How to thrive in 2005, part 2
In response to my column yesterday, How to thrive in 2005, my partner Tom Foremski comments:
I'm very optimisitic that professional journalistic practices will now become more widely known and practiced because of blogging and bloggers. And I predict that the term blogging will lose much meaning. In the same way that the "new economy" turned out to be the "economy," blogging is journalism and it is subject to the same rules that define the quality of journalism. But there will be much confusion in the meantime ;-)
Can't disagree with that, but . . .
I like the term "citizen journalists" and agree that this term, as well as "blogger" is likely to fade. "Journalist" will continue to serve, adding another layer of meaning as this new publishing medium - the so-called "blogosphere" (ugly word) - becomes familiar terrain.
Whatever you call them, the challenge for these people, as they come online to tell their stories and share their opinions, will be to adopt best journalistic practices, honestly and with integrity, and not imitate the mainstream journalists, in the business and general reader press, who have degraded the profession by passing along government and business propaganda without questioning, investigating, and putting it in context.
It will be very interesting to watch major publishing and broadcast organizations continue to respond and adapt to the blog movement. These organizations have already become, in my opinion, so involved in the strategies of their corporate owners that it is often difficult to find honest reporting in their products.
Adopting the trappings of the feisty, independent blogosphere may help mainstream publishers and broadcasters win back some of the trust they've lost in recent years, initially at least, but I fear that these organizations will use the blog format as just another vehicle to continue disseminating the products of their compromised journalistic approach.
The field seems open for honest journalists - whether they come from traditional settings or from the ranks of bloggers - to use the Web to report stories that the mainstream press (technology, business, or general reader) ignores, and to correct the misconceptions and deceptions of the mainstream press.
Nowhere will this have more impact than in Silicon Valley.
We've already seen the effect of bloggers making an end run around corporate PR organizations to report news of new products and technologies, personnel moves, mergers and acquisitions, criminal investigations and other legal actions. This activity will continue to increase.
Companies (and their public relations contractors) must assume that, sooner rather than later, everybody in Silicon Valley (I refer to both the strict geographic and less literal meanings of that appellation) is going to know, more or less, everything about what they are doing.
What was once whispered (if it didn't make it into print, and if it was really interesting it usually did) around Silicon Valley water coolers is now published - by bloggers, then picked up by the technology business and general reader press if the story warrants such coverage.
What does that kind of exposure do to a corporate communications program?
Politicians and government policy makers have discovered that, over time, cover-ups and deception and efforts to mislead the public generally don't work.
Can Silicon Valley executives maintain control through more robust enforcement of confidentiality agreements and employment contracts? Among a worker population increasingly made up of part-timers, independent contractors, and outsourced employees thousands of miles away from corporate HQ? Can they keep a lid on news, bad and good, at least for the next few weeks, quarters, over the life of a multi-year CEO contract?
I don't think so.
The trick will be to adopt communications strategies that take for granted full disclosure of bad news as well as good, and that finds in the emerging network of "citizen journalists" an opportunity to build trust and thus win respect and loyalty from customers and other business partners.
