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July 12, 2004
After Spin: Interview with Steve Rubel for Global PR Blog Week 1.0"Public relations should first understand that to the extent that its art is a form of 'spin'--whether it's reasonable spin, accepted spin, good spin, bad spin, terrible spin--it is selling a service for which there is less and less value, and less mind is paid to it. Spin was possible in the era of few-to-many media, and a small number of gatekeepers who could be spun...."Steve Rubel, who writes the Micro Persuasion weblog (“how blogs and participatory journalism are impacting the practice of public relations”) suggested an interview with me for his part in Global PR Blog Week 1.0, an online forum that debuted today with several pieces. I said yes and here are the results. In connection with what I say here, see Trevor Cook’s kick off piece for the forum, Re-thinking PR. (PR today is “literally a mirror image of the mainstream media problem; which we might call the ‘restricted access’ problem.”) Also published as Jay Rosen: PR Needs to Stand for Real Transparency at Global PR Blog Week 1.0. (Rest of the forum’s schedule is here.) STEVE RUBEL: How would you define participatory journalism? JAY ROSEN: Right now, by what people like Debbie Galant are doing— hyperlocal journalism, weblog-style. (“NOW SERVING MONTCLAIR, GLEN RIDGE AND BLOOMFIELD.”) But really there are hundreds more developments to illustrate. Ask someone like Len Witt of the Public Journalism Network (meeting in Toronto soon about participatory journalism): he’s one guy tracking the story as citizens begin to participate in journalism. Or follow JD Lassica, who’s not only on the story, but a driver of it with conference talks, articles, books, and a daily weblog— ideas for use, as this approach is sometimes called. Look at what Jeff Jarvis is up to in advising a team of students at Northwestern, who created this, and evangelizing at his weblog, Buzzmachine. RUBEL: Is it more than just blogging? ROSEN: Yes… it’s the spirit of participation, which means people doing things for themselves, taking action of some kind, where before they were attentive but inert, or out of it completely, and uninvolved. We have seen this force erupt many times in the modern world, a passion to participate. There is every reason to suppose that it would come ‘round in journalism. Every journalist who’s any good will tell you that being a reporter is fun. Plus, a lot of people are fascinated by the news, and what’s wrong with it. There are smart people in every corner of this country, many without any professional standing or stake whatsoever—just citizens, right?—who are seriously frustated by the failures and flaws they see in the American press. When those people find that the tools for doing journalism, or some activity interpretative of it, are within reach, it’s an ignition— a spark. Is it all about weblogs? No, participatory surges are common everywhere, especially in domains of information. Take participatory medicine. You don’t have to squint very hard to see that it’s upon us now. People don’t just depend on their doctor’s prescription and “take” the drugs advised. They find out themselves, and the Interent lets them share and pool knowledge. And so doctors, we know, are in a different position. A knowledge monopoly has collapsed, which is all part of the life cycle of media forms and their spinoff formations. Say you’re a profession, or a guild. You once had social possession of some knowledge zone. It was your zone. This became your source of authority. Then it became distributed. Can you adapt? Can your authority adapt? How many times has it happened in human history? Thousands. It would be shocking if it didn’t happen in journalism. One can argue that it’s starting again now. People are flipping things around, because they now have the tools to “do” more and more with media. Some are tools only the pros had before. RUBEL: What excites you about participatory journalism? ROSEN: It’s democratic. I mean extremely so. There’s always been a lot of talent in this country. Now it can be told. RUBEL: What concerns you? ROSEN: Everything that could go wrong. Everything that’s wrong with the Internet. The problems and potential disasters in participatory media are the problems of having freedom. RUBEL: Why is blogging not really journalism in your view? ROSEN: Actually, that is not my view. It was something I wrote down, a phrase I employed in passing, or winding around to my view, which is that blogging doesn’t have to be journalism to be good. Sometimes it is journalism, of a kind, which often depends on the daily output of the professional and commercial press, in the way that a second wave depends on the first. Sometimes it’s just good information about a place— and that’s journalism. Let’s say, and we know it’s possible, that a story can be “kept alive” because bloggers keep it from disappearing in the news tide. The Trent Lott Lesson. That’s like a second action, a “holding” of the story up for inspection. It happens just after the first news wave and follow up stories are done. Many of the political blogs have this character: a second army pours over the dispatches and conclusions of the first, interpreting it. But this is not the really new thing. The new thing is how, in the online space, bloggers knit the news together with their views and views arriving from elsewhere, and then manage to embed into the Web this second imprint, upon the items that originally struck us as news. And so you have the first wave (also called a news cycle) and a second that embeds it further into the Web, with interpretations adding to a web of other notes and reactions. How is this possible? Because the bloggers know how to link, and quote, and entice you to look elsewhere, zap around. They’re way ahead of the journalists on that. If people in the press would just understand that one fact they would grasp what weblogs are about, and why they’re being talked about at all today as “journalism.” RUBEL: What about those who are empowered to blog by established media outlets, are they more like journalists than the rest of us? ROSEN: Good question. I think these people—any journalist empowered to blog, as you well put it, by a mainstream news outlet—will be the ones in the best position to change journalism from inside the traditional firms. Will they? I have no idea. But if you are interested in the press, it pays to watch this one unfold. I try never to make predictions. But I do place bets. If there’s gonna be a carrier class for changed notions of what it means to be a professional journalist, within the body of the mainstream press, it will probably be local writers and reporters on metropolitan newspapers (or public radio stations or maybe weeklies) who learn to blog really well for their communities, which means digging into their communties, embedding themselves in the information flow— and in public conversation. Here I would compare a weblog to a community switching station. When professional journalists get the hang of that, they will become quite good at it. This form of publishing was made for people with journalistic skills. A growing number of people are realizing that. When I say it “probably will” be them I only mean: I’d bet on them. “Those who are empowered to blog by established media outlets,” in your phrase. (And if I were a young journalist on the way up, I would hunt down this assignment: to blog in a newsy way, day-to-day.) These people—young, old or in the prime of their careers—are inevitably going to bring radical ideas and questions to the table within