<nettime> Internet Society denies press pass to Amateur Computerist

[Ronda Hauben <ronda@ais.org>]

I thought this would be of interest to nettime readers.

The Internet Society is having a conference INET'2002 in Washington DC
in the middle of June. Following is some backgound on the reporting
about the Internet by the Amateur Computerist, and the denial of
press credentials by INET'2002 to Amateur Computerist editors.

The business press is welcome at INET'2002 as press, not the online
public interest press.

>From jrh Sat Jun  1 11:14:04 2002
>Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 11:14:03 -0400 (EDT)
>From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
>Subject: ISOC denies presspass

The Amateur Computerist began covering the online world in 1988. In
September 1993 when the Wall Street Journal was going to carry one of its
first articles about the Internet, its reporter interviewed one of the
editors of the Amateur Computerist. In 1992 another editor, Michael
Hauben, was one of the founding members of the Internet Society. The AC
has covered the Internet and Internet related events in depth. Its
reporters attended and reported on INET96 and INET98. Extensive coverage
and criticism was given of ICANN. One of our editors, Ronda Hauben, has
been invited to speak about Internet related topics in many
venues including at a meeting of ISOC-NY.

All of the AC reportage comes from the viewpoint that the Internet is
a public treasure and needs the protection of the governments of the
world. But the AC welcomes a spectrum of viewpoints.

But somehow the AC does not belong at INETs any more. The coverage of
INETs should be the exclusive domain of the mainstream media not the
public oriented media like the Amateur Computerist.

The following email message was the response I received to the Amateur
Computerist's request to cover INET2002.

Jay
The latest issue of the Amateur Computerist Vol 11 No 1 is available at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/text/acn11-1.txt
---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>From: Melissa Byrd <mbyrd@foretec.com> 
>>To: Jay Hauben <jrh29@columbia.edu> 
>>Subject: Re: Press Passes Requested

Dear Jay,

Thank you for your interest in covering INET 2002.  Unfortunately, I
cannot approve your request for an INET 2002 press pass.  Due the
limited space this year, we must give preference to those media
outlets with the broadest and largest audiences, such as Newsweek, The
Wall St. Journal, CNET, etc.  However, I will put your name on our
waiting list and contact you if there is a last-minute cancellation.

We do value your interest in our conference and hope you are still
able to attend INET 2002.

Kind regards,
Melissa Byrd
Marketing Communications/INET 2002




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net