MTV's True Life has issued a casting call for furries aged 16-25, and potential cast members are already posting about it. [tip: sohjin]

True Life is is billed as following "unique persons in their everyday situations, and [documenting] the problems and goals they face." Their most recent episodes were "I'm A Chubby Chaser", "I Can't Please My Parents", "I'm A Sex Offender" and "I Have Diabetes".

True Life previously covered the fandom in infamous "Sex2k" segment Plushies and Furries.

There are many ways a journalist can cover a local event, add a little humor, and still leave the reader with information and some chuckles. However, in its coverage of a campaign to promote giving homes to animals in shelters, one NBC employee became completely enamored by the first image that popped into her head from the name of the campaign, and ran with it until all useful content of the coverage was forgotten in the slew of 'edgy' comedy.

Nat Geo sees fursuiting as a fit subject for Taboo, according to this three-minute preview:

The program spins furries as "people who enjoy wearing animal costumes in their adult life", calling the behaviour "bizarre", and quoting regular media commentator Dr. Sudeepta Varma:

Furries can be considered greatly taboo because we look at people dressing up in furry costumes as child's play, and it's something that should have been left in the past, and not brought into adulthood.

Update (24 Dec): The episode is to air January 3 at 9PM Eastern, and again at midnight. [cloudchaser_s/furrymedia]

One fursuiter profiled on the show is Nuka (Courtney Plante), a social psychology graduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

Chicago radio station WBEZ's Jason Marck and Eilee Heikenen-Weiss today broadcast their experience of MFF 2011 on morning program Eight Forty-Eight. [tip: Iggy & Idlewild]

The eight-minute segment focused on the motivations for fursuiting, and featured interviews with Woody, Atara, Ford Shepherd and convention chair Takaza J. Wolf. Other topics included whether furry was a fetish, and the convention charity, which left with over $18,500 (video).

So a huge part of it is this kind of kid-like, unbridled joy. [...] The whole thing felt like good clean fun ... there's an overall air of [...] innocence, inclusiveness, belonging ...

Jason said he found the fandom by accident, stumbling across WikiFur while looking up Japanese comic books. MFF attracted 2600 fans this year, including 574 parade fursuiters.

Sweden's TV3 is currently showing Svenskars Hemliga Liv - a program on the secret life of Swedes [in Swedish], featuring segments on a group of steampunk fans, a Final Fantasy cosplayer, and a fursuiter from Örebro meeting fellow fans for the first time. [tip: Emprah]

Update (15 Dec): A streaming version is available for the next few days. The furry segments are at the start, 22:40, 28:20 and 41:14.

For this month, I’ve kept the tags to ten. Hopefully they catch the furry zeitgeist.

I wasn’t as proactive as I thought I would be, and I’m pretty sure I missed a couple posted during the first of September, so apologies there. Otherwise, here was last month’s Newsbytes.

The Onion's A.V. Club has published a retrospective review of Omaha the Cat Dancer, recently re-released as a recompiled set. [Tmachine]

While Noel Murray notes the sex scenes on the NBM covers "border on the gratuitous", he praised the comic for rising above its steamy origins:

Omaha, on the other hand, became less about the sex and more about story over time—even after the book migrated to Eros. [During] the series’ heyday, Omaha sensitively explored devotion and jealousy and hypocrisy, via the ever-shifting relationships of the main characters. It was no masterpiece, but it was entertaining and more fun to read that about 95 percent of what was on the shelves at the time.

Reuters has published a short video from last weekend's Eurofurence, focused on fursuiters.

The segment includes a clip from Sesame Street's Jim Martin (this year's guest of honour), who explained furry fandom as an expression of animal spirit, saying that "a lot of us grew up with cartoons, and comic books, and loving our pets."

One wolf emphasized the open-minded nature of the fandom, noting that "you can't run around in a giant dog costume without a good sense of humour."

Pittsburgh radio personality Jim Krenn spent some time with furries at this year's Anthrocon.

The message from 102.5 WDVE's co-host? Furries like to party. (As do the production staff)

Fanboy Confessional: The Furry Edition by Markham Street Films is a very good, well-balanced, objective and positive review of furry fandom.

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter recently published a commentary (translated by Ora) of Alfred Holmgren's interview of a literally diehard Sonic fan in gaming magazine Fienden.

At the center of the debate is French woman Alix Henriol, obsessed with Sonic since 2000:

I could have given anything to have become a robot or a character in a game.

The piece, posted on the newspaper's website, described Alix's desire to become cryogenically frozen until scientists can transfer her consciousness to a console, while referencing cosplay, erotic fan fiction and fantasy sex toy manufacturer Bad Dragon.

Lights!  Cameras!  FURRIES!  Canadian cable television network Space has launched a new documentary mini-series, "Fanboy Confessional" (from Markham Street Films) exploring the various science-fiction fandoms, such as comic books, LARPers, and yes, even furries.

While the series premieres in Canada on July 13 at 10PM Eastern, there is no word yet as to whether it will be shown on other sci-fi channels, such as NBCUniversal's Syfy.

Read more: Fanboy Confessional on Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo and Twitter.

Update (1 Aug): See dronon's review of Fanboy Confessional: The Furry Edition

Another year has come and gone for Anthrocon's 4,400 attendees. But what did the media make of it all?

Local stations WTAE (video, slides) and WPXI (video) gave mostly superficial coverage, while the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (photos) went into a little more depth. [Higgs Raccoon, baracudaboy, Wild`Bill`TX]

The convention was also picked up by Reuters, who posted a short piece based on organizers' statements.

In a story likely to be repeated in 2012, furries were blamed for booking out local hotels. Conversely, Anthrocon's CEO complained of a lack of hotels, telling the Post-Gazette that "when downtown hotels became fully booked in mid-May, [registration] dropped off dramatically." This helps explain this year's growth rate of 3.8%, compared to double-digit increases in prior years. (Somehow the parade count rose over 19% to 854.)

Meanwhile, 10^th St. sub mogul Cory Robinson reported two months of business in five days:

We love furries. They're just people having fun, and they don't hurt anybody.

Could furry be holding your love life back? Los Angeles television producers appear to think so, judging by a recent casting call for an unnamed show (seemingly Saralane's Reality World):

Looking for Vampires, Wolves, furries, adult babies, trekkies, comic book lovers, body builders, Wiccans, puppetears (sic.), roller chicks, chubby lovers, ... Are you single and genuinely looking to find true love, but something is holding you back??

Researchers at the University of California, Davis might disagree; their 2007 furry survey found 'about half' the respondents were in a relationship – 76% involving other furries.