Sun Valley: Barred from the bar
Reporters who cover the annual Allen & Co media conference know that the bar at the Sun Valley Lodge is a great spot to sit with uber-execs from Rupert Murdoch to Google’s Eric Schmidt to get their deep thoughts on the state of media and technology.
That was true this year, at least on Tuesday night, when reporters like me got to sit with Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner shareholder Vivi Nevo, former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin and others.
Someone complained, however, and tonight, reporters are not allowed to go to the bar.
Who killed this longstanding tradition of informal and colloquial relations? The talk among the press was that it was Henry Vigil, Microsoft’s mergers and acquisitions chief, but he denied it.
It’s a pity, really. Reporters are not welcome at this luxe gathering, but many executives like talking to them anyway, and that contact can have benefits for shareholders who read our news articiles and for plain folk who digest the TV shows, movies and other media that these people are paid to develop and distribute.
One good thing for the reporters: we can still order drinks from the bar — they deliver them to us in the lobby.
Who needs press releases anyway?
BGC Partners apparently does not. The self-described global full-service inter-dealer broker of financial instruments issued this announcement on Tuesday (via press release on the PRNewswire press release service, of course):
In compliance with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent guidance regarding “notice-and-access” news releases, the company plans to discontinue issuance of full-text financial news releases via a wire service and will issue only advisory press releases notifying investors when new and material information is available on its websites.
This came out a few hours after General Motors used its website to disclose news that some people might think material: It is cutting 10,000 jobs. There was no press release issued through the normal distribution services.
And then Molson Coors stucksome of its results tables on its website rather than in its press release.
Do three opaque acts in 24 hours equal one clear trend? We fear as much.
We’re not saying reporters should be so lazy as to expect everything to show up on the press release wires. But PRNewswire and BusinessWire do exist for the disclosure of important information that is supposed to reach recipients simultaneously. That way, everyone gets to make their bets and win and lose money with equal abandon.
There may be some arguments for a company to scale back on wide distribution of press releases. After all, PRN and BW charge for issuing them, and every penny counts in Corporate America in these hard times. The Web also is a good place to make information perpetually available.
Keep in mind there is also Marketwire who is roughly 25-35% more cost effective than both PRN and BW, while still distributing your news to the AP, LN, Reuters, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, Online, Trade Pubs, etc.. If you are looking to reduce cost and have the same effectiveness there is a 3rd option, Marketwire.
How rude! We’d be happy to get you into any bar in Boise and round up some Idaho entrepreneurs to drink along with you:-)