Accept no substitutes

Blooker Prize gives rise to Colby-mania

Peter Freedman who has been handing the media side of the Blooker Prize writes us, the judges, to say that the Prize and more importantly the overall winner, Colby Buzzell and his blook, My War: Killing Time in Iraq, have been getting a lot of attention. Peter sends this:

The coverage is still coming but the following are the highlights so far:

– The Blooker announcement was the lead story on Google News at least a couple of times on Monday

– There have been maybe 300 or more (?) pieces of coverage in the traditional media and several hundred blog-posts (maybe 700 or 800 so far… and counting), including one in every conceivable language and script

– It was covered by all the major news agencies: Associated Press, Reuters, AFP/Agence France Presse, Bloomberg and, in the UK, the Press Association. Plus a few that I’d never previously heard of.

– The BBC alone have now covered this year’s Blooker over 15 times on different media, including interviews with Colby on both their flagship current affairs show (“Today” on Radio 4) and their global TV channel

– It has been covered by The Times? not just by The (London) Times and Sunday Times (the latter did a big piece after the shortlist) and The New York Times but also the LA Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Seattle Times, New Orleans Times (etc), Ely Times (NV), Howell Times (UT), Centre Daily Times, Pioneer Times-Journal, Albany Times-Union, Florence and North-West Alabama Times, Brisbane Times, Contra Costa Times, Taipei Times and North Korea Times — and probably others that we’ve missed.

– The Guardian in the U.K. gave it the whole of page three + an opinion piece on May 15, having already covered it three times on its website, plus a big piece by Nick in his column for their Sunday paper, The Observer.

– Other U.S. papers, magazines and websites to have covered it include The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle (twice), Houston Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Las Vegas Sun, Miami Herald, Denver Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Forbes, Business Week, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, San Jose Mercury, abcnews.com, cbsnews.com, MSNBC.com

– Most or all of leading papers in Canada and Australia have covered it, as have:

– The International Herald Tribune

– People’s Daily and China Daily News in China

– There has also been lots coverage in all the major European countries (Germany, France, Spain, Italy), not just through Reuters
but in their leading newspapers (particularly in Italy for some reason where all the biggest newspapers reported both on the
short-list and winner announcements.)

– Media in Iran and much of the Arab world, mainly fed by Agence France Presse

– Colby has been or is going to give TV interviews to CNN, BBC News 24, CBS News TV for the History Channel? Channel 7 News on the West Coast, City TV in Toronto

– Umpteen other TV channels, large and small, at least reported the announcement, including CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News

– The Lulu Blooker Prize site has risen just under two million places in the world website rankings.

1 Comment

  1. Eli James

    Brilliant! My inbox is now exploding under the strain for all my Google alerts on the word ‘blook’. What a week!

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