Press Page User/PW?

[isham-research.freeserve.co.uk at pop.pol.net.uk]

> Audi isn't the only one over here: BMW, M-B, etc. They all hand out their
> password protected info at the Auto shows ... on press days.

Hmm.  Well, they're either monumentally stupid or very sophisticated.

I've been dealing with professional trade press journalists for over
two decades.  I have nothing but respect for the vast majority of
them. They basically spend their entire working lives sandwiched
between a few dozen people trying to pull stunts on them and a few
million eagle-eyed bastards who'll spot the even partial success of
any such attempt - all of this bounded on the sides by irascible
editors and owners looking for circulation and lawyers looking for
the simplest life possible.

Sub-editors are the real scum.

(I met one once, in the 'Green Posts' pub that was Karl Marx's
 favourite when he was in London.  I'd recently been the victim
 of some appalling sub-editing and had complained vociferously
 to the editor of the journal.  This guy decided to face me down
 and challenged me to expand on my complaint.  I did so.  Then
 he partly acknowledged the case I presented, and asked why I
 thought sub-editing standards on th ejournal in question were
 generally bad.  I listed off four or five really outstanding
 cases from the previous three months.  There was a short silence
 before he admitted he'd subbed all of them.)

In the trade press sector that interests me professionaly (the UK
Information Technology sector - try a TextLine search on my name) I
know pretty well how it works.  Journalists have a bonus scheme
that, for example, requires them to file four exclusive stories (or
major angles within a story) for 20% of the year's circulation.  If
they achieve this target, they may get a bonus of (e.g.) 20% of
their normal salary.  So exclusivity is important and press releases
(at least at a personal level) irrelevant.

On the other hand, they cannot afford to miss covering a product of
major significance.  Regular car magazine readers will expect to
see, for example, an Allroad review in _their_ magazine.

Another dimension is reading age.  Is the (wonderful) old MS-DOS
package 'Corporate Voice' still available?  Take a few megabytes of
text from your target publication and reduce it into a model.  Take
your press release, and run it against the model.  The result tells
you how likely it is that any text from your press release will EVER
turn up in the target journal.  Usually - zip!

--
 Phil Payne
 UK Audi quattro Owners Club
 Phone +44 7785 302803   Fax: +44 7785 309674