Rachel Wimberly

We Don't Have An "Agenda"
October 25, 2007

Here at Tradeshow Week, we pride ourselves on reporting the news, which means remaining completely objective and reporting the entire story, good or bad.

I have written stories that didn’t shed the best light on certain companies, destinations, people, etc. Some sources seem better able to handle this than others. For example, when Gaylord Entertainment went back and forth on whether it would build a new convention center and hotel in Chula Vista, Calif., they never called to say, “Hey, why are you reporting only the bad news?”

Recently, on at least two different stories, one by me and another by Senior Editor Heidi Genoist, we were accused afterward of focusing only on the “negative” and of having an agenda when we reported on the stories.

In my case, the article was about a show that was about to launch. The show had existed before in another form and, while many of the same exhibitors were signed up for the new version of the event, many were not.

In fact, the show’s manager was the one that pointed out half of the flagship exhibitors were returning. Meaning half were not. I simply reported what she said and called a number of specific big-name exhibitors to confirm if they would be attending.

The number of exhibitors of size who were going to be at the show was of news value because it would have a direct impact on whether or not the show attracted enough attendees to deem it a success.

After the article came out but before the show ran, I received an e-mail from the PR person who worked for the company that owned the show chiding me for being “negative,” for focusing on the fact that a substantial number of important exhibitors were skipping the nascent event.

Heidi had a very similar situation occur after a story came out about a show moving to a new city. The company that ran the show accused her of having a bias when another source she interviewed expressed regret that the show was moving.

Aren’t people entitled to have an opinion these days? And do you think anyone would bother reading Tradeshow Week if all we did was reprint glowing press releases?

As Heidi told the company’s PR representative, we report the news, we don’t work for the sources we report on and, believe it or not, we don’t lie awake at night thinking up ways to make people unhappy.

Posted by Rachel Wimberly on October 25, 2007 | Comments (2)