newsrooms. We’ll have to watch what happens when bosses and peers meet up with this. How will they react? Of course it’s already happened. Witness the live issue: Can reporters have their own blogs? Freedom of speech for journalists is a freedom of press issue for publishers and journalists. If you separate for a moment the weblog authors, as they have emerged so far, from the weblog form and its online sphere, then it’s clear that the blog software and the liveness of the Web connection it promotes are possible boons to any solid news franchise, and in particular to individual journalists— reporters with a beat, columnists with an urge to prove themselves. They can use the tool now called weblog to fine tune their informational “fit” with a live public of users who talk back—indeed, write back—and are thus able to locate stories, or define their significance. To have to deal with a writing readership is of inestimable value to a young journalist. And as Dan Gillmor always says: My audience knows more than me. A weblog teaches you that. A lot depends on the terms of empowerment for journalists who blog, and of course on the wit and talent of the professionals involved, plus the crash and thud of events. But I like what Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post said in OJR recently: the Internet demands voice. Liked it so much I’ve quoted it three times. And I admire what the Spokesman Review is up to. They’re trying stuff, which they feel free to abandon. Often the best approach. RUBEL: Do the majority of established journalists fear participatory media/blogging or do they embrace it? ROSEN: The majority do not understand this new formation out there, so no, I would not say your typical journalist fears anything special, except more information pollution from unreliable, attention-seeking amateurs who blog. Nor has there been a general “embrace.” Rather, something else is going on, far more significant. Some journalists (numbers are not known) are reading blogs. Not all have the time, but many realize they can be worth the time once you develop a feel for what I call the “second wave” effect. A little orchestra of interpreters instantly comes along and does something to journalism, plays back its significance, but first editing out all the noise. It’s like a reply. Smart journalists are tuning into that because its an intelligent use of their work— and a departure point, a place where criticism flashes. Sometimes what they are reading surpasses their work. Ask these journalists about blogs and you get a totally different answer . It embraces a user’s more intimate knowledge, and that’s what counts. This will all be talked through in Dan Gillmor’s book, We, the Media. He is the one mainstream newspaper columnist who is totally in tune with both worlds. (Hype alert: I have blurbed his book and I am quoted in it.) Part of the reason Gillmor wrote We, the Media is to teach his profession to be more open. We’ll see if it works. (See his note: Dear PR People.) RUBEL: How are j-schools changing to equip students who are entering the ROSEN: J-schools change even more slowly than the profession. However, students will change what J-schools are doing if the programs can attract the right bunch, and set them to work doing interesting journalistic things. Cablenewser is a weblog written by Brian Stelter, an 18-year-old sophomore at Towson State University in Maryland. Right now, he might be the most effective journalist of his generation. Keith Oberman might e-mail Cablenewser with views on things so he can talk to his own industry, a mini-public that “meets” at the weblog. (See “Olbermann Calls FOX The “Worst Winners TV’s Ever Seen” Only on CableNewser…) I’d hope J-schools would find that interesting. I do. But I’m confident that students will push this form forward, not only in weblogs but in web zines and specialized reports, or college newspapers on the Web. The question for my fellow deans, chairs and directors (worldwide) is: will the forward ones be journalism students? We may be on the verge of an entrepreneurial “moment” in journalism, in which case the challenge to J-schools would be: can we nourish experimentation, entrepreneurship, team work in building something from scratch, or one-person operations in, say, the I.F. Stone (but also the Brian Stelter) tradition. That’s not an approach journalism schools are accustomed to taking. RUBEL: Does disintermediation threaten PR? How should the profession react to the changes in how consumers get news? ROSEN: I think public relations should first understand that to the extent that its art is a form of “spin”—whether it’s reasonable spin, accepted spin, good spin, bad spin, terrible spin—it is selling a service for which there is less and less value, and less mind is paid to it. Spin was possible in the era of few-to-many media, and a small number of gatekeepers who could be spun. There are fewer who listen (or have to listen) and more who hear only dull propaganda, witless repetition, one of the many forms of mindlessness to which citizens are subjected. Spin is also comedy to Americans, and John Stewart speaks with authority on it. PR does not because it believes, on the whole, in some right to spin— all exceptions cheerfully granted. Plus, there’s what Doc Searls once said to all the “pound the message home” pros, in any field: there is no demand for messages. Factor that possibility in if you want a bright future in any media field. Today many knowledge monopolies are breaking up, and this corresponds with what the British media scholar Anothony Smith once identified as a shift “in the locus of sovereignty over text,” a shift toward the public. We could say “toward consumers,” but what Smith meant is that more power has fallen into the hands of the people who were mere receivers before. They are more sovereign— as consumers, yes. But also as producers of their own media. Pickers and choosers. My advice to PR people is to help citizens become more so— more sovereign over information goods. Spin is not a good. Neither is a brick wall, or a blatantly one-sided story that cleverly coheres because it leaves out every single inconvenient fact. Public relations, if it wants to do good, should stand for real transparency in organizations, and genuine interacivity with publics. Want an issue in corporate PR? Freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of interaction for company bloggers: how do we make it a practical reality? RUBEL:: Recently you told Bill Gates: “cure your blog of public relations, every hint and drop, or don’t do it at all.” What advice can you offer to PR pros who might be involved in helping their companies blog? Well, blogs for an internal audience are one thing. I have no advice there. For the larger universe, I guess my advice would be: think of your bloggers as your organization’s ombudsmen over micro matters and the macro. With what guarantee of independence? is an issue for newspaper ombudsmen. It rises up here. PR might help make freedom of speech possible for speakers within the firm; it can highlight the benefits in this form of openness. RUBEL: What other words of advice (if any) can you offer public relations pros who are coping with the changing media landscape? ROSEN: Hmmm. One thing comes to mind, a kind of warning. PR could be to weblogs what spam is to email: death of a social advance, the ruination of a perfectly good public instrument. It’s worthwhile for professionals to imagine how it might happen. And I know there are some who sense what a disaster that would be. I hope we hear from them during Global PR Blog Week. RUBEL: Recently you