Earlier tonight I was on a four-minute segment on CNBC that largely focused on Forbes’ new cover story …
– Attack of the Blogs. Registration is required or the bugmenot login/password “forbesdontbug” worked for me. The article’s author, Daniel Lyons, was in our interview group.
The gist of Lyons’ soon-to-be maligned story is that blogs are “the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.”
If that’s not bad enough they also squarely put the blame here on Google and Yahoo as our “potent allies.” It’s so ridiculous that two companies that have done so much to democratize media are being chastised for it.
Forbes, I am very disappointed that you chose to take such an unbalanced POV when BusinessWeek and Fortune told us both sides of the story. With all respect to Lyons and the magazine’s editors, bloggers are not Corporate America’s Boogeyman. They can be a company’s greatest allies and evangelists if AND only IF we take the time to take them seriously and engage them in dialogue. Instead of telling us about both opportunities and threats, you paint the blogosphere as the Wicked Witch of the West. With a a few hours of reading excerpts of the forthcoming book on business blogging, Naked Conversations, you would have seen both sides of the story.
My message to Corporate America is simple. Don’t listen to Forbes. Take a look around the blogosphere for yourself and you will find real humans – good, bad and ugly. What do you know? It’s just like in the meatspace. There are some who mean well, others who are more nefarious. And all want to be heard. Listen to them. Work with them. Live with them and get over this fear mongering because they’re here to stay. And some companies -probably your competitors unless you act – will prevail by treating them with respect and engaging them in genuine unfiltered conversations.
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
