>Cc: Vigdor Schreibman <•••@••.•••>
•••@••.••• (David W. Crawford)
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996
From: •••@••.••• (David W. Crawford)
To: Multiple recipients of list <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Media Cartel & Vigdor in New York Times
I was looking in the New York Times yesterday (monday feb 26)
and saw a story about Vigdor (late of telecomreg).
Look under 'cybertimes' or go directly to
http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0226media.html .
The gist of the story is that the Capitol Hill Press passes are available
only to commercial journalists and not to hobbiest-citizens.
Vigdor's work is distributed via a gopher site
(gopher://gopher.inforM.umd.edu:70/11/EdRes/Topic/CompResource/CompSoc/FINS)
so that may make ascertaining and verifying his actual readership
more difficult than doing so for a print newsletter or magazine.
Quote:
Last month Vigdor Schreibman pounded on the clubhouse door
and was refused admission. Gallery officials said he had failed to
meet the qualification of being a working journalist that is
required of all members. That is not unheard of; other applicants
have failed to meet the same standard.
But Mr. Schreibman's case differs in one important respect: His
work appears solely on computer screens, at two Internet sites
that he says have been visited by thousands of readers. He is the
first Internet-based writer to seek accreditation from the
Congressional press galleries.
It seems it is the press cartel that controls access:
Richard S. Dunham, the Congressional correspondent for
Business Week magazine, heads the executive committee of the
periodical gallery. He said that the gallery had rejected Mr.
Schreibman because it concluded that FINS was less a
commercial venture than a sideline or hobby.
So in an environment where insiders want to exclude common
citizens and dilettants, there is now the question of
how to distiguish between the commoners and the press guild.
Obvious solution: auction off balcony space to all comers.
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Dear David & Vigdor,
I've forwarded this to cyber-rights. On this list, we often decry
the lack of net-savvy in Congress, and this case seems to show that
Congress has little interest in the net being Congress-savvy either. What
a shame.
I wonder how Ben Franklin or Tom Paine or Thomas Jefferson would
feel about these clubhouse policies. Paine refused to take royalties on
nearly everything he wrote, so as to lower the retail price-tag, and would
have fallen under Vigdor's journalistic employment classification.
Is there any avenue of redress?
In Solidarity,
Richard
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - •••@••.••• - Wexford, Ireland
Cyber-Rights: http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/
ftp://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/library/
CyberJournal: (WWW or FTP) --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib
Materials may be reposted in their _entirety_ for non-commercial use.
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