to keep serious journalists on the payroll for his ongoing Pulse site (TCJ #265).

Rich Johnston has broken a number of stories in his Lying in the Gutters feature on the Comic Book Resources site, but is content to play the role of gossip columnist. "Journalism in the U.S. demands strictures that I'm unwilling to follow or sign up to," he told the Journal (#266).

Tom Spurgeon (TCJ #267)has been writing the occasional news story for The Pulse and has given some thought to pursuing news coverage in a consistent way on his own Comicsreporter.com site, but he refers to the news section of his site as a "Daily Blog" and for the most part, has settled for the blogger's goal of compiling and annotating reports from other sources.

The site under consideration this issue, Miltion Griepp's ICv2, has such a strong reputation for reliability and will-informed analysis among professional observers of the comics industry that Griepp might fairly be called a journalist's journalist. Except that in the absence of any professional observers who would refer to themselves as comics journalists, it's hard to call Griepp anything more meaningful than a non-journalist's non-journalist.

Which is a shame, because Griepp seems to pursue the aims of ICv2 with a thoroughness and even-handedness that one would like to see in a site devoted to comics journalism. If ICv2 falls short of being the kind of site the public can turn to to be informed about the comics news of the day, it may be because this is not its goal -- not even secondarily. Asked how he would describe the target audience of ICv2, Griepp told the Journal, "Retailers and distributors in any channel that sell products in the categories we cover. Secondarily, other members of the trade."

Griepp was himself a prominent member of that trade for many years as co-owner and CEO of Capital City Distribution for 16 years. Capital City and Griepp were well-liked and widely regarded as being more open to a wider range of independent comics publishers than their largest competitor Diamond Comic Distributors. Some would date the late-'90s comics-industry bust that toppled numerous shops and publishers from the year that a parade of exclusive contracts between Diamond and the industry's largest publishers forced Griepp and co-owner John Davis to sell Capital City to Diamond owner Steve Geppi. The sale took place in 1996. By 1998, Griepp was chairman and CEO of Next Planet Over, a pop-culture e-commerce site that was bought out by eHobbies in 2000. Today, still based in Wisconsin, Griepp runs ICv2, an advertising-funded trade news site for the comics industry, as well as a consulting service for both comics-related and non-comics-related businesses.

Griepp writes more than half the news posted on ICv2 himself. Other contributors include Tom Flinn, who, as Capital City vice president of product placement, oversaw the Capital City solicitation catalogs; Steve Bond; retailer columnist Steve Bates; and occasionally a University of Wisconsin journalism grad student.

Given the site's target audiences, it's not surprising that when asked about his criteria for choosing news stories, Griepp responded, "Our primary criterion is that what we publish be useful to retailers and distributors selling products in our categories -- comics, anime, games, toys, and movie/TV licensed merchandise. A secondary criterion would be that it be useful to other members of the trade in those categories. There are others, but those are the main two."

With his many business contacts in the industry, Griepp is in a position to hear news tips from many sources, but like most comics-news sites, he said, ICv2 takes press releases as its starting point. He argued, however, that ICv2 stands out from other comics-news sites in various ways. "We definitely uncover news that would otherwise go unreported," he said, "and we also choose which information to present and how to present it differently than any other site."

The aspect of ICv2's coverage that is most responsible for its uniqueness is undoubtedly its handling of market statistics and financial data. "Nobody does analysis of numbers and market trends like we do," he said. "Sometimes we have great information, like the numbers we produce on Diamond's comic sales to the direct market. Other times we have to work with much less direct info. But either way, I think we bring a good set of analytical tools and tons of experience to the endeavor. We do more on comparing sales in different channels than any other site, which I think can be of huge value to our audience. Knowing what's selling well in other channels, and why, can help a retailer expand sales in new ways."

Griepp pointed to conciseness as another strength of ICv2: "One of my favorite exercises is to take a 1,200-word press release and boil it down to three sentences and under 50 words without losing one fact of material importance to our audience, while providing some context for the information. That is a great service to a time-constrained, fast-moving audience."

Beyond these elements of practicality and efficiency, Griepp claimed some solid journalistic strengths for ICv2. Despite the site's aspirations toward brevity, he said, "We give context. Most articles include links back to previous articles on the topic for more info. We also refer to other connected events, where appropriate, to give context. We're fair. We work hard to be even-handed in our coverage. We're accurate. It's rare that we have to make a correction because of what we go through to check out information before it's published. We have our own archive of stories against which to check new info and references and have a variety of other ways to check out the information we receive."

That fact-checking system doesn't always prevent errors, however. In covering the recent legal case in which comics retailer Gordon Lee faced charges of obscenity in Georgia, ICv2 reported incorrectly that Lee's Legends shop had won a previous case on appeal with the help of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. According to Griepp, "We said that Gordon Lee was acquitted on appeal in his earlier case. I wrote that because someone who'd talked to Lee told me that, and the company I was running at the time of that case, Capital City Distribution, was involved, and I remembered a positive resolution. Because of the pressure of getting the article out quickly I didn't double-check and it turned out that I was wrong -- he had been convicted and the appeal had been turned down. (He paid a small fine). I had it half-right. Lee had won one aspect of the '90s case, but it involved the return of evidence, not the obscenity conviction."

