A lot of criticism has been aimed at Randy’s Journal, the pseudo-blog from Boeing Vice President Randy Beseler.
The only thing this site had in common with blogs was the blog-like entries. No comments, no trackbacks, no permalinks, no RSS feeds. You can debate the need to allow comments; I’ve noted here before that Dave Winer, the guy who (for all practical purposes) invented blogging, doesn’t think comments are a requirement, since you can use your own blog to comment on what you’ve read and use a trackback to link to the original post. But a blog that misses all these characteristics? Now that’s what I call a fake blog.
Now, Lee LeFever over at CommonCraft notes that Beseler’s blog has added two of these elements: permalinks and RSS feeds. LeFever points to an April 5 post on the Boeing blog that announces the addition of RSS feeds, but makes it pretty clear that the company just isn’t interested in comments. While you’re free to leave general comments (not associated with any particular post), Boeing is incredibly selective about which ones they’re willing to share publicly. Despite criticism that a blog isn’t a blog without feedback, Beseler replies,
“I didn’t realize that the blogosphere had such a rule. Sorry, that’s just not what we’re about. Sure, we’re going to post some of your comments. Even critical ones. But it’s not a free-for-all.”
GM takes a different approach, publishing all comments except the very few that violate standards of decency. GM is interested in building a dialogue with its customers. I suspect Boeing doesn’t need a blog to do that, since it has pretty tight relationships with its customers, primarily airlines. Permitting open commenting just wouldn’t provide Boeing with the same benefit it produces for GM.
One thing I like in the post is a clear definition of the blog’s purpose. Just as the GM Fastlane blog is dedicated to a discussion of cars-no matter how much others want leadership to talk about business decisions-Beseler’s blog also has an explicit focus:
“Here, we’re going to talk about the future of flight. The exciting things on the horizon for air travelers. The new trends and technologies that are shaping this exciting industry. Quite a few people have emailed to say that they’ve very much enjoyed reading about just those things in this blog.”
(Interesting, though, that the very next post had nothing to do with the future of flight, but was rather at get-well card to ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings, who announced he is battling lung cancer.)
More frequent posts wouldn’t hurt; The most recent post is dated last Friday. But all in all, I agree with LeFever: The addition of RSS and permalinks go a long way toward improving Boeing’s sole blogging effort.
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
