As for how sites are reporting and interacting with Hasbro? It's certainly complicated. Every person who is working as a reporter on a collecting site started as a fan. Nobody is doing this purely as a journalistic pursuit. And very few have any serious journalistic training. And very often their lines of questioning may be guided by their own personal interests. Is it admirable that some collecting sites went to Hasbro with reader questions? Sure. And there is something kind hearted about them keeping those questions in their original form from the readers. But in the grand scheme of things, you need to do some editing of those questions in order to make them coherent for both Hasbro and the readers. Because this Q&A session frankly came across as a completely unfocused mess.
As someone who was there for 2 hours after the convention closed with Derryl and Bryan from Hasbro, Dan Curto, and Paul and Chuck from JTA, I can attest that what transpired that night was anything but an unfocused mess. The six of us sat in the darkened convention center exhibit hall and had a completely open round table discussion about the state of collecting right now as a conversation with questions sprinkled throughout. It was hardly a simple ask and answer grilling nor did we just dump a load of questions on their lap and say "answer these". One question sparked another which lead to another and so on. Very freeform.
There were a lot of things said in that 2 hours that didn't make it to the page whether it being proprietary information or something just omitted because the question has been asked and answered ad nauseum through prior discussions at cons, QnAs or through simple deductive reasoning. Also, it's very hard to translate the body language and wry smiles that Derryl and Bryan cast when we touched on topics that are not quite ready for public dissemination.
This experience was the highlight of the convention for me as I/we got to pick the brains of those responsible for the Star Wars line on a personal level. Derryl and Bryan were very gracious in giving up their time, and to be honest, they would have done it for anyone, not just for representatives of a few fan sites.
I've been in these types of sessions with Derryl, as well as Brian Parrish, Mark Boudreaux and others, along with other collecting site reporters. In my experience the Hasbro staff have all been very nice, and incredibly generous with their time. They are all fans of the saga, and consider themselves lucky to be working on the Star Wars license. And there is a sense that some of the things they're working on are for collectors like them just as much as us.
As for these sessions? Lots of info flows out of these informal sessions, and I was able to break stories on numerous topics following my time with the Hasbro team. I've even seen ideas pitched to the Hasbro team from reporters, some of which eventually wound up being produced (the Cade Skywalker / Darth Talon comic pack specifically comes to mind). The trick with these Hasbro sessions is how you break down the information and present it to your readers. You can edit it and present it in an organized fashion, or you can just put it all up online in the manner in which you heard it. Ultimately you have to serve your readers, and that means organizing the information in such a way as to give some weight to the important stories. That just takes good editorial judgment and a clear writing style.
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