Blogging God Dr. David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and a well-known blogger himself, spoke to ITWorld about the "long tail" of weblogging and dishes up some thoughts about how PR people should cope with the democratization of media. His message and mine - the days of Anal Retentive PR are over.
Bruce Taylor: Let's go over to the media side, because I think that is where there is a huge amount of interest right now. Here you have industrial, organized media terribly concerned and terribly interested in what's going on with this insurgency that they don't own and control. And then the other piece of that is how intrigued marketers and particularly PR people are in the use of blogs as a way to flog, rather than to inform or to share or communicate. Where are we going ethically with this?
David Weinberger: It is certainly the case that PR firms are noticing weblogs. I've been talking with a few of them, and there's no doubt. And at first sight, it raises all of the worst PR instincts: Here are people talking about my products, my client's products, and so what is my role in life? It's to get more people to talk about my products, and to say what I want them to say. That's the instinct. But at least some of them are fighting that instinct, whether because they're enlightened or because they are afraid that if they try to work under the table to influence weblogs, they'll be outed and it will be a black eye. Occasionally, you hear about a marketing campaign that has tried to suborn blogging. And there are marketing campaigns that are perfectly straightforward about advertising, for example. But it's the product placement side of life that, I think, worries many of us.
