The trick is to play down the stuff you want to collect, and play up the stuff you want to sell. Raising awareness raises prices. --John On Friday 24 October 2003 01:03 am, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:

On 24-Oct-2003 Joe wrote: Whatever you do, DON'T LOOK THEM STRAIGHT IN THE EYE! This will provoke their attack response. And nothing is more fearsom then a computer collector on a rapage. -Philip

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: Was that on a "rapage"? with Somalian or Samoan helpers, eating fence? NOTE: always open all fences, gates, and doors, and then STAND BACK when Sellam is collecting! I've watched him stuff multiple cubic yards of boxes into a Honda.

Hello all, Regarding this discussion about dealing with the press, I feel compelled to reply, because (as some of you know) I'm a reporter AND a vintage computer collector. Of course I have to make a disclosure: the opinions I'm about to convey are solely my own, and when I'm on this email list, I do not represent my magazine (eWeek) or its publisher, Ziff-Davis. And now on with my opinion... It really saddens me to see so much negativity about how the press can only get it wrong, look for the bad news, or generally miss the point. I suppose that stems from the approach that "the media" includes everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Fox's "Entertainment Tonight" in the same boat. The reality is, as with any group of people or businesses, there will be a vocal minority who make the good majority look bad. In fact, local newspapers are still the heart of American journalism, and most do a superb at covering their regions and small towns, in a way that the AP or CNN never will be able to do. The comments about emphasizing the preservation angle, about these machines being the 'opposite' of business computing, and about the growing size of our vintage computing hobby are all very good ones. Another very important point to emphasize is the legacy integration angle. Everyone from the world's largest businesses to the one-man shops has some old data or peripheral lying around, which one day they may have to use. That requires people who can help. Moreover, when you explain this to a mainstream news reporter, focus on the angle of history repeating itself. Above all, make the best possible analogies that you can come up with. For example whenever I explain my collection to someone, I focus on how it's very similar to collectors of antique cars, furniture, art, stamps, etc., and that it only makes sense that one generation removed from computers first becoming a commodity, people would start to collect them. There were other comments that are really wrong. "Don't look them straight in the eye" is just silly. As a reporter, what I appreciate most is interviews that flow more like conversations. Also, "don't tell them more than they need to know" is off-base too. If I'm interviewing someone and the replies involve little eye contact and terse replies, THEN maybe I'd think they have something is amiss. Granted, sometimes too many details can overwhelm people, but that's a characteristic of over-zealous collectors, and it's entirely unfair to make the broad assumption that reporters are an idiotic breed who can't handle too many facts with accuracy. Remember, reporters wouldn't bother asking for an interview if they didn't care about the topic! Good reporters are experts , not incompetents, about juggling multiple, fast-incoming facts. The assertions that reporters "usually get them wrong anyway" and are "technically unsavvy idiots" is one really concerns me. Granted, I'm an exception, because I was a computer nerd BEFORE becoming a reporter. But again, I want to stress this: it's not an inherent trait of reporters that facts sometimes get mangled; think of yourselves when you first started collecting computers -- all of us asked dumb questions, were slow to learn, etc. Something that I'm grateful to Sellam for is his explanations of how the VCF is to celebrate, not blindly hang onto, old technology. He's right, and the can't and won't grow if we (I'm speaking as a fellow collector now) treat non-hobbyists as clueless nimwits. I believe that would be the same spark that caused computers to be so difficult for the public to use in the first place. So an absolutely key thing to remember is, the people who we're preserving vintage computers FOR and the people who reporters SERVE are THE SAME PEOPLE. We reporters aren't out to 'get' anyone; we just want to understand and then share with the masses. (Any reporter who disagrees with that is discredible.) One final comment: ethical news publications do not let interviewees "check" stories before they're printed. As an ethical reporter myself, sometimes I'll fact-check very technical things and/or fact-check that I got someone's point of view correct. But no self-respecting journalist or publication would ever allow people to approve or pre-read a story. Yes, we make mistakes sometimes, as does everyone. However when someone accepts an interview they have to trust that the reporter is a professional at getting facts correct. I'm sure parts of my above comments are a bit jarbled. I won't deny that this email is somewhat reactionary; after all I see my fellow collectors attacking my profession. So in summary, if any of you are asked about your collections by a reporter, please just keep in mind that we reporters WANT to understand, to get it right, and to share your opinion with our readers. Personally I write an average of three to ten stories per week, and I haven't got time to ask people questions for which I don't care about the answers. Assume that a well-reported and well-written story can HELP you, but remember that reporters are people too. - Evan

