Comped scribblers the bane of conferences

[Bill Stewart]

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...