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August 2008

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Dear fellow AAJ contributors,

It's been a while since our last announcement and we have plenty of news to share. To catch up on all the happenings since March, please read on...

  1. Contributor News Flash
  2. View Your Top Read Articles and CD Reviews
  3. Site Developments: Innovations and Expansion
  4. New Editorial Staff Members
  5. Beefing up our International Coverage
  6. CD Assignment Update
  7. Musician Timeline Editors Wanted
  8. JJA Jazz Awards and Alexa.com Rank


Contributor News Flash

You can now stay up on the very latest contributor related news by visiting the Contributor Center. See "Contributor News Flash."

View Your Top Read Articles / CD Reviews

Curious about the popularity of your older articles? Thanks to a suggestion by Jack Bowers, you can now view your most read articles and CD reviews from your contributor profile page. Once there, click the "most read" link in the right column just above the search box. Your counts are visible to you only.

Site Developments: Innovations and Expansion

  • Musician Profile Changes: We've focused on musician profile improvements for a good part of the year. Our new recommendations feature works like a charm. Check out the "If you like Wayne Shorter" list for starters. Click around—you'll find the lists surprisingly accurate.

    We've also created individual networks for each musician and plan to build on that soon. Musicians will communicate directly with their network members about concert dates, new albums, giveaways, and more. Please feel free to join as many musician networks as you like. I belong to well over 100.

    You can also view videos, photos and find valuable links on a musician profile page. Visit the Musician Center and please consider coming on board as a musician profile editor.

  • Calendar Expansion: All About Jazz has partnered with EvieSays.com, a leading event and entertainment listing company, to vastly increase the number of events actively listed at our website. More info.

  • Jazz Near You: We've added a quick and convenient way for you to access local jazz venues, festivals, radio stations, schools, teachers, musicians, and so on. Just click the "Locate!" dropdown and make your selection. You will see results within the specified miles set in your profile. More info.

  • Share: We've added a "SHARE" button to every article and news page. This all-encompassing social-bookmarking button allows you to recommend articles to Digg, Del.icio.us, MySpace, Reddit, Live, Facebook, Google, Newsvine and more. Just drag your mouse over the button and share an AAJ interview, CD review, or musician profile with your favorite bookmarking site. More info.


If you haven't explored AAJ in a while, please reacquaint yourself with the site starting with the home page.

New Editorial Staff Members

We've added several new CD review editors to the staff over the last three months and we'd like to take a moment and recognize their efforts. Their names appear at the bottom of your articles, and we'd like to thank them all for making the words at AAJ shine. So please say hello to Brooks Frank, Emily Horn, Jeff Rzepiela, Luis T. Martinez and, lastly, Aaron Basiliere from Wisconsin, who has joined us on an internship program for the summer.

New section editors include Randall Robinson (News) and Simon Jay Harper (Download of the Day). Thanks to Randall, news is more active than ever. Simon is just getting started, but plans to expand the download center.

Thanks everyone!

Beefing up our International Coverage

We're now assigning regions to our articles in an effort to bring greater recognition to our international coverage. Please select the appropriate region as it applies to future articles. Our region list includes the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Japan and the Middle East. We've started the process of associating archived articles with regions—check out our international coverage.

We'd like to dramatically expand our global coverage and readership, so if you want to cover live events, new music and so on from specific regions, please contact us. Our goal is to cover all major international festivals and to make sure that all assigned AAJers receive proper credentials and accommodations.

CD Assignment Update

We can't apologize enough for the CD assignment delays. We know it's been a very long time and many of you have made several requests. The good news is we're making steady progress on sorting out the CDs and we're close to finally sending them out. Everyone who has requested music will receive a substantial package.

Musician Timeline Editors Wanted

We're looking to create individual musician timelines starting with musicians born prior to 1950. Most notable musicians have at least a dozen musical milestones. We'd like your help in researching musician bios, breaking out the milestones, and submitting them as timeline facts. Contact me to learn more about this opportunity.

JJA Jazz Awards and Alexa.com rank

All About Jazz won its seventh consecutive Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) Award for Best Website Concentrating on Jazz—making it the top winning single category nominee since the inception of the JJA awards.

AAJ's Alexa.com rank dropped to 19,000. If you're familiar with Alexa and how it works, you know this is an amazing accomplishment. FYI: yahoo.com is #1, google.com is #2, and rollingstone.com is #2,134.

Thanks to all involved. Whether you're contributing articles, editing articles, editing sections, or offering suggestions, we're all collectively making a difference. We are the best because we have the finest collection of jazz contributors on the web.

Thanks for reading.

Michael Ricci

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