U.S. Senate gallery needs ConsumerAffairs.com

ConsumerAffairs.com has been around since 1998, and I gotta be honest: it has helped me both professionally and personally over the years.

This small, online news organization run on a relatively shoestring budget and with a small staff is downright scrappy. You can find stories about almost everything that has anything to do with buying, selling, trading, insuring, manufacturing and legislating stuff. Product reviews. Alerts about product recalls, consumer scams and consumers' complaints. All of that and much, much more is on ConsumerAffairs.com.

The site's solid mission is admirable -- which is why it's troubling that ConsumerAffairs.com reporter Joe Enoch has been booted from the U.S. Senate's press gallery.

According to ConsumerAffairs.com, gallery officials are questioning whether the site is a "legitimate journalistic enterprise." The site also noted in a story that its business model has been questioned.

"We try to bring in enough money from advertising each month to keep the lights on," said James R. Hood, the site's founder and editor-in-chief. Hood formerly worked as top editor of the Associated Press' broadcast operations, and he is co-author of the AP Broadcast News Handbook. He founded Zapnews, eventually bought by the Christian Broadcasting Network and then sold to ABC News.

Let's just say Hood -- and his small staff -- are legit. They deserve to retain their seat in the Senate gallery. Gallery officials should reinstate the online news organization's credentials immediately. Blocking ConsumerAffairs.com from Senate hearings is essentially blocking the public from having access to vital information that doesn't always make big headlines (Case in point: the organization's coverage of troubles with Honda CR-V and Element models. I just Googled news of a suit filed against Honda, and the only story popping up is from ConsumerAffairs.com -- and Hood wrote it.)

All of this raises interesting questions (Yes, it's worth wondering whether the gatekeepers are trying to free up a seat for some blogger they're paying on the down-low to write nice things about the Bush administration -- but that's not one of my questions) about the rise of online media. While I think ConsumerAffairs.com should be in the Senate gallery, I do wonder how gallery officials should determine who gets a credential. They've got limited space and a exploding array of news organizations to deal with.

Any ideas? Issues of meeting access are obviously issues on the local and state levels, too.