Quothe Chad Fernandez, from writings of Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 05:36:40AM -0500: Just the other day, the Baltimore Sun had two conflicting articles in it. One article, with drawings of Dilbert illustrating it, told of how dissatisfied American workers are with the workplace. In another article, on the front of the help-wanted section (the Career Builder section, which contains a page full of hogwash fed to the Sun by the media conglomerate that bought the Baltimore Sun, and is printed in other newspapers owned by the same corporate entity) is an article about workplace dissatisfaction, but, it shows that only 15% of workers are dissatisfied overall... but the numbers don't make any sense; here's what a chart on that page showed: Job dissatisfaction: overall: 15% (48.9% satisfied, 35.4% neutral (afraid to say?)) job security: 25% wages: 33.9% promotion policy: 46.4% vacation policy: 22.7% sick leave: 29.2% health plan: 35% Now then, how in the heck to they get 15% as an average, or mean, or whatever else they're using to obtain that figure, from the other figures? Wouldn't it make much more sense for newspapers to just hire 7th graders to work part-time and pay them minimum wage, since the news is typically written on a 7th grade, or lower, reading level? Seriously, it makes no sense to hire English/Journalism majors to write articles on a 7th grade, or lower, reading level. If those English/Journalism majors can't make any use of what they supposedly learned in college, and, in the apparent majority of cases, they lack the skills to comprehend much of what they write about, be it politics, computers, employment, the usual propaganda or whatever else they're writing about, why employ them? Perhaps I've just answered my own question: the owners of the media apparently don't want to hire many people who have the ability to ask the right questions and think rationally, who might just upset the apple cart, so to speak, thus annoying too many politicians, shareholders, special interests, the political correctness police and various business entities such as land "development" scum. Can't have that, now, can we? The propaganda machines, whether working for the so-called left, right or center, mustn't be interfered with, right? Just my two-cents worth... -- Copyright (C) 2003 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, R. D. Davis wrote: Are you suggesting that the Baltimore Sun should UPGRADE their writers to 7th graders?

"evan" <evan947(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Huh? Every time a newspaper run a story about *anything* I happen to know about (not just tech), the story is riddled with inaccurate, distorted, or just plain wrong information. I can hardly believe that I'm unique in this regard, so presumably for the stories that I don't have direct knowledge of, other readers who are would would have the same reaction. Thus I am forced to conclude that *everything* they publish is at that level of "quality", or at least such a high percentage that I'm disinclined to believe just about anything I read in the paper. If the newspaper said the sun was going to rise tomorrow, I'd want to find an another source to confirm it. That said, I think television news tends to be even worse.

On Tuesday, October 28, 2003, at 12:35 PM, Eric Smith wrote: You are definitely not alone. Just about every article I read where I know about the subject is full of false information. Just the other day I read an article that talked about how people were learning computer languages like Excel and Windows so that they could get better jobs. The only things in the newspaper I trust are the comics. Yeah, but at least on the television news, you can hear them mispronounce words too, not just misspell them. Ian Primus ian_primus(a)yahoo.com

Hard to miss that one! It's easier to forgive the Grauniad that one ... there's no obvious physical reason why Mostek could not have made a 6502 :-) Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, evan wrote: Hi Evan. While I understand your reaction to the negative comments being put forth about reporters in general, I will say that there is definitely a basis for the negativity. Most of the many times I've been interviewed, the article came out in a way that made me embarassed to have been quoted or to have been the subject. Now, I realize your message was reactionary, but you should realize that you are one of the most impressive reporters and researchers I have ever known (and you know I've told you this many times before). You are really the exception to the norm (unfortunately). You are probably very lucky to work with the team that you do. You are most likely insulated from the schlock reporting that takes place. So anyway, don't take it as an affront. If you want, I'll even point out all the (many) inaccuracies in the various stories I've presented in the Press section of the VCF website: http://www.vintage.org/press.php ...then you'll know of what we speak ;) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]