It's happening again.
I try to keep my bookmarks list clean and tidy, sorted into appropriate folders and pruned of the errant entries resulting from stray keystrokes. As you probably now, I also collect theatre related URLs. And occasionally these start to collect in the corners of my favorites list, awaiting a sorting.
Here's a batch of some of the most recently accumulated URLs -- not necessarily the most deserving, but at least of some interest.
Once upon a time I made some suggestions as to how one might go about finding reviews online. In my never-ending quest to find them "the easy way" (hardy-har-har), I stumbled on a few sites that purport to help. We checked their article searching capabilities with two terms: "Harelik," searching for articles about our friend and collaborator, Mark Harelik (although we would have been happy with any Harelik who showed up); "Hairspray," hoping to pull up articles on the musical which opened last month on Broadway; and, "Dead Man Walking," looking for reviews of the new opera which opened at the New York City Opera the evening before we did our searches (not its debut, however; it originally opened last year in San Francisco).
DailyNewspaper.co.uk is a site comprised of links to thousands of newspapers worldwide and -- what else? -- Nokia cellphone ringtones! Users will find it more value as a portal to the newspapers' sites than as a place to search for news stories -- I typed "bbc" into the "Headline Search" box and all of the results were stories from the Washington Post. But as a quick way to search for links to official newspaper sites around the world this is a nice, glitzy alternative to NewsDirectory.com's staid but more extensive collection. (I can't vouch for the quality of the ringtones either, not having a supported phone; but the "picture messages" seem pretty good....)
Headline Search for "Harelik" got no results.
Headline Search for "Hairspray" got no results.
Headline Search for "dead man walking" got 8 results,
none appropriate.
Billing themselves as "The Web's first FREE Article Search," Find Articles is a good place to head -- if you know that your article appears in one of the specific magazines searched by Find Articles. The magazines number more than 300 and articles are included starting in 1993. (For a list of "Arts & Entertainment" publications they search, click here.) According to the site, "FindArticles is a content-distribution partnership between LookSmart, which provides the search infrastructure, and the Gale Group, which provides the published editorial content." Unfortunately if you're looking for an article that appears outside of this group, you're out of luck.
Search for "Harelik" pulled up one article and six
reviews, all from Variety.
Search for "Hairspray" got 125 results, 3 about the
musical (the rest were about the original film and/or its creator,
John Waters).
Search for "dead man walking" got 187 results, 12 of
which were regarding the opera, but none of which were about the
NYCO production.
NewsBlip searches a varying number of news websites -- the total number is not specified, but they say "we're constantly adding additional, high-quality sources." Entertainment sources seem to be limited to the AP and E!, but not confining a search to the "Entertainment" category will get results from a larger number of sources. By the way, NewsBlip is a Matt Jensen project.
Search for "Harelik" got no results.
Search for "Hairspray" got three general Broadway results
from Yahoo! News - AP Entertainment.
Search for "dead man walking" got five less-than-valid
results (everything from reports on the Middle East to an article
entitled "Why do cell phones make us stupid?").
Next week: More links!
Originally published at Suite101.com Theatre, 9/17/02
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