Bloggers could become easy prey to standard public relations techniques
As companies and their public relations organizations ponder how to react to the “blogging” phenomenon, I’d like to point out some tricks of the trade used in the business of influencing media.
Forewarned is forearmed some say, and maybe some of the following will help bloggers who are not professional journalists.
I believe that some bloggers are in danger of losing their independence and their unique voice within the media landscape—if they become pulled into a sphere of influence. This is the “sphere” that professional journalists operate in every day and cannot avoid.
By Tom Foremski - November 29, 2004 | Permalink
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The rise of blogging has a nightmarish quality to it --if you are in the public relations or corporate communications fields-- because of the fact that anyone can become a blogger. And that means that anyone can become a journalist. 
In the first part of this essay, I asked how will PR communications teams apply media relations to the blogosphere? The traditional methods of influence can’t be applied to such a fragmented media landscape. (Part I is 
I just arrived in San Diego for the 
Here is a version of an entry I wrote for 
This is pretty much inside baseball, but 
I'm often asked how a blog differs from a website. I usually say that blogs are websites that are organized like journals, generally created with software that lets you make frequent posts and supports things like reader comments and trackbacks, which aren't typically found on business sites. Blogging connotes a lot of other things, of course, like strong opinions, brutal honesty, and an ongoing conversation. SiliconValleyWatcher, for instance, uses Movable Type even though it is organized more like a news website than a traditional blog.
In countries where the press in under the direct control of the government, blogs provide the equivalent of a free press. That's why 
They show the viral nature of some stories. Some spread very quickly yet are soon gone, while others have a steady momentum that continues to generate trackbacks.
There wasn't much in the way of burgers and beer for Jay Allen and his colleagues this past barbecue weekend. As product manager for Six Apart, the publisher of Movable Type, Jay faced a big problem: an upgrade to a popular third party software application was causing tens of thousands of Movable Type blogs to behave erratically.
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