Home » Jazz Articles » Contributor News » July 2007

July 2007

By Michael Ricci
July 19, 2007
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Dear fellow AAJ contributors,

We have some important information to share since our last newsletter in May. Please read on...

Useful Info and Tips

Over the past few weeks, we've compiled a handful of contributor tips that explain how certain processes work and will save the editorial staff time in preparing your articles.

USE AN EMDASH: Do not use a single dash to separate a sentence (ex: " - "), rather use a double dash ("—") with no space between the two words. The website will automatically convert the double dash to an emdash when the article is viewed by the readers.

REMOVE LEADING PARAGRAPH BREAK: Please do not open your article with a paragraph break. It alters the spacing and is always removed.

UPLOADING CD SLEEVES: Check to see if the CD sleeve exists prior to uploading your version. Click here to access the page to upload the sleeve.

CHECK YOUR ARTICLE'S PUBLISH DATE: You can check your article's publish date by going to your profile page and clicking the "View Your Pending Reviews/Articles" link under "Private Contributor Information".

SUBMISSION CONFIRMATION: When our mail server was down, we couldn't send out email confirmation messages, leading some contributors to ask if we received your article(s). If you see a a big red DRAFT notice after you click the "Submit" button, then it was submitted successfully.

COMMUNICATE WITH EDITORS: A new box on the article submission form allows you to pass along special notes or instructions to the editors.

CDs sent. More on the way!

We sent out close to 30 CD packages on July 3rd. If you were one of the recipients and haven't confirmed receipt, please email us and let us know that it arrived safe and sound. We hope to send out another round of packages next week.

If you recently filled out our Help Wanted form and haven't heard back from us, please hang tight. We'll reach out to you very soon. And thanks in advance for volunteering!

Website Additions: Teacher Finder, Musician Finder, Mouseover pop-ups...

We're always actively improving the site and have launched four new features that are worth pointing out:

TEACHER FINDER: The Teacher Finder allows students to locate teachers by geographic region, musical instrument and teaching level. You can search by a mile radius from a zip code or by city, state and country; for example, see who teaches in NYC by entering 10013 (and 20 miles) or in the Bay area by entering 94608 (and 30 miles).

MUSICIAN FINDER: We repurposed the Teacher Finder feature and created the Musician Finder. Now, musicians can connect with other musicians by region. Looking for a drummer in Indianapolis? Find one at AAJ!

MOUSEOVER POP-UP WINDOWS: The home page is our most popular page, so we're committed to its continual improvement. We just implemented a new mouseover pop-up technology that will pop-up additional information when you mouseover certain links and graphics. Have fun with it!

RELATED ARTICLES: Thanks to our friends at FreshNotes, each article and CD review page now includes a content recommendation box. Just scroll down to an article page and look for the "Related Article" box. It's accurate and should drive up website clicks (page impressions). For more about the new "Related Article" box, click here.

Meet Our Growing Editorial Staff

We'd like to recognize the efforts of the following contributors who have volunteered to help with editorial duties. Please get to know Greg Camphire, George Carr, Stanley Clarke, Henry Smith, Mark F. Turner, Gina Vodegel and Brian Yordnoff, as they are all pitching in behind the scenes and need your support.

Others like Martin Gladu, Duane Peirick, Budd Kopman, and Ed Zucker are maintaining the directories, the videos and the calendar.

Thanks you all!

Help Wanted: Musician Profile Editors

AAJ is rapidly building our Musician Center and we're looking for help from everyone to create and maintain musician profiles.

Creating profiles is fun, just ask Ed Zucker, James Nadal, Mark F. Turner and Konrad Pesch. It doesn't require a huge commitment in time and you can create and maintain them on your own schedule. You can even select your favorite artists and request editorial access to their profile. For more information on how you can become a musician profile editor, click here.

JJA Jazz Award: Six Years Straight!

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

Many thanks go out to the editors, the active contributors, the technical people and the readers who make AAJ a special jazz place on the web.

Traffic numbers for April, May and June

AAJ reached 1,365,779 visitors (44,057/day) in May 2007 and generated 5,328,193 page impressions in June 2007. May 7 marked AAJ's top traffic day ever with 48,977 visitors. Gotta love the numbers!

Interested in the numbers? Click here for 2007 year-to-date traffic.

As always, we welcome your ideas and input. As AAJ continues to grow and reach more jazz fans, musicians, educators and industry people, your support becomes even more and more important.

Thanks for reading!

Michael Ricci

P.S. Missed our previous contributor announcements? Click here to read them.

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