At 12:57 PM 08/25/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 09:38:34AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
Granted, the conference gets publicity. But, presumably, the magazine or other outlet gets readers and viewers. A two-way street, right?
Maybe. But so far, market forces have prompted few conferences to try to push journalists around and try to make this argument. I covered PFF's Aspen conference this week. If I had to pay $800, I probably wouldn't have gone.
But PFF is also a Pundit-Con - it gets its value not only from the speakers and attendees but also from the reporters who attend, and they're as important a part of the business expenses of the conference as booze and rubber chicken, and there'd probably be fewer paying attendees without them. Similarly, at PR-oriented computer conferences (Comdex et al.) that's the case, while at academic conferences (Crypto in Santa Barbara, for instance), they're not, and obviously at journalism-oriented conferences they're the target paying audience so they're not comped. I suspect Tim's objection to paying high rates for conferences where journalists are comped is partly due to the content and style of the conference...