Roopinder Tara has raised an interesting point about how different CAD vendors treat journalists and bloggers. Ralph Grabowski has responded with a “Who cares“. Now you have more CAD blogger navel gazing to put up with as I have my say on the matter.
As a traditional magazine journalist (Cadalyst, 1995 – present) and now as a blogger, I’d like to say I agree with Ralph. The label shouldn’t matter, content should be king. From a reader’s point of view, that is.
Where it does matter is from a vendor’s point of view. How to dish out the freebies? Should Autodesk fly every blogger out to San Francisco, put them all up at Nob Hill hotels and shower them all with gifts? Or just the traditional journalists? Or journalists and major bloggers? If so, what’s a major blog and what isn’t? Is is based on how active the blog is, the quality of writing, the number of visitors, how vendor-friendly the articles are, or some other factor?
Every vendor’s PR team has to draw the line somewhere. Some invite only traditional journalists while others invite a host of bloggers to their events. It all comes down to how much coverage the PR people want to see and how much they are prepared to invest to make that coverage happen. Their budget, their choice.
That’s it, right on the money! It is THEIR budget, THEIR money, and they will do what they think is to their advantage to get the best bang for THEIR buck.
A good blogger with either timely or incisive (or both!) discourse is every bit as worthy as a traditional journalist, especially if the blog has a large readership, which is where the journalist usually has the advantage. Content should be king. And if vendors perceive that bloggers, as well as traditional journalists, are capturing the ears of those who ultimately BUY, then they are probably going to court them equally.