My Phones and E-Mail Are Working
Dear OnRequest -
Recently I spoke with a second person who reported that you have said to them that you have tried to get in touch with me about my reporting about your failed business model(s), and my otherwise critical position about how you're trying to generate enough revenue to be: a) profitable; b) a takeover candidate, or c) ???
So, I checked, and my phones work. I looked back in all my e-mail from pre-blog launch to present, and no correspondence. And, since I actually archive my junk/trash, I checked there to. Nope. Zip. Nada. I got nothing from you.
Apparently, when you were talking to a few photographers who have expressed reservations about your business model and manner in which photographers can generate revenue from a relationship with you, your folks have come back and said things like oh, you mean that Washington DC photographer? We've tried to reach out to him, but he's not interested in talking to us. Now, that's not a direct quote (otherwise it'd be in quotation marks) but the gist of what was said to them.
If you want to get in touch with me, and provide a cogent response to what has been written and reported, please do so. However, going around and suggesting that you have done so without actually doing so is disengenuous, and quite possibly dishonest. If you'd like to respond and take apart what I've written and provide an e-mailed point-by-point response, feel free to do that too. I'll review it, and be happy to provide a follow-up piece that includes it, with any applicable commentary on my part.
The last word I heard from OnRequest was when David Norris responded to another questioner in the audience at the Microsoft Summit, who was challenging the figure Norris cited (which was somewhere above $20k if I recall) for an entire library for T-mobile to use for their new campaigns, and who was suggesting that that figure was way way too low. Whatever the actual figure, the photographer in the audience doing the challenging knew whereof he spoke when he responded that the figure was a low low low amount.
Soon I'll be reviewing what your staff has referred to as your latest contract. Supposedly, it's better this go 'round, as nothing there jumped out at the person who was kind enough to provide it. However, a contract is a form of 'the price of admission'. It gets you in the door. Next will be - how fair is what you're paying for what you're providing. Are you treating the creative talent as day laborers - paid once and never again? Or, are you paying them 50/50 or all licensing revenues as an agency, or 80% to them and 20% to you when acting as their rep? I look forward to reviewing it, and, if you actually wanted to contact me, rather than just pay that act (of picking up the phone or e-mailing me) lip service, feel free to do so. If you have concrete examples of how your business is not just serving your clients, but also acting on behalf of the photographers and creative talent that you will rely on for any longevity, I am happy to review it.
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As I was pondering my post for today, the Colbert Show was on, and I was doing some paperwork review. One of the guests on the show was Andrew Keen, author of 
Debates debates debates. Everyone's having one. CNN, Youtube, and to the right is the debate I had to interrupt my vacation to cover in Chicago for a day - the union's democratic debate on Soldier Field. The first debates that will really matter in the presidential field won't really come until the spring. Yet, a debate worth paying attention to is that about your future as a photographer. 
I was passing through a drive-through during my trek through the Northwest these past few days, and there I found an interesting insight. "Jack", of Jack-In-The-Box fame, was cited as the source for the phrase: