Just a little congratulatory self-pat on the back here: I emailed Roger Ebert a couple weeks ago, after one of his 'answer man' columns was closely related to an article I wrote for Newsvine. (Original article here.) I included the text of said article in the email and he responded and inquired as to whether it would be okay to re-publish it on his website. (His words: "This is right on the mark.") I of course said "okay" after a quick check with the Newsvine team. (Actually, that's not true. I said "okay" and then thought to myself: "Oh shit, I should probably clear that with the Newsvine team.") They were (as usual) very responsive and gave me the okay to do so. (They actually informed me that we own the content that we write for Newsvine and that I could do what I like with it.)
A couple of things: The article actually states that I'm from Santa Monica, CA... I wish. I'm from Shawnee, KS. (Well, not "from" but living here. I grew up in Marion, IN.) Newsvine is mentioned, but the links seem to be broken. It also mentions free registration because this was published before Newsvine went live. I just noticed it today but I think it's been up for a couple of days.
I've since emailed Roger to thank him and also to point out the small errors. I don't really care about the geographic relocation at all but it would be nice if the links worked. (Both for Newsvine and for me.) At any rate, he's fixed errors that I've alerted him to before so I don't doubt that these will be fixed as well.
Pretty small potatoes, really... but I'm a huge fan of Ebert's reviews so i couldn't be happier to have written something that he found to be worthy.
**Update**
I live in Shawnee, KS again. (The errors have been fixed.) The links were removed, but Newsvine is still mentioned.