Looking to create a team to post industry news - more info within!

[sothis]

I've been debating the idea of putting an industry news section here in the forum - it would include things like series announcements, interesting stories, etc. Posts would need to have a source listed, and would preferably be editorialized (even if brief) in your own words. We can hash out a format once the section is created.

Is anyone out there interested? Ideally, the primary members of the team would either be in Japan/up to speed on Japanese news sites or publications, or can read Japanese and read the same news sites/publications from afar. Additional folks would be useful as well even with a solid grasp of the English language, as you could summarize stories found elsewhere if needed and applicable to our community.

This is still brainstorm mode, so if you have any thoughts, feel free to chime in.

[JacobM]

Although I like the idea of a simple industry news sections, I'm not sure a full fledged one would be useful. I get all my news (anime and otherwise) through RSS feeds. Even with just a couple anime sites on my list, there's a lot of overlap between stories so its only useful for me to follow the biggest one I know of (ANN) and a couple other more specific ones that fill in gaps. As you mentioned, it would be best for the news team to be able to read Japanese to keep on top of things, but even so, a broad general news section might retread a lot of ground.

I do think there's a niche that this site could fill in this regard that I haven't seen anywhere else. That is, very specific categories (like series announcements, cancellations, other concrete stuff) that could be used more as a reference than news. This could include some 'editorialization,' but wouldn't need it (for instance, there could just be a section of "announced titles" with their names, planned release season, and a link to the announcement).

Never one to knock ideas that others would find useful, I just wouldn't have a "need" for another general anime news site.

[VivisQueen]

I'm worried about overlap too. There is not that much anime news out there that we'd ever end up being distinctive. I like the suggestion of AP maybe focusing narrowly on releases.

[coffeebreath]

If a-p had news integration it'd be my one-stop place to go. Random members here already post threads for big news or update new sequel/license topics, so why not have a dedicated and more thorough team for it?

[Tyranid5]

Originally Posted by coffeebreath

If a-p had news integration it'd be my one-stop place to go. Random members here already post threads for big news or update new sequel/license topics, so why not have a dedicated and more thorough team for it?

@JacobM & VivisQueen - One of the main advantages is this ^

Not to compete against ANN, just have places so that A-P users can discuss these. And it gives just one more reason to check A-P. Plus I go to ANN a lot, but I usually go check like the MAL News Board because 50%-70% of the news on ANN I really don't care about at all.

[coffeebreath]

ANN is not a well-structured site. Trying to find the stories you're interested in among all the other random stuff is annoying. I visit it on a daily basis but only for entries and if I notice something I wanna read on the sidebar I'll check it out.

Anyhow, I hope some of the Japanese-based A-Pers go for this to get the ball rolling!

[RisikaFox]

While the possibility of overlap could be seen as a problem for some, I don't see it. This site has a user-friendly layout that would make it easy to discuss news, not just read about it.

I'm always hesitant to respond to a news article on ANN because I honestly wouldn't know where to find it later, and once items are off the main news page, they're very difficult to find.

[mjf314]

Maybe it can be like a cross between ANN and Digg. The news team writes 5-10 articles per day, and then people vote for their favorite articles. Then you can see a list of the most-voted articles of the day/week/month so it's easy to find the interesting ones.

[skankfish]

In terms of things about Japan, as opposed to anime, I may be able to offer you something. However it would perhaps not be the up-to-date information it sounds like you're after. With the exception of the current situation here, we don't really cover the news. If you want something about Japan in general/some kind of specific niche, then we might be able to contribute/cross post something.

I'd like to make something work between my site and this one, so if you have any ideas of how to make that happen, we'd certainly like to hear it.

[skankfish]

One thing we have we may be of semi-related interest to you is a series of posts called "Destination". The idea is to cover relatively unknown things to do around Japan for those who want something off the beaten track.

At the moment we've only published three entries in the series, but we have three more scheduled to be published next month. We also have various posts on transport methods - train passes etc. both already published, and queued for next week (or the week after, can't remember).

I know it isn't news, just throwing it out there. Have a look through the archive pages at the top and see if anything appeals.