wrote about Karen Ryan, a PR person who got into hot water for “posing” as a news reporter in a VNR. This incident indicates that PR people are under increasing ethical scrutiny. What do PR pros need to keep in mind as far as ethics is concerned as they navigate the new personal journalism waters? ROSEN: Well, I always found the boy who cried wolf is a good place to begin. Karen Ryan called “reporter here!” when there was no reporter. The ethical problem with that is obvious. Keeping the logic (and moral) of that fable in mind is wise. Postscript July 14: “We need to change our mindset” Found it interesting that the part most often highlighted by other weblogs interested in the interview or in Global PR Blog Week was: I think public relations should first understand that to the extent that its art is a form of “spin”—whether it’s reasonable spin, accepted spin, good spin, bad spin, terrible spin—it is selling a service for which there is less and less value, and less mind is paid to it. Spin was possible in the era of few-to-many media, and a small number of gatekeepers who could be spun. (See Steve Rubel’s own blog, for example.) Others would know better—I am not, after all, an expert in PR—but what this says to me is: A possible split coming in the ranks of PR pros themselves, or maybe just a small faction reacting against the hardened practices of their peers. For some, “spin” is indeed a dead end, but part of something larger and unsustainable, not dead yet but perhaps soul dead: the impulse to control the message, using experts in that art, largely through the media— free, paid and sought. This ultimately comes into conflict with another mission PR people feel they have: the timely release of public information. Control-the-message public relations, which leads to spin, differs greatly from the “public information officer” model that some in PR favor, or perhaps have come back to. Today, however, it’s more like a public interaction officer they have in mind. I’m not sure what to make of this. But with more and more people in PR talking about the need for transparency and genuine public interaction, and asking whether “spin” has seen its day, it is at least possible that a debate could break out— a split in the ranks on what is wise, responsible, effective and shrewd practice in a time of changing media platforms, vanishing knowledge monopolies, and shifting expectations. It would be natural for PR pros who blog to be out front on this. Listen to Australian Trevor Cook talk this week about shifting media platforms: For a long time, our democratic societies have been constrained by the fact that we have relatively few media outlets and that very few people ever have any opportunity to participate in the debates that go on in those media forums. But now, says Cook, “many of us in PR have grown tired of this insiders game.” Tired is one thing. An argument that the world is growing increasingly inhospitable to the arts of spin and message control; that these are somehow incompatible with where things are headed today, and we should watch out— that’s another thing. “So, PR people,” says Elizabeth Albrycht at her weblog, “we need to change our mindset in order to join into that spirit of participation.” I wonder, though, if it’s realized how big a change this is. Control-the-message practices arise from a “move the masses” mentality, and that is something far more deeply set. Corporate stonewalling—a softer form of which is spin—derives from an instrumental view of truth (like when only the convenient facts count) and that too is deeply set. And on top of that, sometimes experts and professionals will try to control the message, not because it works, or matches the public moment, but rather because it captures authority internally, makes someone an important player— with necessary skills that command a certain market price. Thus you have Hollywood executives ordering script changes and making casting decisions, not because this way of movie-making works better in the marketplace— or produces hit films. It “works” internally by giving big shots a chance to make creative calls, while simultaneously downgrading the skills and creativity of eveyone else— writer, director, producer, casting agency. The culture of control is about that, too—the insiders’ game—and thus cannot be dislodged merely by pointing to its failures. The only way to approach such a beast is to look carefully at what it succeeds in narrowly doing, even if it’s bound to fail on a beastly scale in wider arenas. Many irrational practices survive this way— not because the “control” regime works, but because its practices distribute control to the right players. (Those who have a view on all this, hit the comment button below and speak….) After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… Elizabeth Albrycht, a public relations professional with experience in the high technology arena, writes at her weblog that “just a nifty tool” thinking doesn’t cut it: While I agree that blogging is an important tool to be added to the professional communicator’s toolkit, as I have said before, I think there is something happening in the world of communications that is fundamentally different, and that is a change in mindset, from command-control to distributed participation, and that this is creating new roles for PR people. That is why I have proposed the Open Source PR Project. A worthy experiment: The Seattle Times election 2004 Backyard Blog project Are you interested in this year’s elections? Know your community? Like to talk politics with your friends, colleagues and neighbors? Want an opportunity to blog about your observations? On the other hand, there’s new word of how difficult the “experiment” gets. Blogger burnout (see Wired on it, July 8) is becoming an issue. Poynter’s Steve Outing on The Burned-Out Bloggers of Lawrence: (July 12): Lawrence.com invites community members to write blogs for the site, and it’s been successful in attracting quite a few. The most successful in terms of audience was “Powder Room Confessions,” a blog written by University of Kansas student Sara Behunek, who was remarkably open about her personal and sex life. Controversial would be describing this blog mildly, and the writer routinely generated dozens of comments in the feedback area of her blog items. Behunek tired of the spotlight and the writing and retired Confessions last September. Portland (Oregon) Blogger Jack Bodansky suspends work on his site and writes about it: “My mid-blog crisis.” In Online Journalism Review, The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin calls for a new round of conversations between online and print editors: (May 26, 2004) When I went into the online news business eight years ago, I thought by now we’d own the Internet. Blogging the watchdogs, columnist John Leo of US News writes about clued-in-bloggers shaming the out-to-lunch Los Angeles Times on Paul Bremmer’s farewell speech to Iraqis, which the Times said never happened, though bloggers from Iraq and the U.S. were writing about it. Then the Times compounded the error with an editorial blasting Bremmer for giving no farewell speech, and it compounded it again with a lame and inadequate correction. One blogger wrote: “Bremer’s farewell address had been common knowledge among readers of Internet blogs since at least June 30,” four days before the Times criticized Bremer for having given no speech. Apparently nobody at the Times reads the American press either. Margie Wylie’s Newhouse piece discussing the Iraqi reaction to the Bremer talk ran five days before the Times said the speech hadn’t been given.
