Blogging: From Business to Personal

The first 133 pages of “Naked Conversations” by Robert  Scoble and Shel Israel is chock full of great information about the business of blogging. I must admit that it took me several days to complete the reading because anytime there was a mention of a blog, I had to type the name of the blog into Google search and take a peek. I found some truly amazing stuff out there. Some of the blogs mentioned in the book had been archived and shut down but the majority were still up and blogging.

In Chapter 7:Survival of the Publicists, Scoble and Israel discuss Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman PR, which caught my attention for several reasons.

First, as a 1st year student in the Johns Hopkins University Master of Arts in Communication program, I am still trying to decide which communications concentration I would like to pursue. I am torn between public and media relations and corporate and/or non-profit communications.  As a budding PR flack, my interests were immediately piqued when Scoble and Israel mentioned the Edelman Trust Barometer, the venerable annual survey of  ‘opinion leaders’ from around the world. I am currently learning about focus groups and surveys in my Research and Methods class so I was excited to have a cross-reference in my Introduction to Digital Media assigned readings.

Second, I began to realize, through reading “Naked Conversations” and my own desire to continue to learn more about this topic, that CEO blogging can go from business to personal when a major event occurs.

On page 102, Scoble and Israel state, “Soon after starting his blog, Speak Up, in September 2004, he (Edelman) heard blog community complaints that he came across sounding like a corporate executive, which, in fact, is precisely what he is”. The authors go on to mention that over time “Edelman’s language has gradually loosened”.

So, when I put the book aside and typed Richard Edelman’s blog in Google search, I expected to find the first blog entry about what Edelman’s PR firm was working on and what his readers thought about it. I clicked on Edelman’s Speak Up blog and was taken aback and deeply touched by the most recent entry. It was not about the latest happenings in the PR world. Edelman’s most recent entry was about his battle with prostate cancer.

Edelman’s prose is both succint and detailed. He doesn’t parse words and his determination to beat his cancer leaps off the page. I immediately began rooting for him, a man I will probably never meet whose blog I visited because I read about him in a book about businesses and blogs that was written 3 years ago. I wondered out loud if this could be considered a Kevin Bacon-like six degrees of separation situation?

Edelman’s blog about his fight against prostate cancer humanizes him in a way that a press release could never accomplish. As I read some of the comments that readers posted, I saw how the blogosphere brings people, who may never meet each other together by the simple act of sharing information. Some readers wrote about their own battle with cancer or dealing with loved ones who who are fighting the disease and

Blogging truly is a listen and participate medium, personally as well as professionally.

Anonymity, Jurisdiction, and Citizen Reporters

After I finished reading chapters 7 through 12 of Dan Gilmor’s “We The Media” I kept thinking about Chapter 9: Trolls, Spin, and the Boundaries of Trust. I am an avid reader of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Once I finish reading the articles and/or blogs, I turn my attention to the “Comments”.

I always find it amazing some of the things people will say when they can hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Many comments are filled with biting humor and realism, but so many others are mean, patronizing, and condescending. It proves that the cloak of the internet provides cover for any and everyone, sometimes that is good, many times it is not.

I read the Wall Street Journal’s Baghdad Life blog today and the topic was the enormous amount of uncollected and decaying trash that is all over the city, which is common in war-torn and/or neglected parts of the world. When I think about the Iraq war, my first thoughts are about the huge number of casualties, Bush administration deception that brought us there, and the billions it is costing the American taxpayers.

Uncollected garbage and its effect on the populace: foul odors, disease, animals, etc. is not something I think that pops into one’s mind when they think about the casualties of war.

I looked at some of the comments and this one from someone calling himself McCain 08 just astounded me in its audacity, rudeness, and indifference:

Can’t these people do anything except for whine their lot in life…I mean common it’s been 6 years get it together. The US can’t be expected to fix all of their problems. We got rid of the dictator, now it’s time for their people to do something for themselves…besides kill each other.

