Drexel University Launches DragonFire, New Interactive Online Magazine

Business Wire, June 29, 2005

PHILADELPHIA -- Last graph of release: website should be www.dfire.org (sted www.dragonFire.com).

The corrected release reads:

DREXEL UNIVERSITY LAUNCHES DRAGONFIRE, NEW INTERACTIVE ONLINE MAGAZINE

Drexel University's Pennoni Honors College is gearing up to launch DragonFire, a bi-weekly online publication that will combine digital technology and traditional journalism in a new interactive magazine. The publication will feature columns by renowned experts in their field, articles from reporters stationed around the world, translations of requested articles and the opportunity to listen to audio of original articles and their translations in eight languages. DragonFire will post its debut issue on July 5.

Dr. Mark Greenberg, dean of the Pennoni Honors College brought in Amy Webb, former Newsweek and Wall Street Journal reporter, to help develop a free online innovative publication.

The publication is the only interactive journalism site available free online. Superficially it can be compared to Salon or Slate, but with added features such as free subscriptions, no pop-up ads, no banner ads or need to scroll. The user-friendly site offers readers the opportunity to listen to authors read their submissions via clicking on mp3 links. Under the Drexel-DragonFire Translation Cooperative a group of Drexel student volunteers whose second language is English will translate submissions into various languages including Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, Greek and Turkish.

DragonFire is working with more than 100 established print, radio and video journalists, graphic artists and photographers from 30 countries who have contributed to such publications as Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Times, National Public Radio, PBS, CNN, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, The Economist, Time, Budget Travel, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Gourmet and other major U.S. networks.

A native of Chicago, Webb traveled to China and later settled in Japan during the 1990s. She served as a writer for The Indianapolis Star, the Asian Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, and has contributed to a number of publications including The New York Times, the Economist.com, Glamour and Yoga International. She speaks fluent Japanese and some Mandarin Chinese.

Users can visit the site every day to find something new to read, play or download. For more information, visit www.dfire.org.