Posted by Jay Rosen at July 12, 2004 4:58 PM
Comments
I already made some remarks relevant to myself over on the Global PR Blog posting of this interview, so here I just want to mention something about burnout: There's also a seasonal component. There are several people in the Portland area who have pulled back or quit their weblogs in the past couple of months, some altogether and some to get some space and think about what they are doing. Those particulars made me think back over the past few years and if my recollection is right, there's often a weird sort of "ok, what am I doing" about this time of year. Posted by: The One True b!X at July 12, 2004 7:14 PM | Permalink Is there a tie here to blogads and the potential for creative energies that are employed in the infamous Blogwar of 2003, which has reignited this year? Is there nothing PR can do to help counter the evil empire of Evil Glenn? Posted by: Tim at July 12, 2004 7:31 PM | Permalink May I suggest that the PR profession for the time being may be dead, but only until there is a general winnowing out process. The Internet, with its new blogging power, is quite likely to enable concerns who now use PR professionals to contact news pinch points such as newspapers and electronic media to go directly to those they want to influence. As more and more people get their news off the Internet, the more effective this will become. However, the Internet is likely to turn into the same condition we had in the 19th Century (raised to the 10th to the 600 power) as more and more people are posting on-line. Some studies do indicate that for business involving more people in a decision may provide a more accurate result. However, what will eventually happen to the Internet, I suggest, may be such a wealth of information that sooner or later people will turn to special sites to help them find the news they want and interpret it. Then we'll be back to PR wearing a different suit. Posted by: Chuck Rightmire at July 12, 2004 9:57 PM | Permalink I've always wanted to say this, in a context where people would comprehend it: Disintermediation is a myth. There is RE-INTERMEDIATION! That's the A-list phenomenon, the gatekeeper effect recreating itself. It's blatantly obvious that getting a few very widely-read bloggers to plug something can get it echoed far and wide. If that's not a potential PR strategy, what is?
Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at July 12, 2004 11:54 PM | Permalink The obvious temptation is to say "who gives a !@#$% about the future of PR?!!!!". And while giving temptation its due regard, maybe there's another approach: However, even if the Internet is not really utopic but rather a tool for late capitalist appropriation, we must still account for the fact that, unlike film and television as entertainment, the Internet cannot yet constitute all spectators as one spectator, or even a small set of spectators. Entertainment seeks to create unconscious and monolithic audiences, but, because the Internet is a modality as much as it is a medium in the sense that it provides different kinds of venues for expression -- from web sites to MUDs to chat rooms to BBSs to newsgroups to client servers -- entertainment and consumerism, though a large presence on the Internet, constitute a small percentage of its representational capabilities. As a consequence, the Internet enables different and simultaneous possibilities for awareness, including but not limited to the consciousness/unconsciousness of media representation. Expanding on the habitually untheorized notion of the surfer, the following list is not exhaustive; rather, it suggests the heterogeneity of surfers' stances in the same way that the educable sons of the Passover Seder suggest all children without defining them: Posted by: panopticon at July 13, 2004 12:08 AM | Permalink >>>Every journalist who's any good will tell you that being a reporter is fun....>>> The interesting thing about Barista, which you were kind to mention, is how much people WANT to be involved. People are sending in pictures, concert reviews, recipes, essays. And they're doing it without pay because it is fun. The hard thing, which I've never dealt with before, is being an editor. Saying 'no' to material I don't like. I encourage everybody to get their own blogs and tell me about them. If they're local, I'll link to them on my sidebar and post about them whenever they're pithy or profound. Posted by: Debbie Galant at July 13, 2004 1:17 AM | Permalink The hard thing, which I've never dealt with before, is being an editor. Saying 'no' to material I don't like. This is half the reason I have always refused inquiries about writing for Portland Communique. The other half being the fact that the entire point of the site is to be my experience of trying to cover local politics, design, law, etc. Posted by: The One True b!X at July 13, 2004 2:16 AM | Permalink Ah, but note the sampling problem in "Every journalist who's any good will tell you that being a reporter is fun". Those who don't think it's fun, don't stick around, since it's not exactly a lucrative profession. Same thing with. e.g. being an actor. But the fact that so many people want to be a movie star, doesn't make it very rewarding for all the people who try and fail. Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at July 13, 2004 5:00 AM | Permalink I think the fact that a weblog entry or feature essay doesn't qualify as a legitimate clip for even the smallest papers in the country says it all. It's a vanity press. A blogger on the Washington Monthly site wrote: "People have been e-mailing me for — How long? At least a year, anyway — to suggest that George Bush would try to cancel elections this year and install himself as dictator for life. And for the last year, I've been filing these e-mails exactly where they belong. Today, though, my paranoid friends are having the last laugh." Hmmmm.... Well, it does fit the establishment pressthink narrative that the Internet is filled with paranoid conspiracy nuts. Posted by: Tim at July 13, 2004 12:03 PM | Permalink We do have to note now that Condaleeza Rice is now saying that the elections will go ahead come what may. Posted by: Chuck Rightmire at July 13, 2004 1:05 PM | Permalink I think the fact that a weblog entry or feature essay doesn't qualify as a legitimate clip for even the smallest papers in the country says it all. It's a vanity press. I was amused to discover that Zizek, in his brand new book "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle", quotes an anonymous "Rachel from the UK" from the BBC Web forums in his text (he supports her views, but takes issue with Paul Berman). Today many knowledge monopolies are breaking up, and this corresponds with what the British media scholar Anothony Smith once identified as a shift "in the locus of sovereignty over text," a shift toward the public. Today many knowledge monopolies are breaking up, and new ones are being formed. The locus of sovereignity over *data* is also shifting. DRM, genome patents, copyright extensions (and what about the "inducement act"), attempts to legitimate the ownership of merely factual information, etc. Is it safe to assume that weblogs or advanced electronic networks on which they reside constitute an inherently more "immediate, transparent, unscripted" form of communication? The weblog is itself a script, and like Lawrence Lessig says, ignore the code at your own risk: We live life in real space, subject to the effects of code. We live ordinary lives, subject to the effects of code. We live social and political lives, subject to the effects of code. Code regulates all these aspects of our lives, more pervasively over time than any other regulator in our life. Should we remain passive about this regulator? Should we let it affect us without doing anything in return? Is he saying that "build it and they will *self-organize* into transparent communities based on communicative reason" is wrong? Oh, and on another thread there was a discussion of the political fragmentation of the Left. Here's an interesting take: Backstabbers! Posted by: panopticon at July 13, 2004 1:09 PM | Permalink Above, publius makes two related generalizations (a common thing to do in discussions on this topic): First: "I think the fact that a weblog entry or feature essay doesn't qualify as a legitimate clip for even the smallest papers in the country says it all. It's a vanity press." Second: "It's not that the form is illegitimate per se. It's just that without a paycheck and legitimate backing the reporting is not reliable." There are several issues here, some of them related to what definition of "worth" is the important one. The worth of a reportially-inclined weblog is not necessarily determined by what the newspapers think of it from a professional standpoint. The worth of a reportially-inclined weblog is whether or not the community finds it usefully and engagingly offering something that matters to them. Also, in the hypotheticals publius presents, it's going to vary depending upon context. If the author of a long-standing and well-respected weblog known in the community tried to go pimp himself out for a job at the local newspaper, I don't doubt for a second that the author's work on said weblog would be taken seriously. (Whether or not that author had other necessary qualifications for the job is another matter entirely.) Posted by: The One True b!X at July 13, 2004 6:09 PM | Permalink This discussion, so far, has a very liberal-democratic global capitalist order slant. Is there another category for PR/participatory journalism in the Global PR Blog Week 1.0? A few examples might include North Korea, Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc. Could the international window for voyeurs to peer into the local/participatory journalism/blogging from normally opaque communities be an important PR issue? Is it already? How does the PR in the blogosphere help distinguish between personalized spin, journalistic spin and "official" spin? Posted by: Tim at July 13, 2004 7:00 PM | Permalink It's true that no blog post qualifies as a "clip." It's also true that a clip may not be the best way to "qualify" people in journalism, if there are others. What counts most, for me, is whether a blog post is credentialed, as it were, by a substantial enough body of users--what I call a mini-public--who find it credible, interesting and useful. Blocks may well be "disqualified" by mainstream journalism on grounds of credibility. They already are by some. Doesn't mean this dismissal is entirely credible, or that the person making it is qualified to judge. Could be--not saying it always is--but could be just a sign of ignorance. Or let us say unfamiliarity.