Comment by McCain ’08 – September 8, 2008 at 1:53 pm

Talk about spinning! According to McCain ’08’s comment, the Iraqis should not be complaining about anything and they should fix their country and get on with it. I wonder why McCain ’08 doesn’t tag his full name instead of a pseudonym?

Now, there are certainly worse offenders and to be fair, McCain ’08 is simply expressing his/her opinion which is protected under the First Amendment. We are fortunate to live in a country where we can speak freely.

This brings me to We The Media’s Chapter 10: Here Come the Judges (and Lawyers). On page 197, when Gilmor writes about how the High Court of Australia created a right to sue him on their ‘home turf’ for what he said on a blog and column which are both U.S. based, it immediately reminded me of an excellent article I read in my favorite magazine, Vanity Fair.

In Day of the Crocodile, Peter Godwin, Vanity Fair contributor and Zimbabwe born journalist writes about the time in 1984 when he had written about Mugabe led massacres for a British newspaper, a military General aimed a gun at him and threatened to kill him because of what Godwin wrote in the article.

So, in a repressive country (Zimbabwe) torn apart by a blood thirsty dictator, a journalist can have his life threatened because of an article written in another country. And, in a somewhat democratic country (Australia) a journalist can be threatened with a defamation lawsuit for a column also written in another country.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

My Very First Blog

Hi everyone! This is my very first blog and I am incredibly excited! For those of you who know me, you know I love to learn and share information with others. This blog is apart of a class assignment at Johns Hopkins. What a cool project!

We The Media-Chapter 5: The Consent of the Governed

Dan Gilmor’s “We The Media” book is most informative and an easy read. By reading the Introduction through Chapter 6, I feel like I can have an intelligent conversation about 20th century media and the evolution into the 21st.

Chapter 5 stands out for me as really interesting especially since we are just weeks away from the presidential elections. Gilmor’s insight into the Howard Dean campaign reminded me how the internet shaped his campaign and how the Obama campaign has not only adopted that model but perfected it.

Online campaigns with their grassroots roots remind me of the power of ordinary people and how we can affect real change and change the course of an election, a movement, or just about anything we put our minds to.

The similarities between Dean and Obama are striking. They both made bold and brave decisions to openly voice their stance against the Iraq invasion. Activists and citizen journalists are galvanized by folks who stand up for what they believe in no matter how unpopular.

The “Dean Meetups” were ingenious and have worked so well for the Obama campaign by allowing people who otherwise may not have connected to join for a united cause is astounding.

As I continued reading, Gilmor goes on to partly explain how the Dean campaign imploded: “But a true conversation between a candidate and his public would involve the candidate genuinely learning from the people. That process wasn’t prominent in the Dean enterprise”.

I wonder if Dean did not understand or grasp the value of directly communicating with his grassroots supporters by actually contributing his thoughts on a blog on a regular basis. As an Obama supporter who is on the campaign’s email list, I truly look forward to the daily emails I receive giving me updates on his speeches, policies, challenges, etc. I also like those emails from the Obama campaign where they ask for our feedback on what’s happening.

Reading about the internet as a ‘cash cow’ for politicians is another example of how the internet is one of the greatest inventions of all time. The internet is used to raise money for just about everything. The very first time I ever contributed to a campaign was an online contribution to Obama. It was so easy and secure, just absolutely ingenious.

But, we all know that raising money is something politicians have been doing for years whether it was the 1972 George McGovern campaign which utilized direct mail in the 20th century to online donations in the 21st. This demonstrates the evolution of communication mediums. Gilmor points out the 20th century model was a ‘one to many’ medium (i.e. printing press and broadcasting), and a ‘one to one’ medium (telephone). The internet has effectively combined all three in such an innovating and forward thinking way.

This all makes me wonder what something like the Civil Rights Movement would have been like if the internet was available. I think both international and national outcry against Jim Crow would have been so deafening that the time it took to strike down Jim Crow and for President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would have been cut in half. Imagine a viral grassroots movement in the 60s.

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