411mania.com
230px
A screenshot of the home page
Type of site
Pop Culture News
Available inEnglish
OwnerAshish Pabari
Created byAshish Pabari
URL411mania.com
Launched1996
Current statusActive

411mania is a pop culture and entertainment news website founded and run by Ashish Pabari. The website is dedicated to news, gossip and opinion columns relating to film, music, professional wrestling, mixed martial arts, video games and politics and combines news stories, columns and reviews for its content.

411mania.com receives 15-20 million hits a month, and has been mentioned in The Boston Globe[2], the New York Times[3] and CNN[4] as well as being cited as a news source by WWE.com [5], Yahoo Sports[6], Variety[7] and other media outlets.[8]

History

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411mania.com was founded by Ashish Pabari in 1996 as 411wrestling. The site began as a webhosted site on Geocities[9] and as interest in professional wrestling grew with the Monday Night Wars between the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling, the site's readership grew. As it did, the site moved servers and eventually settled in its own domain.

411wrestling shifted their core focus in 2002, expanding from just professional wrestling to include sections for video games and action figures, and then later movies, music, comics and politics. The site re-launched in 2003 as 411mania, with editor Jonathan Widro was promoted to managing partner. Widro departed the site in 2004 with several other writers to found another site, resulting in a change of site organization. The site had a sports section as well, which shifted to focus purely on boxing in March of 2009. The boxing zone was shut down in January of 2011 while the politics section was shut down in March of 2013.

In September of 2014 411mania launched a new site design, updating to a Wordpress format.

Organization

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411mania.com is organized into different sections (or "zones") depending on the facet of pop culture covered. The current zones as of October 2011 are:

  • Movies/TV - Covering film, television and entertainment gossip. Includes news, gossip, film and home video reviews, news reports and opinion columns.
  • Music - Covering popular music with a focus on pop music, rock and rap/hip-hop. Includes news, gossip, album reviews, concert reports, news reports and opinion columns.
  • Wrestling - Covering professional wrestling with coverage of WWE, TNA and independent promotions. Includes news, live show reports, news reports, opinion columns and DVD reviews.
  • Games - Covering video games and entertainment technology across multiple platforms. Includes news, game reviews[10], news reports and opinion columns.
  • MMA - Covering mixed martial arts including Ultimate Fighting Championship, Strikeforce, Bellator and independent promotions. Includes news, show reports, DVD reviews and opinion columns.

Regular features

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Notable writers

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  • Former writer Scott Keith is a published author, with five published books on professional wrestling.[11]
  • Former reporter George Sirois is a published author, having independently published the novels From Parts Unknown and Excelsior. [12]
  • Independent professional wrestler Terra Calaway is a former columnist for the Wrestling Zone.
  • Former Wizard Magazine writer Ben Morse wrote as a contributor for the Comics Zone until the zone's closure in 2004.
  • Former Wrestling Zone contributor Scott Fowler is a professional wrestler who has worked matches for WWE and TNA.
  • Wrestling and Movie Zone contributor Shawn Lealos is a contributing writer for Yahoo[13] and Examiner.com.
  • Wrestling contributor Greg DeMarco worked as a promoter, announcer and on-stage character for Arizona independent promotions Impact Zone Wrestling and Rising Phoenix Wrestling.

References

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  1. ^ "411mania.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2011-10-22.
  2. ^ "Online Finds". Boston.com. Retrieved 2011-10-22.
  3. ^ "The Morning Skate: Reports of Fighting's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2013-01-27.
  4. ^ "'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' shakes up cast". CNN.com. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
  5. ^ "McMahon to give away the "Mon-eyy"". WWE.com. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
  6. ^ "Kendall Grove vs. Jason Day at UFC 96". Yahoo Sports. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
  7. ^ "Hope' thesp backed off from role at first". Variety.com. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
  8. ^ "Christopher Nolan's 'Inception' Revealed And 'National Treasure' Returns In Today's Dailies". MTV.com. Retrieved 2011-10-22.
  9. ^ "About 411mania.com". 411mania.com. Retrieved 2011-10-22.
  10. ^ "411mania Site Information". GameRankings.com. Retrieved 2011-10-22.
  11. ^ "Books by Scott Keith". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2011-10-23.
  12. ^ "Books by George Sirois". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2011-10-23.
  13. ^ "Shawn S. Lealos' Contributor Page". Yahoo.com. Retrieved 2011-10-23.
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Category:Internet properties established in 1996 Category:Entertainment websites Category:American websites