The worth of a reportially-inclined weblog is whether or not the community finds it usefully and engagingly offering something that matters to them. and What counts most, for me, is whether a blog post is credentialed, as it were, by a substantial enough body of users--what I call a mini-public--who find it credible, interesting and useful. So if a blogging "Islamofascist" has a mini-public, his blog has value? Posted by: panotpicon at July 13, 2004 7:26 PM | Permalink There's a sort of tautological definition, where of course if there are any people at all who want to hear what you say, then of course what you say has value and credibility to them. But that's scant comfort to those of us who are NOT content to live off love, which is almost everyone. Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at July 13, 2004 7:38 PM | Permalink So if a blogging "Islamofascist" has a mini-public, his blog has value? Yes, absolutely! It has value to the "Islamofascist" spectators, disciples, agents, the media (for PR announcements of responsibility and apocalyptic threats), counter-Islamofascism groups, etc. These are some of the most valued sites on the Internet. Posted by: Tim at July 13, 2004 7:39 PM | Permalink After porn, of course. Posted by: Tim at July 13, 2004 7:40 PM | Permalink TBF, we should probably distinguish between journalistic value, entertainment value, blog(oshperic?) value and whatever value a news source has. Recognizing these are not mutually exclusive. (Uh oh, 3 in a row.) Posted by: Tim at July 13, 2004 7:50 PM | Permalink On June 28, Paul Bremer gave a farewell speech as he stepped down as U.S. administrator in Iraq. Some Iraqis, at least, found the talk moving. Ali Fadhil, 34, a resident in pediatrics at a Baghdad hospital, watched it on television with a group in the cafeteria. He said Bremer's words choked up even a onetime supporter of April's Shiite uprising. We have this information about the Bremer speech because Fadhil and his brothers are bloggers who file their own reports on the Internet ( iraqthemodel.blogspot.com). I had never heard of "Iraq the Model," but Margaret Wylie of Newhouse News Service produced a good story June 29 about Fadhil's blogging and Bremer's talk. (4! Look out panopticon.) Posted by: Tim at July 13, 2004 8:01 PM | Permalink A few examples might include North Korea, Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc.. Of course, the influence of the internet on closed societies needs to be examined with a different lense than its effect on our open system. How are we to interpret the calls of wannabe tin horn dictators of the blogosphere who want to reclaim the skinny middle from the obese extremes? Perhaps there are some people who simply shouldn't be blogging and would be better off unplugging their WiFi cards and hooking their laptaps up to colostomy bags. That way, when they talk shit, or talk out their ass, the excretion will land in the proper place. Thank goodness people like this are confined to the margins. Imagine if they had the power to influence other people, or were a directors of a "Center for Citizens Media" or some such other institutional body. Posted by: panopticon at July 13, 2004 8:02 PM | Permalink And there a great many blogs out there on the web that come out of dark places where spiders like to hide out and where gibbering in the dark corners of a mind is thinking. Posted by: Chuck Rightmire at July 13, 2004 10:24 PM | Permalink These skewed views provide insight to the inasnity of the editors of the blogs... Isn't a critical point of the dismal debate over blogging vs journalism just exactly how various groups can develop a reliable collective judgment of skew? If you simply decide, Publius, that your tribe is the only sane bunch around, then of course you'll have no use for any other voices. Except maybe those that you hear in the dark, in your dreams, when your personal discerning wingnuts are chillin'. Posted by: tom (no alias necessary) matrullo at July 14, 2004 8:26 AM | Permalink Any discussion of PR and journalism that ignores its roots (The Creel Committee) and the social engineering beliefs of its members begins at the wrong place. After all, the apple never falls very far from the tree. PR isn't something that's been with us forever, yet we treat it as though "that's the way it has always been." As a profession, it tracks similarly with journalism, the roots of which also find sustenance in the Creel Committee. I would love to see you write about this one day, because the masses that Walter Lippmann believed were so ignorant are actually a lot smarter than he thought. What's really happening is a crumbling of the manufacture of consent, and it's happening on many levels. So if Lippmann was wrong, then John Dewey was right, and isn't it interesting that Dewey sounds an awful lot like you, Jeff, Doc and the other prophets of today. Posted by: Terry Heaton at July 14, 2004 9:46 AM | Permalink I added a post-script to this interview: Postscript July 14: "We need to change our mindset" Found it interesting that the part most often highlighted by other weblogs interested in the interview or in Global PR Blog Week was: I think public relations should first understand that to the extent that its art is a form of "spin"--whether it's reasonable spin, accepted spin, good spin, bad spin, terrible spin--it is selling a service for which there is less and less value, and less mind is paid to it. Spin was possible in the era of few-to-many media, and a small number of gatekeepers who could be spun. Others would know better--I am not, after all, an expert in PR--but what this says to me is: A possible split coming in the ranks of PR pros themselves, or maybe just a small faction reacting against the hardened practices of their peers. For some, "spin" is indeed a dead end, but part of something larger and unsustainable, not dead yet but perhaps soul dead: the impulse to control the message, using experts in that art, largely through the media-- free, paid and sought. This ultimately comes into conflict with another mission PR people feel they have: the timely release of public information. Control-the-message public relations, which leads to spin, differs greatly from the "public information officer" model that some in PR favor, or perhaps have come back to. Today, however, it's more like a public interaction officer they have in mind. I'm not sure what to make of this. But with more and more people in PR talking about the need for transparency and genuine public interaction, and asking whether "spin" has seen its day, it is at least possible that a debate could break out-- a split in the ranks on what is wise, responsible, effective and shrewd practice in a time of changing media platforms, vanishing knowledge monopolies, and shifting expectations. It would be natural for PR pros who blog to be out front on this.
