About Middle-earth News
Middleearth.news is the sister site to bestofmiddleearthnews.com.
Where the Best Of site is looking back and showcasing once more some of the fantastic articles that were posted in the heyday of the original Middle-earth News website, middleearth.news is looking ahead for the fans of today, once again bringing together a little team with an all-women core to remember and focus on the fun and the joy and the excitement that Middle-earth brings us.
The original Middle-earth News website may have diminished and gone into the west, but we're fortunate enough to have the support of some of the core members of the original Middle-earth News team, including past directors and assistant directors, as we explore the future of what a fan-focused news site looks like nowadays.
One thing we want to be sure to do is to h/t to the mother of Middle-earth News, who started out with just a Twitter account and subsequently brought the website and everything else beyond that into being. None of us would have ever come together without you, so definitely go and check out what Arwen is up to now, there's some very big things that might surprise you.
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The Internet and the world is a very different place to how it was in 2011, so we think its important to talk about our values and what our priorities for this site are.
Middle-earth joy
Our priority is to focus on the joy, the excitement, the euphoria, the happiness that Middle-earth brings us and to write about things that bring those feelings. We can always find something good in everything in Middle-earth, but if we ever fail to, then we just won't write about it. There's plenty of people making takedowns, critiques, and hate bait, but we're not doing that here.
Fans, fans, fans
We love seeing fans' unrestrained enjoyment of the world of Middle-earth: passion projects, cosplays, makes, micro-detail commentaries, art, comedy, music, we love seeing things that are created just for the fun of it. Writing for those fans but also about those fans is what this website is most about.
No monetisation
We're non-commercial to a T; no advertising, no sponsorships, no partnerships, no subscriptions. Middleearth.news and bestofmiddleearthnews.com will always stay that way. If we ever write about something that can be purchased, it will be from a fan-made microbusiness, generally only just one person behind it. Lots of other websites exist for you to enjoy discussions about big business merch and products; its just not something that we're going to do.
Inclusiveness
Middle-earth is already vast and wide and is constantly growing; there's room for everybody. Books, movies, TV shows, radio plays, fanfilms, podcasts, gaming, art...wherever you find your Middle-earth joy is great. There is no one true way to be a fan, there is no TrueFan™, there is no exclusion here. Do you find genuine joy in Middle-earth? That's it, you're in.
Posting
Our posting policy is "we'll post something when there's something to post"! Not for us the swiftness of the 3 runners, we're much more ent-like in our approach to the latest news. We'd much prefer to write a good post than a fast post! We might be a long way behind the times on a topic, but we get there. This is a passion project for us, but we have to fit it in around life responsibilities and so we won't always be able to post as much as we would wish to.
This isn't a place for actor news, or celebrity rumours, or wild speculation disguised as fact.
No Generative AI
Generative AI remains a hot topic and our position is a very simple "No, that's not for us". That's just for us and our website, we're not dictating to anyone else, only declaring our own position. We can't promise that we won't sometimes be fooled, especially if someone disingenuously passes off something from GenAI as their own creation, but our aim is not to include it at all.
Social Media
We are kinda on social media, but our presence there is fairly experimental also; it is 2026 after all. Our policy is be kind and if we encounter someone who is unable to reciprocate then we delete, block and move on. Its not personal, we're just not here to absorb someone else's upset for them.
We're going to be figuring out exactly how we'll use our social media accounts as we go, but if you'd like to follow along as we work all that out you can find us being active on Instagram and BlueSky; we might yet pop up again on Facebook and YouTube as well, but we're not planning to actively be using them right now. If you see a Middle-earth News account being active on any other platform than those right now its not us.
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We're excited to be going on an adventure with this new website. We've got no idea where we'll end up or even what the road looks like around the next bend, but we hope that people will enjoy reading and that our site will enhance people's enjoyment of Middle-earth as they discover something new to them.
We're curious, we've stepped on to the road and we've memorised the song of Tom Bombadil in case our need is near us.
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Heather, Daisy, Blossom & Primrose, your Middle-earth News websites team