News Slowdown: An Explanation
(source: starwarsfanworks.com, 10-01-07)

Frequent visitors to Fanworks have likely noticed a distinct slowdown recently in our news reporting. We wanted to take a moment to briefly explain why this has taken place. There are a number of factors.

First, lately, there simply hasn't been much news to report from the Star Wars fan audio genre. Barring new releases, news has not been particularly fast-paced in the last couple of months.

Second, speaking of new releases, the number of news bytes required to keep people up to date on the genre has steadily declined with our new policy of not reporting on most new regularly-scheduled releases (since all of that is covered in so many other places on the site already).

Third, the number of active Star Wars fan audio projects, including radio shows, seems to be decreasing. At present, we have almost as many radio shows currently on hiatus with uncertain futures as we do active shows, and many of the "active" shows are on the verge of being considered on hiatus themselves, due to a lack fo recent releases. Less active teams means less news to report.

Finally, all of the overall genre news slowdown has actually helped to take some of the pressure off of another reason why news would have already started to slow down lately. As you may know, the daily running of Fanworks is essentially a one-man job. Well, that "one man" is now at a very hectic point in his life and career (starting to use a new statewide curriculum in his teaching, which requires revising the entire year's lessons from scratch; a new second paid position, revamping the school's website; starting grad school after five years away from continuing his own education beyond a bachelor's degree; work on his timeline's 10th Anniversary release; and, of course, holding down a healthy relationship). All in all, free time for the site's owner is rather scarce right now, so updates are tending to come in quick bursts, about once a week, and when those happen, if there is no major news of note, the news page is unlikely to be updated.

So, all in all, it's just an overall slowdown in news, both in terms of newsworthy events and news coverage, but we will keep you abreast of the major happenings in the genre, as always, and all new releases can always be found on the new release listing.