Worth a hmmm, at least. Bloggers ''should be put in a different category, like 'pretend' journalists.'' Interesting sweeping generalization. I would say there are tabloid bloggers and tabloid journalists. There are critical thinkers in both genres and there are sloppy thinkers. There are pundits, partisans and hacks. There are entertainers, writers, reporters and spinners. I suppose we can try to divide the pretend, or pseudo, journalists from "real" ones. Who gets to decide? Posted by: Tim at July 14, 2004 10:49 AM | Permalink Gillmor's last name is spelled with two l's. I'll be blogging the convention and am excited that I will thus get to meet you and other writers whose blogs I've enjoyed so much. I suppose we can try to divide the pretend, or pseudo, journalists from "real" ones. Who gets to decide? I think you're on to something, Tim. The folks who regard themselves as blogging mavericks valorize "authentic voice" as the currency of credibility. They see the expression of authentic voice as a cultural advance. But if you really want to put your PressThink cap on, this assumption needs to be questioned, and one question would be "Is the desire for authenticity a cultural *symptom* rather than a cultural good?". Because if you don't ask that question, you really aren't thinking outside the box, and you will be limited to repeating the wornout cliches of the Cluetrain Manifesto ad nauseum.
Posted by: panopticon at July 14, 2004 6:11 PM | Permalink Jay: I wonder, though, if it's realized how big a change this is. Control-the-message practices arise from a "move the masses" mentality, and that is something far more deeply set... The culture of control is about that, too--the insiders' game--and thus cannot be dislodged merely by pointing to its failures. The only way to approach such a beast is to look carefully at what it succeeds in narrowly doing, even if it's bound to fail on a beastly scale in wider arenas... I think a possible problem here is that the wrong vocabularly is being used. PR wasn't about Message Control, but about Message Discipline. So if you re-read the situation using the framework provided by Deleuze, you can assert that the movement is from Message Discipline to Message-the-Control. That is, internet communication is the dissemination of control, not its forfeiture. Thus: "We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become "dividuals," and masses, [have become] samples, data, markets, or "banks."
Posted by: panopticon at July 14, 2004 8:02 PM | Permalink Hey Someopticon: Why need the "a" word be either/or symptom or good? What do you/we mean by it, in the first place? Maybe it's just one in a rather infinite set of cultural prision and misprisions. Instead of yet another cheap shot, some of the critical thinking you demonstrate in yr Amazon reviews would be welcome. Posted by: tom matrullo at July 14, 2004 8:04 PM | Permalink I think you're on to something, Tim. #1 (Oh, on to, not just on) ;^) Well, I'm not sure I know what bloggers mean by "authentic" (or what you mean) when they say that. Do they mean authentic as in, this is authentically "my" voice? Do they mean it as here is a voice that gets filtered out of establishment journalism, and is therefore authentic because it is not establishment? What do bloggers mean when they say authentic? A google expedition led me to Online journalism ethics: A new frontier, which is almost 10 years old, but perhaps still applicable here. Do they mean authentic that way? Certainly, bloggers don't mean authentic as a replacement for non-authentic establishment journalism but as adding the icing of authenticity to the error-prone gray spinach of objectively homogenized journalism ladled out each day? Do they mean it in terms of journalism's complexity, context, voice and authenticity? Or is the blogger's maveric authentic voice an online reincarnation of Tom Wolfe's "New Journalism" unwillingness to adopt the traditional journalistic tone of polite neutrality? The modern online Hunter S. Thompsons? Is it analogous to the maveric authentic voice Teddy Roosevelt brought to politics? Or is it a secret desire for a free trip to the Yucatán. Posted by: Tim at July 14, 2004 8:09 PM | Permalink Well, I would have a problem with categorizing the White-Suited Tom Wolfe or the purposefully deranged HST as "authentic". What makes them good is that they are master role-players (although TW is more backgrounded). Posted by: panopticon at July 14, 2004 8:18 PM | Permalink Also, I think that the desire for authenticity is a symptom of a cynical attitude, not its cure. Posted by: panopticon at July 14, 2004 8:21 PM | Permalink panopticon Also, I think that the desire for authenticity is a symptom of a cynical attitude, not its cure. I think that's true, or certainly can be true, and in an obsessively navel gazing way, for the cynic. Would it be true, in the same way, for the philosopher or the theologian? Which would be more akin to the journalist? ---------------- HST in 1997 on online journalism and perhaps imaginatively on blogging: MH: The Internet has been touted as a new mode of journalism -- some even go so far as to say it might democratize journalism. Do you see a future for the Internet as a journalistic medium? HST: Well, I don't know. There is a line somewhere between democratizing journalism and every man a journalist. You can't really believe what you read in the papers anyway, but there is at least some spectrum of reliability. Maybe it's becoming like the TV talk shows or the tabloids where anything's acceptable as long as it's interesting. Posted by: Tim at July 14, 2004 9:20 PM | Permalink I don't think irony is the answer, and I don't think authenticity is, either. One tries to work out a language for the neither nor and this is called writing. I think that's true, or certainly can be true, and in an obsessively navel gazing way, for the cynic. Certainly. Cynical navel gazing is probably an apt "analog" for bias hunting or Fisking, although the object is someone else's navel or other aperture. Would it be true, in the same way, for the philosopher or the theologian? Which would be more akin to the journalist? Well, the philosopher, the priest, and the journalist are considered exempt from political commitment, so the distancing effect of cynicism is less relevant, if you accept that exemption. Posted by: panopticon at July 14, 2004 11:15 PM | Permalink Tom Why need the "a" word be either/or symptom or good? What do you/we mean by it, in the first place? Maybe it's just one in a rather infinite set of cultural prision and misprisions. If that's the case, the misapprehended should be released immediately! Posted by: panopticonartist at July 15, 2004 12:12 AM | Permalink SomeOp: I couldn't agree more! Just pan to the left... Posted by: tom matrullo at July 15, 2004 1:00 AM | Permalink Maybe it's becoming like the TV talk shows or the tabloids where anything's acceptable as long as it's interesting. Or, it's becoming like any number of the many and varied forms of writing and/or conversation that have existed beforehand, it's just that more people can produce it than ever before. Posted by: The One True b!X at July 15, 2004 1:06 AM | Permalink Jay, As the unnamed blogger quoted in John Leo's piece (the quote comes from this post of mine), I know that issue regarding Bremer's farewell speech pretty well, and want to make one minor correction to your post: I don't think the Times ran an editorial criticizing Bremer. Rather, it was a front-page "news analysis." Like Gillmor, Leo is another journalist in touch with the blogging world. He's also one who seems a little more sympathetic to the views of people like myself. (I seem to remember reading a draft of a chapter of Gillmor's book mentioning me and disagreeing with me.) I have consistently made the case that someone at the newspapers should be reading blogs. Doing so would have prevented Alissa Rubin's front-page error at the L.A. Times, as Leo noted. On "authenticity" - somewhat cynically, I think the matter there is the following: You may not be good at research. You may not have leaks and official sources. You may not have a credentialed position. But by golly, you can have (say this in the voice of the Wizard Of Oz passing out goodies) AN OPINION. You *can* rant. Much. Extensively. Thus, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, ranting becomes the highest value, since it's what can be done by everyone. Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at July 15, 2004 1:50 AM | Permalink Refreshing to find an oasis of meditative and factual discourse here instead of the usual codependent rant and opinion. Posted by: tom (no alias necessary) matrullo at July 15, 2004 9:13 AM | Permalink I think HST missed the point entirely, and the question was poorly framed. The Internet is not new journalism. The Internet is a new printing press. Old journalism fits just as well on the Internet. The Internet is journalistically backward compatable that way. But the new journalism that the Internet allows has depth, breadth and breathes. It is linked and layered. It has pop up, under, and hidden. It is interactive and multimedia. The new journalism is not unrecognizable from old journalism, in that much, if not all, of old journalism can still be embodied in new journalism. Thompson's concern, and the one implied in the question, is to misunderstand the invention of the printing press. The printing press democratized reading. It democratized the possession of the thoughts and words of other people and gave everyone the ability to have an opinion or build upon those thoughts. OK, maybe not thoughts in the literal way. That might be the next generation Internet. In the same way that the Internet is the next generation communication medium. But the Internet does not really further democratize reading, does it? Most people can get a form of the printed page. The book carries the content as part of the medium. Many have a radio, a TV, but these broadcast receivers do not contain content. Same with the Internet. The Internet can not democratize the possession of content via whatever device connects to it until those devices are widely available. But, it can democratize content production. It can democratize content presentation. It can challenge the pharisees, the work of the scribes and the art of communication using this medium that, so far, percolates with an ability to express oneself more imaginatively, more freely. So, what does HST mean by "a line somewhere between democratizing journalism and every man a journalist"? What does he mean by an unbelievable, but reliable, press? What more must there be to journalism than interesting to have journalistic value? And how does the Internet, with all the expressive tools it brings to the art form, bring more value to old journalism and gives voice to more journalists with value? And, how can PR, as perhaps the "new publishers", bring to our attention these valuable content providers? Can PR, if reliable at providing content through exposure, challenge old journalism's credentialism? Posted by: Tim at July 15, 2004 9:44 AM | Permalink Top of my head example of a "new publisher" doing PR without credentials might be in the power of the Instalanche, and those that would go to war against it to receive it. But admittedly, it hasn't the power of the pet rock. Posted by: Tim at July 15, 2004 10:46 AM | Permalink Can anyone admit with a straight face that these frequent links aren't just ad hominem attacks on Journalism itself? I can. They simply Mark a point of departure to another place. The associativity of that link, the motivation for linking it, and the content available there are frequently not just ad hominem attacks on Journalism itself. :^| Offset printing is the mark of credible publication. And credentialism. But the cost of production brings journalistic credentialism in conflict with the evolutionary pressures of economics. The credibility of the printing press is not the paper, or its quality, but the etheral value of the publisher's name, the value of a brand, or the diminishing return of an accreditation, a degree. There is nothing necessarily physical in credible, or authentic. It is virtual by nature. It is the value in a conversation, if even half of the conversation exists in the thoughts of the reader privately interacting with the author, or his creation, without the author ever benefiting from the exchange. It's not the ownership of the printing press, or even the power to control what gets printed, that bestows credibility. That is an artifact of enlightenment journalism's credentialism. It is the reliability of communicating valuable information that bestows credibility and earns credentialing authority in a liberally democratic marketplace of ideas. Even if that information is interesting. Posted by: Tim at July 15, 2004 12:20 PM | Permalink Offset printing, credentialing, and publishing are each in their own way self-referential validations within the profession and as such, mean nothing. The following of an audience, gains in market share, being a focal point for moving public discourse on a subject forward – these are external validations and just as possible in blogging, or perhaps more possible, as they are in print journalism. The conceits of yesterday are not the standards of tomorrow. Posted by: John Lynch at July 15, 2004 9:15 PM | Permalink Well Clay Shirky thinks that communication is not content Peter Caputa, guest-blogging at socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com says “Blogging is the Ultimate Social Software.” So far so good, but he makes that statement based on this assertion — “I think it is safe to say that sharing information is at the center of social networking.” In the view of a lot of people not only is no alias necessary, but a real name is mandatory. That way any threats to the socius can be dealt with. Tin horn authoritarians of the blogosphere agree: You're right: We need to define new metrics. This medium isn't about impressions; it's about relationships; it's about conversations; it's about influence; it's about authority. We are starting to measure how many conversations a blog starts (or at least takes part in) with Technorati. But it's just a beginning. The mapping of social networks will come in handy not just for tracking the global guerillas, but also for tracking your non-terrorist troublemakers (and you know who you are). Combined with social exclusion technologies like buddy lists and FOAF, troublesome voices like those of Mark York can be supressed, and only the designated human voices will be heard. Sounds like paradise to me! Posted by: panopticonartist at July 15, 2004 10:19 PM | Permalink back to Shay Quirky: Peter is right about blogs as a social networking tool ... but the thing that makes it work isn’t information sharing. The thing that is at the center of social networking is social networking. I'll bet Clay is not a Marxist, but his formula Communication != Content is a Marxist insight. Blogs are, first and foremost, products of labor. A fundamental Marxist insight is that use value != exchange value. The exchange value of a table is not conferred by its utility but by its relation to other