Why People Haven’t Embraced PWCW

Actually, people have embraced Publishers Weekly's comics coverage, and their free news weekly e-mail has an audience that doubtless dwarfs this site's. Their reach and influence when it comes to accessing publishing news is peerless, and they present fine industry-centric articles on issues like scheduling and marketing, topics that have always received short shrift from other sources.

It's my headline because "Why don't people love us more?" or its rough equivalent is a question that at least one of the co-editors has asked in public.

Let me suggest, then, that one problem putting a hitch in our hug may be that they insist on running ridiculous blow-job articles on a sister company's event.

The New York Con's a legit story; I'm hoping it will be very successful, and suspect it will be. Reed Exhibitions knows how to put on a show. They are better at their job than I am at mine. They will almost certainly correct last year's tickets and processing fiasco -- although I guess it's good they didn't do so last year, because they apparently made the show legendary -- and are likely to have a fantastic year. I'm happy for this.

But publishers discussing what they have planned for their booths and enthusing about the potential good times to be had isn't a news article; it's PR, and it demeans PWCW to publish PR as a lead story. There's nothing in that article that couldn't have been generated by the show itself, and I'm reasonably certain you couldn't tell it's a feature rather than a publicist-written article if you hid the bylines. There's an industry story about DC's marketing department that fits PWCW's mission perfectly that could have gone in that slot. If there had to be a con story, the Festival at Angouleme is closer to today's date and has any number of hooks. I mean, heck, PWCW recently covered the New York show with a totally separate article! And they will have tons of appropriate coverage at the show itself.

Comics is tough because a lot of its fans are super-media-literate and therefore jaded, many folks will forgive PR-driven stories as long as they're getting theirs, there's unavoidable overlap between PR needs and feature article writing that muddies the water, and the field is small enough that you can whip up a teenager's hypocrite charge or 1993 Usenet-style bias accusation with almost no effort. I can be hit with those arguments about this posting. And others! I don't enjoy fighting with people I like, either. I just felt like I had to put this out there, and you can take it for what you will.
 
posted 2:02 am PST | Permalink
 

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