Planet Comicon Kansas City has updated their requirements for press badges for 2020. Over the past several years, Planet Comicon Kansas City has allowed Geeky KOOL to serve as members of the press and cover this wonder convention. Historically, they have provided two press badges to Geeky KOOL cover this event, which enabled us to send two veteran writers to cover all of the awesomeness.
This year, their policy has changed. For a website like Geeky KOOL to qualify, they must have a unique monthly readership of 10,000 or have 10,000 likes or followers for that time on a social media account. Sadly, Geeky KOOL isn’t that large. Our best month was just over 8,000 unique readers. Our social media presence is lacking in comparison. This policy leaves no room for exceptions.
We support Planet Comicon Kansas City‘s right to change their policy. They can determine who qualifies for Press Passes for their event. At Geeky KOOL, we support their right to do this. But we don’t have to love their decision.
This policy has changed for specific reasons. I can see possibility for abuse in the system they way they had it in previous years. Where there some press passes given out that the press sites didn’t do their part and write about convention? I cannot blame Planet Comicon Kansas City for wanting to keep people accountable.
This new change makes me sad for Geeky KOOL and sad for other small press that are trying to make it. The small press members will often out work and out hussle the bigger press agencies to get the story and the readership. Any press group the size of us are working on a shoestring budget and wants to break the story first. We do this out of a love for geekdom.
I am also saddened by this change for Planet Comicon Kansas City. In the past, I have shared with many other geek media professionals and friends how awesome it has been that Planet Comicon Kansas City understands what the small press can do. We weren’t going to write an article that will get 20,000 hits but we will write a dozen article that will get attention day after day. We were the voice of geekdom to our readers.
Last year, Geeky KOOL produced 13 separate articles and videos about Planet Comicon Kansas City. Some of the articles promoted the event. Many of them where covering the event as it was happening. A couple were post convention thoughts. This doesn’t include the numerous Facebook Live videos posted about the convention nor our tweets about it. Bryan and I worked our tails off (as we do at every convention) to cover this event and provide a service to the geek community and to Planet Comicon Kansas City
Geeky KOOL has awesome loyal followers. We usual have between 5,000 and 6,000 unique visitors a month. We try to cover all sorts of events and write KOOL articles. We appreciate our readers and love those of you that support us. Thank you all for checking out or site and coming back.
Geeky KOOL does have some challenges to grow to the next level. We cannot always be the first break the news when something is announced. Videos and movie trailer are often out there before we can post it. We all have other full time jobs along with writing for Geeky KOOL.
Our staff are not paid at this time because our site isn’t making money. Because of that, many of our writers find life gets in the way of writing continually and consistently for Geeky KOOL. Life, stress, and family are a few reasons we don’t write as much as we would like. We have had many wonderful staff members that have resigned for these reasons over the years. We wish this was different but it is where things are.
We don’t have a social media expert on staff. Oh how I wish we did. This could really help out. I would love pull in a social media export for 2020.
Yes we are sad by this change in policy. We will save our lunch money to afford tickets to the convention. I am sure we will still cover this event even though we will not be sporting the awesome Press Passes. But I doubt we will work as hard to get the word out about the convention. We will keep our efforts to report about the convention but not promote it like we did. We will be there to not just work like in years past, but since we aren’t officially press, we will go to play along with covering the event.
Stay Geeky!
