But continuing with my story: I quickly fired back an e-mail to the Comic-Con 2009 publicist asking how could the reserved media space capacity at Comic-Con 2009 be already maxed out yet on www.comic-con.org returning and new journalists still could submit their press request applications. And there was no explanation or rational on why there was sudden cap on returning journalists over new applicants that had never covered Comic-Con before. I didn’t get this excuse at all and challenged that irrational premise in a follow-up e-mail.

Then the next day I get a note from someone in the Comic-Con 2009 PR office that now said that the new and expanded reason why we were being denied a press pass as returning journalists was because they sat around their office and reviewed Hiphopbattle.com. They saw our Comic-Con 2008 photo gallery and no articles and thus concluded that was not enough to justify us being a returning journalist. And they also said I personally did not meet Comic-Con’s PR standard as a “real” journalist. I was more of a “creative” type. This last personal insult was Comic-Con saying they had to weed out the undesirables who abuse their press status. By this time when I got this e-mail back from the Comic-Con PR office I could barely contain my anger. Because I’ve been down this exact path before when someone has looked at Hiphopbattle.com and assumed that we didn’t matter. I can clearly remember a few years ago I was applying as first time press to cover ad:tech San Francisco and the press staff coordinator denied us as press because he stated after reviewing Hiphopbattle.com that:

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to pass on this request as it does not sound like ad:tech is an appropriate venue for your audience.”

Translation: the ad:tech San Francisco press staff coordinator glanced at our Hiphopbattle.com Web site and easily thought our black, minority or urban audience were not sophisticated enough or smart enough to understand a possible ad:tech press article or video report about all the difficult complexities of the great and mysterious Advertising Industry. Comic-Con is a major event, but it is not bigger than Sundance, Cannes, E3 Expo 2006, CES, or Toronto Film Festival that we covered before as online press for FuTurXTV.com and Hiphopbattle.com

Anyway, after I got the Comic-Con 2009 PR office e-mail that hastily reviewed Hiphopbattle.com and re-confirmed our rejection as press for Comic-Con 2009. I of course sent back a lengthy note demanding to know if Comic-Con press had a standard policy to check or review the past coverage or lack of coverage from all returning 3,000 journalists? I then gave the Comic-Con 2009 publicists and press staff several links to all the other viral ways we promoted our photo and video coverage of Comic-Con 2008. FuTurXTV.com’s Youtube, Daily Motion, Bebo, MySpace, Facebook pages and even on our Zannel.com mobile social network.