PRs increasingly trading on the ‘authenticity’ of bloggers
One of the cliches of weblogging advocates is that webloggers are disinterested ordinary people whereas journalists are biased and prey to PR ’spin’. Well it turns out that PR agencies are increasingly targetting bloggers as well - with some success. This NYT story about Walmart feeding bloggers stories shows bloggers doing the kind of things “MSM” journalists are often accused of - copying and pasting press releases.
You can see some of the early reaction to the story already on the blog of one of the bloggers named in the story.
And one aspect of the story the NYT didn’t concentrate on - the PR agency in question, Edelman, has written a report last year (Ironically entitled Trust ‘Media’: How Real People Are Finally Being Heard) urging just this kind of active engagement with selected bloggers.
April 6th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
[...] Since it is illegal to advertise smoking on TV and Hollywood and TV directors are being increasingly discouraged from glamourising the practice, nicotine peddlers are following ‘citizen journalists’ into DIY media. One savvy entrepreneur has decided to produce the Up in Smoke Video Podcast - guest starring technology pundits John C. Dvorak and Steve Gibson to give it some online word of mouth - and is trying to promote it via bloggers (the creator contacted me via my weblog). I note that while the website of the company selling the cigars and producing and promoting the podcast asks that you be over 18 to view it, there is no such barrier to access the website or directly download the podcast and the only barrier to downloading the programme via iTunes is that it is rated ‘explicit’ (a tag normally used to describe language or nudity). iTunes does let you restrict access to ‘explicit’ content but that parental control option is not switched on by default. Alas, the hype around weblogs being a ‘free’ media where the plucky independent citizen can challenge corrupt corporate and governmental interests is obscuring the manner in which business interests are sheltering behind its current lack of regulation for their own ends (as I have blogged before). [...]