It happens dozens of times a day in the newsroom. Someone discovers a video, comes across a news break or reads a new blog outburst.

"You gotta see this," they shout to colleagues. From idle gossip to a fact checked to news that must not be ignored, journalists spend a lot of time at computers and have become familiar with websites that they check weekly, daily, hourly.

Here are some favorite sites of Star Tribune arts-and-entertainment writers in various genres.

Giant music geek

There's a shelf of encyclopedic, fact-filled rock books collecting dust in the Star Tribune newsroom (and most newsrooms), and the reason is Allmusic.com. They may not all admit it, but music critics use the site daily. It's a reliable resource for verifying facts, far more so than Wikipedia. Whether you're looking for the proper spelling of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," Mary J. Blige's age or what year Minor Threat split, you'll find it there.

For those of you unburdened by facts, Allmusic.com also is a great place to turn before you buy an album -- not so much current releases, but so-called catalog discs. It has reviews and star ratings for most of the major efforts in an artist's discography. Checkmarks indicate the best one or two albums to buy if you're just starting to dive into a band's collection. Nine times out of 10, the staff is right-on. Local examples: Start with "Tim" or "Let It Be" for the Replacements; skip Prince's "Come" or "Rainbow Children." Call it your on-call music geek. At: www.allmusic.com.

Chris Riemenschneider

The aggregator

I check in each weekday at artsjournal, an arts-journalism aggregator that digests about 200 English-speaking newspapers mainly in the United States, Britain and Canada. Founded by Doug McLennan in 1999, it's run by him and assistant news editor Sam Bergman, a violist with the Minnesota Orchestra. The site is timely and easy to navigate, with stories updated twice each weekday and classed by subject: theater, music, dance, visual (art), people and ideas. I can tell quickly what interests me because the site neatly summarizes stories that it links to. It also features posts by high-profile bloggers such as CultureGrrl Lee Rosenbaum, who has written for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, classical music writer Greg Sandow, Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal and influential visual-art writer Tyler Green. At: www.artsjournal.com.

Rohan Preston

Movies without mercy

Ingesting eight to 10 movies a week, most of them mediocre, is a media diet that tends to discourage. A reviewer may be tempted to lower his standards so he doesn't sound like a total grouch or an insufferable elitist. (Gene Shalit never gets hate mail.) Whenever I feel my resolve weakening, I visit Pajiba, a website whose witty and merciless critics offer "scathing reviews for bitchy people." They deliver creative, insightful and energetic public spankings to hacks, and sing the praises of worthy work like an angelic chorus. It's a reminder of how exciting good criticism can and should be. Not only are the staff writers sharp (Dustin Rowles called "The Bourne Ultimatum"an honest to God action flick with enough adrenaline coursing through it to burst the capillaries in your eyeballs"), their readers weigh in with great stuff of their own. E-mailer Jameison put the dreadful "Underdog" in perfect perspective: "The amount of money spent on producing this sort of rubbish could save 10,000 Third World orphans." At: www.pajiba.com.

Colin Covert

The Playgoer

Garrett Eisler, an administrator and instructor at New York University, has lots of chatty stuff about the New York theater scene on this blog. For example, Eisler recently poked into the dust-up between "Gypsy" creator Arthur Laurents (who directed the new revival with Patti LuPone) and Sam Mendes, stager of the Bernadette Peters piffle a few years ago. He mused recently on Broadway grosses ("was it always news when a Broadway show recouped its investment?") and, after panning a show in the Midtown International Theatre Festival, asked, "Anyone see anything good there?" With his own musings, newsy notes and links to stuff all over the place, Eisler lets you feel a part of the New York street without actually being there. At: www.playgoer.blogspot.com.

Graydon Royce

Superheroes

Vying for the mouse clicks of geeks everywhere, Comic Book Resources and Newsarama are the Web's two titans of comic-book chatter. The former gets the edge for user-friendliness. You'll find daily news items on comics and comic-book movies, exclusive interviews and an array of staff-written reviews. Most attention is paid to superheroes, but its writers also keep up on the large number of indie comics by the likes of Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware.