It’s not just the marketers who need to pay attention to what’s being said in the blogosphere – it’s the journalists as well.
Glenn Reynolds reminds us of this today in pointing to a Baltimore Sun article that analyzes the role bloggers played in Dan Rather’s retirement. A key quote from the story…
“The fallout from Rather’s Bush report is proof of that power: It was bloggers – not television or print journalists – who first questioned the authenticity of the documents on which 60 Minutes II based the segment.”
“What’s more basic to journalism than fact-checking and accuracy?” Socolow says. “That’s what bloggers are providing, as the Bush-Rather story illustrates. CBS News – or The New York Times for that matter – never had to worry about its journalism being independently evaluated the way it is today on the Internet.”
Just as Scoble today told marketers to listen and respond to bloggers, Reynolds advises journalists to do the same…
“And if I were running a Big Media outlet I’d pay someone to surf the blogs (or check links to my own stories from blogs via technorati) and then make corrections when they found errors. It’s free, outsourced error-correction.”
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.
