SHOCK: Reuters Joins SL Press Corps

by Pixeleen Mistral on 14/10/06 at 2:19 am

Embedded Reuters correspondent Adam Reuters leaves Orientation Island soon

by Pixeleen Mistral, Herald National Affairs desk

Reuters sends help to mop up Second Life PR event overflow

I was swimming laps in the pool at the Aloft hotel friday afternoon, when Denise Levertov – one of the Herald interns – IM’ed me with an urgent message. According to reliable sources, Reuters news will be announcing a dedicated, embedded correspondent in Second Life early next week – most likely monday. The artificial intelligence agent script we recently added to the mojo wire in the Herald offices had detected a leak at Reuters and kept printing the message “Adam Reuters will be here once his avatar is starched and pressed”.

Our mojo wire’s A.I. script has been a bit unreliable of late – likely due to some lingering Linden Scripting Language issues or a slow asset server, but Denise said that even after re-rezzing the mojo wire, it was still predicting more PR hype for Second Life – and an actual journalist dedicated to the SL beat. I shuddered at the though of some poor soul condemned to covering an endless series of SUN press conferences like the one I went to this week, but everyone’s got to earn their Linden dollars somehow.

Once I hopped out of the pool, I checked the “search people” tab and found immediate confirmation – there is exactly one person in SL with the last name “Reuters”. A quick trip to the new account setup screen for Second Life confirmed my worst fears – “Reuters” was not on the list of last names that the hoi polloi can select from. Someone with an inside track at Linden Lab had probably purchased the name for about $1500.

On the chance that the newest member of the 4th estate in Second Life might want to go for a swim, I IMed Adam, but I guess the Reuters guys get weekends off – its been hours and hours and he still has not replied. Perhaps Adam is stuck on Orientation Island?

[16:13] Pixeleen Mistral: Hi Adam! welcome to the Second Life press corps…
[16:13] Pixeleen Mistral: I write for the Second Life Herald – www.secondlifeherald.com
[16:14] Pixeleen Mistral: can I interview you sometime this weekend?
[16:14] Pixeleen Mistral: hopefully we can get together in-world soon
[16:14] Pixeleen Mistral: I know where there are some great freebie things to get you started
[16:14] Second Life: User not online – message will be stored and delivered later.

Returning to the pool for a few more laps, I wondered what this all means for our metaverse news scene. Hamet Au has certainly enjoyed special status to date as the Linden-sponsored “embedded journalist”, but if Reuters is going to devote a person to the SL news beat, does this mean that Hamlet has been GOMed? In any case, once Adam does get his avatar done and moves off Orientation Island, I hope he’ll stop by my yard sale – we have a really great deal on L$1 government surplus peanut butter, which is just what you need while saving up to buy your 512 m2 first land in SL.