NYTimes.com Announces Reader Predictions Sweepstakes for Academy Award

NYTimes.com Announces Reader Predictions Sweepstakes for Academy Awards-R-; Chance to Win Dream Vacation to London, Hollywood or California's Central Coast Wine Country

    Business Editors

    NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 22, 2005--NYTimes.com announced today the launch of its "Reader Predictions: Award Winners" sweepstakes as part of its coverage of this year's Academy Awards(R). Readers can predict the winners in six categories of the Academy Awards(R) for a chance to win a dream vacation to one of three nominated-film settings: London, England, the setting of "Finding Neverland;" Hollywood, CA, the setting of "The Aviator;" or California's Central Coast wine country, the setting of "Sideways." One winner will be selected from among all participants in a random drawing following the Academy Awards(R) ceremony on February 27.
    Current results for the "Reader Predictions" sweepstakes are posted on NYTimes.com/Oscars and updated every 15 minutes to provide a current snapshot of which nominees are leading the "Reader Predictions" race. As of this morning, NYTimes.com readers had predicted the following winners:

--	Best Picture: The Aviator
--	Best Director: Martin Scorsese
--	Actor in a leading role: Jamie Foxx
--	Actress in a leading role: Hilary Swank
--	Actor in a supporting role: Morgan Freeman
--	Actress in a supporting role: Cate Blanchett

    "The Oscars section brings movie coverage to life by combining high-quality journalism and criticism with multimedia packages such as our signature audio slideshows," said Leonard Apcar, editor in chief, NYTimes.com. "In keeping with the site's overall strategy, the Movies section, including our Oscars coverage, allows our engaged and knowledgeable users both to share information by rating films and writing their own reviews, and to deepen their relationship with our critics through features like A.O. Scott's Movie Minutes and online Q&A's with Manohla Dargis."

    Other features and tools include:

    -- Rate and Review, which allows users to both rate movies based
    on a five-star system, and to write their own reviews for all
    feature films ever released. Scores for each movie are
    averaged so that users can see the all-time highest-rated
    films, as well as the leaders among the films in current
    release.

    (http://www.nytimes.com/readersreviews/movies/highlyrated/alltime/ index.html)

    -- The Critics' Ballots, a multimedia feature narrated by The
    Times's film critics Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott and Stephen
    Holden. They discuss their predictions for the Oscars and
    offer their opinions on films and stars that did not earn
    Academy Award nominations.

    -- Dedicated Oscars 2005 RSS feed with links to Times articles
    and features about the Oscars race. (www.nytimes.com/rss)

    -- Movie trailers of all the nominated films, and slideshows of
    the Best Actor and Best Actress nominees.

    -- Movie Forums where readers can discuss and debate the merits
    of their Oscar picks.

    (http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/movi es/oscars/index.html)

    -- "Questions For...," where The Times's film critic Manohla
    Dargis answers readers questions about the Oscars.

    (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/readersopinions/dargis-question s.html)

    NYTimes.com makes available thousands of free archived New York Times movie reviews dating back to 1980, as well as free reviews for all of the films in the New York Times's "Guide to Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made."
    (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/1000best.html)

    The movie section's other tools and services include extensive director, cast and production information from AMG's All Movie Guide; improved showtimes listings searchable by title, city or ZIP code and online ticketing from MovieTickets.com; weekend box office results from Nielsen EDI.
    Traffic and advertising revenues are strong and growing. In January the section had 1.9 million unique visitors and 12.9 million pageviews. Revenues from studio advertising increased 131% year-over-year, and it is one of the fastest-growing sections for NYTimes.com.
    The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with 2004 revenues of $3.3 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 16 other newspapers, eight network-affiliated television stations, two New York City radio stations and more than 40 Web sites, including NYTimes.com and Boston.com. For the fifth consecutive year, the Company was ranked No. 1 in the publishing industry in Fortune's 2005 list of America's Most Admired Companies. The Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

    (Due to their length, the URLs may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

--30--NF/ny*

CONTACT: The New York Times Company Kathy J. Park, 212-556-4059 kpark@nytimes.com

KEYWORD: NEW YORK INDUSTRY KEYWORD: PUBLISHING ENTERTAINMENT MOTION PICTURES SOURCE: The New York Times Company

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