There are a lot of blogs and websites that make an effort to pass on news about the comics industry, but when the Journal began its search for serious online comics journalism, it wasn't hard to figure out the best places to look. Comicon.com proprietor Rick Veitch, The Pulse's Jen Contino, The Beat's Heidi Macdonald, The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon, Lying in the Gutter's Rich Johnston and ICv2's Milton Griepp all pointed to one another when we asked each what sites they check out on a regular basis. Two other sites that were frequently mentioned by the Journal's interviewees have not yet appeared in this series: Newsarama's Matt Brady and The Comic Wire's Jonah Weiland. Unfortunately, it's unknown if Brady and Weiland reciprocate the admiration of their colleagues, since neither was willing to identify other influential sites or to respond to any of the Journal's other questions.

Weiland, who is in charge of not just The Comic Wire, but the entire Comic Book Resources site that hosts it, was startled when the Journal contacted him about an interview. He pretty much never gives interviews, he said, due to the exhausting pace of overseeing the CBR site, which includes The Comic Wire, The Comic Reel, The Comic Brief, miscellaneous feature articles, a contest, a new-comics list and other databases and columns by Joe Casey and Matt Fraction, Steven Grant, Tony Salvaggio, Scott Shaw!, Augie DeBliek Jr., and James Sime, as well as Rich Johnston's Lying in the Gutters. Not to mention numerous pop-up ads. Apparently fearing he might have granted an interview to the Journal while in some semi-conscious state, he responded by e-mail, "Did I agree and forget?" After the Journal assured him that he'd agreed to nothing, he said he would think it over, but ultimately declined.

Brady initially indicated he would try to find time to respond to the Journal's questions, but three months later, reported, "I gave it a lot of thought, and in the end, I'm going to pass." The Journal was particularly interested in talking to the Newsarama reporter, because, whereas all of the series' previous interview subjects had been frankly up-front about calling themselves bloggers first and journalists second -- if at all -- Brady seemed to take himself the most seriously as a journalist. His hesitation was based on more than a busy schedule. He had been reading the early segments of the Journal's series and wasn't entirely happy with how it was developing.

First off, he felt the Journal had been entirely too easy on the first ongoing website it had taken under consideration. He complained, for instance, that Jen Contino had been allowed to claim falsely that, in covering the bankruptcy of CrossGen Comics, The Pulse had disclosed the status of its own parent website, comicon.com, as a CrossGen creditor. The Pulse did in fact neglect to mention its connection to CrossGen in its first report on the company's bankruptcy. Contino explained that, as soon as Comicon.com co-proprietor Rick Veitch and Steve Conley made her aware of the site's involvement as a creditor, she added that information to the story and made sure the disclosure was part of all the CrossGen bankruptcy reports that followed. The Journal confirmed this, but Brady's point is not only valid, it points to one of the problematic aspects of online journalism: Because it exists as a kind of ongoing flow of news, it is infinitely correctable, but a correction that is made to a site on Wednesday is not necessarily going to reach everybody who read the site's report on Tuesday. "It was never mentioned in her earlier reports about it," Brady said of Contino's initial coverage of the CrossGen bankruptcy, "and only came up when someone pointed it out. I know this, because I got burned by it with the Chaos stuff, and was watching Jen, open-eyed, walk down the same path I had. Likewise, ICv2 has yet to ever mention that they're an unsecured creditor of CG, either."

The Journal also cut Contino too much slack, in Brady's opinion, when recounting The Pulse's coverage of a dispute between DC and Bulldog Collectibles and Distribution. Though the Journal noted that the report had to be taken down and rewritten so that the lead paragraphs were devoted to facts instead of rumors, it added that "these incidents are not so much indicative of Contino's editorial weaknesses as they are illustrative of the tendency of Web-news sites to report news on the fly, relying on the fact that inaccuracies can be erased and rewritten as they are discovered." Brady argued that the story's problems shouldn't be considered inherent in the Internet's rushed pace, because his own coverage of that story had escaped those problems. "Considering that I posted a Bulldog story at exactly the same time that didn't need to be pulled down," he pointed out, "I'd say her story was a little indicative of her editorial weaknesses."

Fair enough. But even Brady was capable of expecting lower journalistic standards from the Web. "Don't get me wrong," he said. "I'm very appreciative of the compliment Jen paid me in the article. (We went to the same high school, and are from the same town.) But c'mon -- hold that story [about The Pulse] up to some of the Journal's others. It reads like a... well, article from a website."

Brady also objected to the Journal's estimation that Comicon.com was perhaps the most highly trafficked comics news site on the Web. According to Brady, Comicon is in fact a distant third in terms of the number of daily visits. He based this supposition on statistics compiled on the Alexa.com website. The Journal had qualified its statement with the hedge word "perhaps," because until all the comics news sites in question disclose their actual traffic numbers, there's no way to say with certainty which gets the most hits from Web-users. So how does Alexa.com arrive at its statistics? By compiling data supplied from the users of the Alexa toolbar. Unfortunately, since the Alexa toolbar is far from a universally used product, the closest statistic it can provide to the comparison we're looking for is that Comicon.com is the third most visited comics news site among customers of the Alexa toolbar.

