I see I’m not the only one who struggles with Media Pass approval issues for bloggers and podcasters.

Now granted, the Podcast Expo is a weird cat, in that every attendee could technically be considered press at a different event. And because of this, my criteria is extremely narrow. And because of this, I angered quite a few people this year when I turned them down. For most of them, it was a weak attempt to simply get a free conference pass. But for others they truly would be media elsewhere, but if NAB gave press passes to anyone from a radio station, they’d have nothing but thousands of press walking the show floor.

On one we turned down, the guy CC’d me on an email to his assistant to “cancel all my plans to attend the Expo - it’s obvious I’m not wanted.” Guess we made the right decision on that one.

But I think it’s a huge mistake to dismiss all Media Pass requests from bloggers and podcasters as it appears the LPGA is doing. Yes it’s going to take more work on the show organizer’s part to determine who should get a media pass, but I can tell you it is absolutely worth it. Bloggers can spread the word about your show faster than anyone else on the planet.

I’ve adjusted our one sentence of criteria about 100 times and finally settled on this:

“Bloggers & podcasters with an exclusive focus on media with regular postings for at least six months and significant readership…”

It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with so far. Yes “significant readership” is vague - and that’s exactly the way I want it.