The end is near...

Only 2 weeks left of school and that is weird! As excited I am about getting done with this hectic semester, I am getting pretty nostalgic about school.

Ebertfest went great! You guys can check out all of our coverage at the217.com/movies_tv.

I got to meet Roger Ebert and his wife, and he signed my copy of buzz. I also got it signed by the producer of Let the Right One In as well as the Director and a star of Frozen River. It was a great, great weekend full of great films.

Favorite - Tie between Let the Right One In and Frozen River
Lease Favorite - Nothing but the Truth - it was really interesting up until the really disappointing ending.

Next week is my final issue of buzz, and I think that is going to hit me the hardest about graduating. Joining buzz was one of the greatest choices I made in college. It taught me what I wanted to do with my life. I made great friends, interviewed some amazing people and learned how to be an editor. Sad....

Ebertfest Begins

Ebertfest 11 kicks off tonight and I am both extremely excited for it, and can't wait for it to be over. It has been a lot of work organizing coverage for Buzz, but I think it is all going to turn out really well. If you are interested, keep checking the217.com throughout the weekend for constant updates.

Covering a festival like this will be great experience as an editor. It will also be the last big thing I do as Movies and TV Editor, so I want to do it right. I will have to employ all the skills I have learned at work and in class to make this run smoothly.

Here is a schedule of what Ebertfest looks like this year. Not really any standouts like in particular years, but I am EXTREMELY excited about Let the RIght One In.

	WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22
	7:00 pm	Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, The Director's Cut (225 min)	Michael Wadleigh, Director Dale Bell, Producer
	THURSDAY, APRIL 23
	1:30 pm	My Winnipeg (80 min)	Guy Maddin, Director
	4:00 pm	Chop Shop (84 min)	Ramin Bahrani, Director
	8:30 pm	Trouble The Water (NR; 96 min)	Tia Lessin, Director, Producer Carl Deal, Director, Producer Kimberly & Scott Roberts
	FRIDAY, APRIL 24
	1:30 pm	Begging Naked (80 min)	Karen Gehres, Director
	4:00 pm	The Last Command (88 min)	Alloy Orchestra
	8:30 pm	Frozen River (R; 97 min)	Courtney Hunt, Director Misty Upham, Actor
	SATURDAY, APRIL 25
	11:00 am	The Fall (R; 117 min)	Catinca Untaru, Actor
	2:30 pm	Sita Sings The Blues (82 min)	Nina Paley, Director, Animator, etc.
	6:30 pm	Nothing But The Truth (R; 108 min)	Rod Lurie, Director Matt Dillon, Actor
	9:30 pm	Let The Right One In (R; 114 min)	Carl Molinder, Producer
	SUNDAY, APRIL 26
	Noon	Baraka (NR; 96 min)	Mark Magidson, Producer Ron Fricke, Director

Anybody planning on seeing ay movies?

Wikipedia

Lecture on Monday brought up the debate on whether or not Wikipedia is a reliable source for information.  Now, I love Wikipedia.  I spend way too much time looking up any random little thing I can think of.  The amount I have learned from Wikipedia is incredible, plus, I am not super awesome at Jeopardy.  

As for Wikipedia's credibility, I used to agree that it wasn't extremely reliable, but then I found this story: http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

A study found that Wikipedia is just as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica , and this makes me excited.  

While you can still find ridiculous things on Wikipedia, the fact that the information is almost as factual as the encyclopedia is a step in the right direction in making wikipedia a valiable source.

Hmm..maybe I just love the internet too much.

Moral Issues with Editing

My research for our paper due Monday has had me reading a lot about moral issues that come up with editing.  Not making up stories, sources and plagiarizing are all the main  issues - most of this seems obvious, but people still seem to want to bend the rules.

My research is actually crossing over to my work life, as I am having a problem with some moral issues with a few of my writers.  I won't describe the problem in detail because I am still investigating it, but it has been causing me a lot of unnecessary stress.  

One of the biggest things I have learned about being an editor is that you can not be afraid to be confrontational.  One of my biggest flaws is I am not a very confrontational person, about anything.  I hate to offend and I hate doing uncomfortable things like confronting my writers about things.  I quickly had to realize that it is not possible for me to make everybody happy, and in the end, not everybody is going to like me, and I am just going to have to deal with that. 

The word guerrilla (or guerilla) really confused me today.  I wrote it in my cut line for the photo of Jacob Zuma and just trusted Word in its spelling.  I put "guerilla," and got back the I misspelled it.  Words should have one spelling.  In a language like English that is already confusing enough with homonyms, multiple spellings of words should not happen.  English would be a super confusing language to learn if my first language happened to be Spanish or something.    

Internet Headlines

After class on Monday, where we discussed internet headlines and keywords, I started investigating headlines used on the217.com. I wanted to see what keywords brought in the most hits to stories, and how people were finding their way to our site.

the217 has a surprisingly addictive statistics page that shows number of hits per article per day. Since discovering this feature, I have spent WAY too much time looking up random articles I have written or looking at what articles get the most hits on the website.

To my surprise, an article that is in the top five most visited articles everyday is the Beverly Hills Chihuahua review that one of my writers wrote back in October, 2008. Now, why is a review that old ALWAYS in our top 5? I do not believe that that many people care about that movie.

The only reason I can think that it gets that many hits is because of the headline, "Disney meets Paris Hilton." People searching for Disney, or Paris Hilton, will eventually find that article. Certain headlines can increase traffic dramatically.

Other extremely popular articles include the one on pegging (look it up at your own risk) and the buzz's most anticipated tv of 2009.

Man...I love the internet.