Biz media absent from South by Southwest Interactive conference

Daniel Terdiman of CNET News writes on his media blog that the business media are noticeably absent from the South by Southeast Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, this week, primarily because they don’t understand its significance.

Terdiman wrote, “Other than CNET News.com, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle and one or two other regional outlets, most of the big traditional media publications were nowhere to be seen. No New York Times, no Wall Street Journal, no Washington Post, no Time, and so on.

“To be sure, many of those publications will almost certainly cover the music side of the festival, but it seems that the interactive side is just not at all well understood.

“Over some food Wednesday, I was talking with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Dan Fost about the curious lack of major media at the interactive festival. And we couldn’t really figure it out.

“But a comment made to me over instant message by an editor at a major business publication provided a clue.

“It’s ‘not really our kind of thing,’ the editor told me. ‘It’s games and music, right?’

“And of course, games and music are both elements of the larger conference. But SXSWi is about so much more–Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, Six Apart, Electronic Arts, the Internet Archive and so many companies and institutions are on hand at the Interactive festival.”

Read more here.