About dealings with the media

[giza]

I got in from Feral last night. It rocked. While I write up my con report, here's some required reading before you EVER talk to the media about furry.

Remember, reporters have to make money somehow, and they do this by reporting on unusual things, which isn't always good when it's YOU who is being reported on.

On a related note, would anyone near Ostrich do me (and the rest of us) a great big favor and slap some sense into him? Thanks.

Comments

[malamute.livejournal.com]

That's a great website. Perhaps furry conventions should include a hand-out similar to that while including convention policies on public relations and media exposure.

And/or the convention should adopt a daily "general session" event in the mornings where announcements could be made about things like this. The general sessions could also have a wonderful incentive for attending such as the guest(s) of honor getting up in front of the audience and speaking for a while, taking questions, or giving an interesting/funny demonstration.

[mongrelism.livejournal.com]

Sensible advice, as far as it goes. It presupposes that all furs care about the fandom being fairly and accurately represented, of course. Also, too bad Frampton doesn't appear to know what a furry lifestyler or a transvestite is. :)

[technomom]

I feel similarly about the press, which is why I wrote http://www.technomom.com/writing/press.html . Not furry-specific, though :-)

Bitch Slaps

[awolf.livejournal.com]

Sure I'll slap Ostrich, if you think it might help. He does know exactly what he's doing, however. There's no "to his senses" involved.

Ostrich only wants revenge. At some point, he thought I had turned against him (I was actually one of his supporters) and he slipped me into a number of ACME-plans-to-take-down-the-fandom. So I've seen it from both sides. I feel badly for what he's suffered, but I don't think that anything can be done about it.

Trickster

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

The ironic thing is that we complain about being depicted as weird... but we are weird! We like pictures & stories with talking animals in them! That's pretty weird! Heck, bein' weird's one of the fun things about being furry! But yeah it's the other kind of weird that the media emphasizes; the fetishes.

The other ironic thing is that there's nothing wrong with having a fetish, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. But o'corse sadly the world's still full of narrow-minded types who don't believe that.

(Actually the statement in news articles that tends to annoy me most is "Furries are people who want to be animals". Naah, most furries are perfectly happy being human. That statement probably makes readers picture us as a bunch of pathetic types all sitting around waiting desperately for medical science to develop the species-change operation, or something.)