[meteorite-list] Lorton, Smithsonian and "cool" scientists thinking

[Paul H.]

Steve wrote:

“I am not sure of all of the reasons, and who made the actual 
decision to deny us and our audience the opportunity to see 
it first hand,  but it seems that because the Smithsonian 
now has their own new cable TV network, and as such it is 
now their policy to not give any competing TV networks any 
access to shooting any of their stuff in their collections.”

and

“Apparently, other networks have had severe access challenges 
lately in wanting to get footage of other national treasures 
since the Smithsonian cable network was formed. In our case it 
seems to be a real shame as it would have generated great PR 
for both our TV show and for the Smithsonian and for meteorites 
in general.”

Having had a little dealing with the Smithsonian in matters, 
unrelated to meteorites, the impression that got is that with 
continuing cuts in their federal funding, the Smithsonian has
had to more and more rely on generating income from private 
sources. One result of this is that in order to generate income 
to support the operation of the museum, many activities 
have been commercialized, including the selling of exclusive,
first come, media rights to certain newsworthy events. I doubt 
that any “prejudice against the collecting community” has 
anything to do with your treatment. It is simply that in order
to generate income from private sources to replace federal 
budget cuts, they have sold the media rights to “discoveries,” 
like the Lorton meteorite, to a private company. I suspect that
it is an outside company, not the Smithsonian, who now make 
the decisions on such matters. I suspect that a number of the
people at the Smithsonian are as unhappy as you are with this 
state of affairs.  However, it would be a bad career move for
anyone to either openly or privately disagree with, express any 
displeasure of, or violate the contracts / agreements that they 
have with various outside companies. 

This growing commercilization and turning research into
commodities managed by outside companies is a growing
trend ion many museums. Go read:

Caveat Venditor? Museum Merchandising, Nonprofit 
Commercialization, and the Case of the Metropolitan 
Museum in New York by Stephen Teopler in “International 
Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations” at:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/9229h92302851283/

MUSEUM MERCHANDISING: AN EXPLORATION OF ITS USES 
AND LIMITATIONS at:

http://museumstudies.si.edu/Fellowships/toepler.html

The cost of journal articles, like the above one, is another 
aspect of this problem.

While working at an archaeological site, which I was working at 
and shall remain nameless, some friends of mine were prohibited 
from taking pictures of the site while visiting me because a
well-known, national organization that was funding the dig had 
exclusive media rights as part of the funding agreement. Even I,
theoretically was prohibited from taking my own personal pictures. 
However, since I actually worked there, people, the director just 
looked the other way. However, there were a couple of times when
representatives from the funders were visiting, we all were told to 
hide our personal cameras for the duration of their visit.

Yours,

Paul H.