ip: GINGRICH'S FAVORITE THINK TANK SPRINGS A LEAK IN ASPEN

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Even though this is a PR I felt it had enought to say to send it to IP. Dave


Date: Thu, 14 Sep 95 08:10:47 MDT
From: "David Hipschman" <dochip () netrix net>
To: "Dave Farber" <farber () central cis upenn edu>


Dear Mr. Farber,


I intrude upon your email at the suggestion of Danny Weitzner. He said you
might be interested in posting the following press release to your
"interesting persons" email list. It is press release about a story I wrote
for Web Review on the PFF conference in Aspen.


Danny also suggested I ask you to add my name to your list. Thanks. And let
me know if I can ever be of help.


WEB REVIEW MAGAZINE
http://gnn.com/wr/
1-800-998-9937


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


For more information contact:
Managing Editor Richard Koman at 707-829-6500


GINGRICH'S FAVORITE THINK TANK
SPRINGS A LEAK IN ASPEN


SEBASTOPOL, CA. - The Progress & Freedom Foundation, (PFF) a Washington,
D.C. think tank with ties to Newt Gingrich, has been riding the slip-stream
of the House Speaker's rise to power.


But in an exclusive story in the September 15 issue of Web Review, David
Hipschman reports that the group's recent Aspen conference, "Cyberspace and
the American Dream," was a public relations meltdown that left prestigious
corporate sponsors confused and upset.


Rather than the legislative agenda sponsors, including AT&T, America Online,
Prodigy, Microsoft and CompuServe, had been promised, panelists chosen by
PFF to represent the Internet community spent two days lobbing bomb-shells
into the corporate camp, Web Review reported in the copyrighted story.  One
panelist pronounced "telephony dead." Another predicted that the conflict
between the citizens of cyberspace and the unplugged would "end with blood
spilled on the borders." Another suggested eliminating government
altogether, except for national defense.


"This was a meeting in search of a constituency," said Hipschman, a
Contributing Editor at Web Review, author of the newspaper column Cyberland
and former International Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. It didn't
find that constituency among its corporate sponsors, he said, nor among
folks who spend a lot of time on the Net.


Web Review, the Internet magazine located at http://www.gnn.com/wr/ is owned
by Songline Studios, an affiliate of O'Reilly & Associates, the creator of
Global Network Navigator and publisher of computer-related books. Managing
Editor Richard Koman said "This is a story that no other new media or old
media outlet got. It establishes Web Review as an outlet for serious
journalism on the Internet."


There was concern among the sponsors, as well as conference attendees, that
the panel chosen by PFF to represent the emerging "community" of the
Internet was unrepresentative. The panelists included John Perry Barlow,
former Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, Esther Dyson, an EFF director and writer; George A. Keyworth II,
chairman of the PFF board and former science advisor to President Reagan,
and futurist Alvin Toffler


"AT&T was looking for something different than what I saw," said AT&T
executive Christopher Quarles. "If these people are opinion leaders, maybe
I'm stuck  in the Second Wave. ... "


Corporate sponsor's expectations were high when the Aspen meeting began.
"This is the Progress & Freedom Foundation, - they are players because of
Newt," one sponsor said, "They (the PFF) are  riding the high tide and money
is coming in from all over."


Brian Elk, Prodigy's director of public relations said "The Speaker is
making a full-court press to wrestle the cyberspace mantle away from the
Clinton/Gore administration, if he hasn't done that already," he said. But
of the two-day conference itself,,Ek added:  "I felt the ball could've been
moved further... (we) did not get any action plan... It was long on theory
and short on action."


If fall-out from the Aspen conference results in a loss of corporate
confidence - or contributions  - it could be a serious blow to the PFF - and
to Gingrich. Both the group and the speaker have benefited from the linkage
between them. The PFF is perceived as the force behind Gingrich's Third Wave
vision of the future and 43 percent of the money the PFF raised in 1994 went
to finance the speaker's "Renewing American Civilization" satellite college
course.


The corporate donors paid as much as $25,000 to get their names on the
conference program and expected "action, not two days of cyberbabble," as
one participant put it. The conference ended with  a private "morning-after"
meeting between corporate sponsors and the PFF in which the upset sponsors
voiced their concerns, Web Review reports in its article  "Who Speaks for
Cyberspace?"




****************************************************************************
David Hipschman (dochip@netrix,net)
Whitefish, Montana * phone: 406-862-6523
Contributing Editor - Web Review (read us at http://www.gnn.com/wr/)
Creator of Cyberland, the Internet newspaper column
(read it at http://www.netrix.net/enter/)
****************************************************************************