Blogs Play the Access Game

Those conferences are where the big gamemakers debut hot, new products, each outdoing the other in an endless escalation during the past decade. Even before E3 officially kicked off, Nintendo debuted its Game Boy Micro at a crowded presser at the Kodak Theater on Tuesday. Sony, meanwhile, cut down on the space rental by using its own studio to show off the new PlayStation 3.

When Everyone's a Journalist...

E3's organizers can't be expected to grant all-access passes to everyone who wrote a sentence in their life about video games and posted it on the Internet. But doesn't it seem strange that we can put a blogger in the White House and still have trouble getting one into a technology fair? Heck, even the Gray Lady herself is considering revenue-sharing agreements with bloggers.

To be fair, E3 isn't the only trade group that resorts to razor wire to keep out the unaccredited. The organizers of the North American International Auto Show held every January in Detroit is grappling with how to deal with bloggers as they make more aggressive bids for press passes.

"I didn't even know what a blogger was until last April," said Richard Genthe, co-chairman of the 2006 edition of the auto show and a Chevrolet dealer in Southgate, Mich. "It kind of passed me right by." He said that the Detroit Auto Dealers Association, which owns the show, will review bloggers on a case-by-case basis and institute a more formalized system by the time it starts taking media registrations for the January event. "We're going to have to come to a much deeper understanding of the role they play," he said.

The auto show runs for two weeks, one of which offers full public access for $12 a pop. The problem is, gawkers want to show up at the first two days of the show, which are reserved for press. "A lot of the people will come out of the woodwork" to get face time with the muckety-mucks, she said. This is an even more difficult problem to deal with in Detroit, where more than 800,000 people tend to show up.

All this raises the question that's on a lot of media types' minds these days: Where do you draw the line between a journalist and a blogger? If bloggers check their sources, strive for accuracy, dot and cross the necessary letters and make sure someone reviews and changes the copy to read better, then are they just a freelance journalist with a hipper name? Who decides? Is it time for Cohn & Wolfe to drop the charade and let in Gwyneth Paltrow when she decides she wants to interview Bill Gates about the Xbox 360?

The Consumer Electronics Association faced this problem at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. Drawing more than 100,000 people and nearly 7,000 credentialed reporters to this year's CES, the CEA is well aware that blogs are taking their place in the mainstream online media pantheon. Where is anybody's guess, but the group is working with its members to come up with a blogger accreditation system, said spokeswoman Leah Arnold.

Sometimes pure persistence pays off. Amit Runchal, who blogs about games at damnedmachines.com, said he wrote several times to the E3 organizers after they failed to respond to his query for credentials. Eventually he got them and is now posting from the show.

And persistence, as anyone knows, is the good journalist's distinguishing characteristic.

Wall Street Joystick

E3 is without a doubt the runway on which the world's top three game console designers parade their new models. As someone who has written about the expo off and on since 1996 but is not a video game nut, it's difficult for me to keep straight who is debuting the new box, who is lowering the price to undercut the other and just who's involved. (The triumvirate used to be Nintendo, Sega and Sony, as many of you remember.)

The Wall Street Journal's three-man crack E3 squad -- Nick Wingfield, Rob Guth and Phred Dvorak -- provide a solid article in today's paper that breaks down exactly who is doing what to whom, where and when. Make sure to scroll toward the bottom of the story where a simple graphic lays out each console's selling point side by side.

Heavy Traffic

People like to send me the e-mail message about how life would be if our cars ran on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Seems the old saw about life imitating art is coming true, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times: "The typical passenger car has 70 or more tiny but powerful computers onboard that control audio systems, air conditioning, brakes, air bags and other functions. And the systems are complex: Software for the average car can have more than 35 million lines of code, 100 times or more the code needed for a full-color, action- and sound-packed interactive computer game."

The article goes on to list a litany of bugs that have plagued the Toyota Prius, the Mazda RX-8, Mercedes-Benz's E-Class cars and BMWs with the iDrive joystick.

Speaking of transportation issues, give a hearty round of applause to Boston, whose transit authority made the big leap into paper technology. Now T riders are beginning to use "Charlie Tickets" instead of tokens, the Globe reported. (I'm not linking to the Kingston Trio anymore. Look them up with "Charlie" to get the story behind the name.)

New Hampshire, Massachusetts's neighbor to the north, is upgrading from tokens as well, but on its EZ-Pass system. Unfortunately for the Granite State, questions about how much subscribers will save are keeping the transponders in the warehouse. More from the Globe: "The Executive Council was to vote Wednesday on a proposal intended to get the automated highway toll system running by July 4, but Gov. John Lynch held it up. Lynch said he wants more financial information to make sure neither drivers nor the state lose out. ... Many drivers now use tokens, which are sold at a 50 percent discount, instead of cash at the state's toll booths. The council was ready to vote on giving E-ZPass users a 30 percent discount and getting rid of tokens." Ain't the 20th century grand?

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