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When A Blogger Meets Public Relations
fermion writes "The New York Times is running a story on the evolving relationship between PR departments and bloggers, specifically between the Wal*Mart PR people and sympathetic bloggers. The interesting thing in this story is not so much the astroturfing, which is old news, but the transformation of blogging from a personal statement to a corporate bullhorn. The bloggers mentioned in the story, who presumably are able to articulate their own opinions, received Wal*Mart email and began to simply copy the PR text into the blogs. What is the use of a blog if bloggers are just going to copy sentences and sentiments from the puppetmaster's email?"
What is the use of a blog if bloggers are just going to copy sentences and sentiments from the puppetmaster's email?
What is the use of a newspaper that just reports government press releases almost verbatim?
What is the use of a television channel if it copies its programming from somewhere else?
What is the use of a boy band just like every other boy band?
The mainstream media and blogs are beginning to watch over each other reciprocally. This is a good thing. It means that if either lies or fucks up, the other pounces down its throat.
Three (tentative) cheers for a free press?
Some people are "sympathetic" to Wal*Mart???
I'm sympathetic to wounded puppies, starving people, oppressed subcultures, the sick, the dying, abused children, and so on.. but multinational corporations are just not something I can rouse the neccessary emotional response to sympathise with.
We all know that "journalists" do this all the time. They quote from PR releases, and use video footage in their news reports.
Why shouldn't bloggers do this as well?
Fascinating that a newspaper would run such a story, considering the huge numbers of newpaper articles that are barely rewritten press releases from special interest groups and politicians.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.