European wine producers, together with their Californian and Australian counterparts, are fighting a rear guard action to prevent the introduction of Internet domain names such as .vin and .wine.

This story both amuses and frustrates me at the same time. It’s an issue that I read about several weeks ago, but today it’s featured in the Wall Street Journal. After working at big news organizations for the past 20 years, I’m reminded of the old joke, that nothing is news until [INSERT BIG NEWS ORG] says it is. 

However, there is a news peg here: “The issue will be one of the topics this week in London at a public meeting hosted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the technical functions that direct Web traffic to the correct servers and websites.”

So the cynical reader in me wonders, are WSJ editors late to this story? Or did they turn down this story until they had a news peg? Or did the reporter only just discover this angle of the story while looking into the upcoming meeting? A quick Google of the author (who I see focuses on technology and telecom and reports from Brussels), lends me to believe it’s the latter.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

What makes wine-related stories of interest to the mainstream press? That’s a question I’d like to explore a bit more as I continue with this site. 

Web domain names like .vin and .wine raise hackles among vintners