commodities, and that relation is a social relation. The exchange value of a blog is not conferred by the utility of information, but by its relation to other blogs. DailyKos.com is the prime example. The unending of stream of content on that site hardly matters anymore - its value is contained in the social link exchange with other blogs and sites. Instapundit is a better example. The growth of the blogosphere is a process of commidification, not democratization. New hierarchy-preserving/creating technologies like FOAF are being developed in order to maintain the social basis of link exchange value. Under the regime of disciplines, authority was external and imposed on the subject, like an identifying armband. In the control society, authority is internalized and adopted voluntarily, like a foaf.rdf file dropped into your blog's root directory. FOAF and buddylists are tools for filtering/policing Web content. Thus the maintainance of link exchange value relies on a process of exclusion. Witness the case of York. In order to maintain link value, a distributed social ghetto must be constructed alongside the blogosphere. This process of commodification/exclusion is rationalized in the obfuscatory market mythologizing of the ClueTrain Manifesto. The CM, which presents itself as a subversive challenge to conventional corporate thinking, is in reality merely 95 pinpricks in the corporate rear, designed to get its attention - "hire me as your consultant!" - 95 new ways to suck on the corporate tool. In the CM, the constant reiteration of the word "human", "voice", "authenticity" and "nature" is a dead giveaway that what you are dealing with is ideology. Ideology always tries to naturalize itself referring beyond its own confines to the "human". How do hyperlinks subvert hierachies? By creating new ones - mutable hierarchies not imposed by external authority but introjected by the subject voluntarily. There is no need to invoke the extraordinary pharmaceutical productions, the molecular engineering, the genetic manipulations, although these are slated to enter the new process. There is no need to ask which is the toughest regime, for it's within each of them that liberating and enslaving forces confront one another. For example, in the crisis of the hospital as environment of enclosure, neighborhood clinics, hospices, and day care could at first express new freedom, but they could participate as well in mechanisms of control that are equal to the harshest of confinements. There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons. Golly, I hope the PR professionals can get this all sorted out! Posted by: panopticonartist at July 16, 2004 3:41 PM | Permalink Can. Worms. Ick! Blogging, as an activity, is primarily an act of communication. It may result in building social networks, a type of communication. Some bloggers measure their blog value using social networking metrics/tools. This is, I think, part of what panopticon considers the commodification of social networks. A Marxist might immediately squint at this and hyper-rationally trace its contours for hierarchy, inclusion, exclusion - the demarcation of the bourgeois, the possessors (or in this case inclusive participants) - of the commodified networks. Non-participants and "victims" of discretion are assumed to automatically be marked as non-possessors for the ghetto (albeit they may posses their own blog and are not excluded from developing their own networks - think Tim Robbins' "Chill Wind" blowing across the National Press Club microphone). Of course, this entirely misses Clay's point of dealing with anti-social behavior with social influence and judgement calls rather than technological and algorithmic infrastructure solutions (removing the human/social component). Panopticon conflates the natural human and social process of dealing with anti-social behavior with the creation of ghettos and the very real totality of the holocaust. I see no analogy between the process that took place here, resulting in the the first and only banned poster on PressThink (and the continuing process of moderating his posts), and the social networking tools being developed to mullify social communication by codify rules in the infrastructure of social network software, or the objectification and vilification of humans by socialists turned fascists. -------------------- Seperate from the processes that have evolved to govern social interaction, but related within the blogoshere/journalism universe, is content versus communication. I would agree that journalism is more concerned with content than is blogging. Blogging is more concerned with communication than it is with content. Clay defines the terms as mutually exclusive, but in a special relationship where content is produced not in order to communicate - but to satisfy demand. Content is a commodity. Communication is a social interaction. Jay Rosen approaches this, I think, with Blogging is not Journalism, which he addresses again briefly in this interview. Jay uses different semantics for the more defined sets of journalism and blogging, rather than the larger concepts of content and communication. (Content is not King!) Participatory journalism, the kind I would want to participate in, would be a social network for communicating content, rather than the current journalism that produces commidified content with the goal not to communicate, but to accumulate subscribers and advertisers, increasing thier ability to generate profit. Posted by: Tim at July 16, 2004 5:24 PM | Permalink We have spoken, in other parts of this blog, of one-sided or single-note journalism. The blog provides some exploration of topics. Content is a part of the exploration or what would we be exploring? Social networking is a part of the exploration or who would be doing the exploration? Neither are the point of the blog. The work product of such exploration is a more complete human understanding of a topic or issue. Even those who read and do not participate, if they can pick out the parts of the dialog that advances thinking and revelation, benefit. They, the readers, have not networked socially, but have benefited from the work product in as much as it exists. It is a form of content. A form that does not exist in print journalism. One of the conceits of print journalism is to advance social causes. There are numerous examples of print journalism succeeding. Yellow journalism from the turn of last century exposed and changed a number of issues resulting in improved social conditions. With the decline of media credibility, the ability to effect change declines. Blogs may provide some at least temporary relief in advancing understanding, thought, and social issues. An important conceit. Posted by: John Lynch at July 16, 2004 5:53 PM | Permalink I think the ongoing construction of the internet socius gives us a lense on the social constructedness of our real reality. In real reality we have ghettos, we have camps, we have the homeless, we have the excluded, we have people who are complicit in their own subjugation (not pure victims). Observing the construction of the internet socius affords a window to revisit those real world constructions because they are reproduced virtually, and we can see them with new eyes. We can see how the appeal to "nature", "human nature", "authenticity", "markets" and such are used to ideologically mirror the real in the virtual. And this mirror affords an opportunity to reflect on the errors of the past. But if you don't see anything in the glass, I suppose you shouldn't go out in the daylight.
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