The Journal offered this defense and invited Brady to raise as many criticisms of the series as he liked, since that would force it to tangle with the very issues it was intended to address. Brady chose not to pursue the argument any further and, despite the Journal's winsome charm, refused to be baited into expressing any more of his thoughts on the subject of online comics journalism. Left with a lot of questions and no one to talk to, the Journal was forced to try to answer its own questions based on what was visible on the reticent website. Toward this end, the Journal and staff visited Newsarama repeatedly throughout the month of June and into July and compiled a few statistics about the kind of news one will find there. (Statistics were also gathered for CBR and other comics news sites which will be considered in a future issue.)

Newsarama has migrated a number of times, residing for a time at AnotherUniverse.com, and then Comicon.com (where it was replaced by The Pulse) before coming to Kevin Smith's View Askew site. Brady, who has had experience writing for print venues, including Comics Buyer's Guide, is not the only writer at Newsarama, though he writes the bulk of the news reports. When an occasional serious story appears that involves phone calls and research, Brady is usually responsible. And when Brady has a serious story to sink his teeth into, such as recent challenges to DC's Superman copyrights, Stan Lee's lawsuit against Marvel or obscenity prosecutions of comics retailers, his reportage has typically stood out from other comics news sources on the Web.

The Journal asked Brady, "How much are you able to follow up on an average report?" Of all the stories posted on Newsarama between June 9 and July 6 (roughly 250), the Journal found four that were updates or follow-ups to earlier stories, including one that followed the fluctuating changes in DC's executive staff and one that added more Spider-Man-related products to an earlier report on Spider-Man-related products.

Still trying to get at how much depth of coverage Brady was able to pursue on Newsarama, the Journal asked about the ratio of serious or "issue-oriented" stories versus press releases and product announcements. The Journal found 72 stories that were basically quoted press releases plus another 23 that were heavily "inspired by" press releases, 20 stories that were essentially product announcements and a total of 79 that were no more than links to stories elsewhere. By comparison, the number of stories that would fall into the most generous definition of "serious" totaled 11. A story was classified as serious whenever it reported news that went beyond hawking a product. The promotion of products, which is a common occurrence on comics news sites, shows a certain loyalty to the well-being of the comics industry, but not all the products covered are comics. The Newsarama site included stories about movies, videogames, trading cards, posters, role-playing games, more movies and pies (a promotional pie giveaway at the Image Comics booth at the San Diego Comic-con).

The Journal asked Brady if he ever felt pressure to not report things that might hurt the feelings of friends who are professionals in the comics industry. Along the same lines, the Journal asked if Brady felt pressure not to report stories that might offend potential employers of Brady in the comics industry. Newsarama contributing editor Michael Doran left the website in 2002 to take a short-lived position as Marvel Comics Marketing Communications Manager, but Brady has publicly denied having any such ambitions. He turned down an invitation from Marvel to submit story ideas to Marvel's Epic line in 2002. Nevertheless, a tabulation of happy, upbeat stories ("Yay, Company A Has Released a New Product") versus reportage of critical or negative news ("Uh-oh, Company B Has Gone Out of Business, Leaving a Lot of Creators Unpaid") at Newsarama found 235 positive stories and only nine negative ones. Another nine (creator obituaries, for example) were classified as neutral stories. This suggests that A) the comics industry is a place where negative things (bankruptcies, censorship, lawsuits) rarely happen; B) Brady is disinclined to cover negative news; or C) the comics news environment makes coverage of happy news much easier than coverage of unhappy news.

The Journal asked Brady how often he has lunch with Kevin Smith, but was unable to determine this by statistical analysis of the site.

It may be possible, however, to make an educated guess as to how Brady might have answered the following questions: "What are your goals for Newsarama? Do you feel it's living up to those goals?" Looking over the numbers reflected in Brady's stories during the weeks the Journal observed the site, it seems probable that if his goal is to keep up a steady flow of news stories, the vast majority of which promote the products and business interests of the comics industry, he would have answered the Journal in the affirmative. Newsarama is living up to those goals just fine. But if his goal is to maintain a high standard of investigative or critical journalism for all or most of the stories he generates on the site, he would probably have been forced to conclude that he has, so far, fallen short of that goal.

Ever generous to a fault, the Journal would like to presume that it is the Internet's voracious appetite for a constant flow of content that has forced Brady into the role of herding press releases, with the occasional serious news report thrown in. Brady, however, who prefers to call a spade a spade, would probably want to lay the blame on editorial weakness.

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