In a rare case of an online comics-news site taking additional time and digging deeper into a story, however, Griepp said, "I got it straight and did another story. It took me weeks to put that together. I interviewed Lee's attorney in the '90s case, then waited a long time for a copy of the ruling to have all the information I needed to write the story."

The story illustrates some of the strengths and weaknesses of online journalism in comparison with print magazine journalism. The rush to post described by Griepp can easily result in superficial or inaccurate stories, but a daily site is in a better position to continually follow up on a story, correcting itself as it goes, whereas a print magazine story might not revisit a story for months, if ever. That's only an advantage, however, if an audience can be relied upon to revisit a particular site on a regular basis while the site continues to revise its coverage. Those who only read ICv2's first report on the Lee case, for example, ended up misinformed.

The Web's merciless demand for a constant stream of content is at the root of what Griepp sees as ICv2's primary weaknesses. "The crush of daily reporting makes it difficult to work on long-form stories with more in depth coverage," he said. "That's sort of the territory we're in with a daily Web publication, but it's still something I wish we could do more of. We only do an average of six stories a day and some days there are a lot more than six stories out there. Over time, things even out, but it's frustrating to have to leave news on the table some days. We don't do much with creator movements in the comic space. There are sites that do that very well; we're not one of them."

Griepp's close ties to industry businesses is both an asset and a liability to the extent that it represents a potential conflict of interest. The site is supported by advertising and ICv2 also draws income as a consulting service. The site doesn't sell banners, per se; it provides ad space on its Web pages and in an e-mail newsletter to paying sponsors for a week or a half-week at a time. Sponsorships are ICv2's greatest source of revenue, according to Griepp, exceeding even the company's consulting business. Griepp said more than half of his consulting clients are involved in the comics industry.

Asked if he encounters pressure from sponsors and consulting clients to run certain stories and not others, Griepp said, "There's always pressure, from clients and non-clients, to not report stories that might portray them in a negative light. We respond to those requests the same way whether they're from clients or non-clients -- we give them a chance to respond and try to present the issue in a fair light. There are definitely articles on the site that our clients wish we hadn't published, but they understand that our audience wouldn't be there if we didn't tackle the tough issues."

In its online editorial-policy statement, ICv2 promises that all advertisements will be clearly distinguishable as such, that it will indicate the source of information it reports "whenever possible," and that it will not print press releases verbatim -- except its own, which it will identify as press releases. In cases of error, ICv2 pledges to update as soon as possible and to retro-correct the mistake in its article archive.

Also posted on the site is ICv2's editorial philosophy: "We believe that we're all in this together -- that if the markets for pop culture products grow, we'll all be more successful. Accordingly, we're devoted to promoting our common interests and growing the business of which we're all a part.... At ICv2, we strive to be fast, accurate, fair, and complete in our coverage. We'll try to get you the news that affects your business first, to give you correct information, to be fair to the companies, people, and products we cover, and to give you the whole story. Rather than telling you our personal preferences, our credo for the site is 'we like what sells,' and we will endeavor to chart accurately the potential and performance of various products profiled, always trying to include those important channel issues (who's selling these products), that can greatly affect sales potential. Many people involved in the production and sales of pop culture products are also aficionados. We certainly are, and that's why we're still in this business after many years. One of our goals in doing this site is to remind people that this business is supposed to be fun! No gloom and doom or dour countenances here -- we're having fun and hope you are too."

The trouble is an allegiance to "what sells" and an aversion to "gloom and doom" can sometimes be an even greater conflict of interest than business ties when it comes to accurate and truthful coverage. If a news tip were to be received by Griepp that would be detrimental to comics sales or to the public's perception of the comics industry ("Study Shows Comics Retard Literacy," "Steve Geppi Caught in Love Nest with Michael Jackson"), would reporting the story be a violation of ICv2's editorial philosophy? Griepp replied that ICv2 might report the story, but it would find a way to accentuate the positive: "It's generally a matter of nuance, not of whether to cover a story or not. It's just an attitude that underyling any story is this great business -- which is selling enjoyment to people that like comics, anime, games, toys, or the other fun stuff we all love so much."

Though, Griepp said ICv2 doesn't shy away from stories that "tackle the tough issues," those stories can easily get lost in the flood of product coverage. Of the front-page headlines running on the site on April 19, most were little more than the names of products ("New Hellsing Anime Announced," "Inuyasha Mobile Phone Game,") and some were barely a step removed from advertising copy ("Sin City DVD Will Be Loaded," "GI Joe Comics Sell Out"). Of the top 10 stories listed, only one ("Hasbro Posts Poor Q1 Results") reported negative news.

ICv2 is very up-front about its target audience. The ability of Griepp and other ICv2 reporters to track and crunch numbers and organize the information clearly and concisely makes ICv2 a useful tool to comics journalists, but the fact that it favors the sellers of comics over the readers of comics means it must always be taken with a grain of salt as a source of journalism. It is undoubtedly a boon to those who are looking for a quick and concise presentation of information that will help them sell comics-related products better. Because ICv2 has done such a good job of achieving that goal, the site might best be called a comics promoter's comics promoter. But if scarcity is anything to go by, we probably could have used a comics journalist more.

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