So the U.S. Travel Association’s Pow Wow convention is coming to town. And while those in the hospitality industry are busy trying to teach everyone in Miami polite and efficient customer service, the rest of us are gearing up to put the best face on our city so that our economy does not completely collapse. And who better to report on a convention of travel people than a website that caters to, well, travel?

Apparently pretty much everyone, as it seems that the good folks over at Pow Wow have opted not to give our beloved little site here press credentials to their convention. 

I’m not sure exactly what part of “Miami Beach 411”  doesn’t inform the TIA that we are in the business of disseminating information about Miami Beach, I can only guess the number for Information in Washington D.C. must be different. Or maybe 411 is their local number for sex offender registration.  Who knows? All I know is if I were running a convention to promote United States travel in one of its top tourist destinations, I would want a site that specialized in promoting said travel to have as much access as possible.

BUZZ BISSINGER MUST BE BEHIND THIS

I suppose what this once again boils down to is the old “blogger vs. journalist” debate that seems to be all the rage in mass media today.  Classically trained journalists who have worked their way up the ranks at their now-failing newspapers feel that press credentials should be reserved for those who work in an industry that uses an actual press. And the conservative powers that be tend to agree. And while I certainly would not argue that any Tom, Dick or Jose with enough common sense to start a Blogger account should be allowed unfettered access to whatever they want, people also need to understand where people are going for information these days.

Look around you. Newspapers are laying people off and going out of business every day. Even television and radio news outlets are losing market share. But when news-talk shows are looking for talking heads for their discussion and debate segments, it is never uncommon to see bloggers discussing health care reform right next to a health reporter who has been covering that topic since the Nixon administration.

“BLOG” IS SUCH A RELATIVE TERM…I PREFER “OPINIONATED TRAVEL CONSULTANT”

That aside, I’m not even sure what we do here qualifies as blogging. We have nice little feature articles that are aimed to inform (there’s that 411 thing again) people about Miami and the Beaches and what to do when they get here. But aside from my occasional rants and Carlos Miller’s First Amendment crusades, we really don’t get too topical or promote much of an agenda. All we want to do is bring people to Miami. So the more information we have

about what’s going on in Miami Beach, it would reason, the better we can tell people why they should come here. But I suppose that logic is lost on the TIA.

I’m not saying every blogger in South Florida should be granted a press pass for this event. That would defeat the purpose of even issuing credentials. But when you will give passes to local Spanish-language radio stations whose only potential tourist audience would likely arrive by raft, one has to wonder what the criteria for getting one of those things is. No, we are not a traditional media outlet, but if the goal of the convention is to spread the word and promote tourism in the United States, an outlet with the same objective should be able to get as much access as we need.

Matt Meltzer is a featured columnist at Miami Beach 411. Matt’s column appears Tuesdays. See more articles by Matt Meltzer >