Entertainment media: general coverage sites and what separates them

Entertainment media sites cover film, television, music and celebrity in one place. The format has been around as long as the web, and it has split into two kinds of site that look similar in a search result and read very differently.

The first kind is reported: it has named writers, it attends things, and when it makes a claim it says where the claim came from. The second kind is aggregated: it rewrites what the first kind published, adds a headline built for clicks, and publishes twenty times a day. Both rank. Only one is worth your time.

The quickest way to tell them apart is the byline and the sourcing. A site with no named authors, or with authors who publish fifteen pieces a day across unrelated subjects, is aggregating. A site that links out to its sources, including to competitors, is usually reporting.

Coverage in this category also dates badly. An entertainment news piece is worth reading the week it is published and rarely afterwards, so a site whose front page is full of undated articles is not being maintained, whatever the copyright line says.