A couple of days ago, NSSF chief marketing officer, Chris Dolnack wrote a great post about the growing number of gun bloggers at SHOT Show. Chris noted that it’s time for the firearms industry to take gun bloggers and internet media seriously, and recognized the fact that those of us that blog about guns and shooting have the ability to take a new product and give it instant recognition.
I went back to the post yesterday to catch up on the comments, and was quite surprised to see this from a representative of GunsAmerica:
Now the question is when you are going to start qualifying internet media? We have to crawl over nobodies who can install wordpress and have nobody reading anything they write, It isn’t so hard to qualify internet media using Alexa.com and Compete.com. Why do you waste the manufacturers’ time and make the real internet media have to deal with wish I were internet journalists who are just using your stamp of approve to solicit review guns and accessories? You’ve created this giant gorilla in the room and we all have to deal with it, and you may think the industry takes your numbers seriously, but everyone sees things for what they are. If you are serious about bringing value to your exhibitors, you need to vet the press list.”
I guess not everyone “gets” new media. Go figure.