...blowing off the dust and cobwebs.
Nothing wakes up a musty, neglected (but still much loved) old blog like the distant sound of unearned praise.
And so it is with dear, dormant Flackster - stirring from slumber at the news that The RSS Pundit (aka Kip Meacham) just included Flackster in a Top Ten list of PR-oriented blogs.
Apparently, we're mainly of interest to the elitist-bourgeoisie, though - so all you proles can sod off back to Micropersuasion now :-)
Thanks Kip!
May 18, 2005
Posted by Michael O'Connor Clarke
[Note: not all of my posts here at Flackster will be stupidly long. This one is. Again. Mea culpa. The executive summary: bloggers are like dogs. Only they’re not.]
So. I’ve been noodling on this post for quite some time. I kept coming back to it, tweaking and kneading the argument over the last few months, then putting it away again to think about other stuff. Earlier today, something happened to break through the inertia and push me into finishing the thought.
If you take a look at the previous post, below – a short “Blink” piece pointing to something John Wagner wrote – you might notice there’s a comment showing. Read it. It’s a polished little pitch from a lady at Backbone Media, encouraging me to take part in their survey of corporate bloggers. Comes complete with a helpful little definition – “Blogging is all about starting online conversations about a particular topic.” Thanks for the epiphany.
Odd.
The urge to fisk is so strong, but rather than respond directly (and, no doubt, grumpily) to this specific manifestation of flack-on-flack action, it’s made me want to take a longer look at the curious business of PR people pitching blogs.
...continue reading.
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November 9, 2004
Posted by Michael O'Connor Clarke
“Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure.” – Neil Postman
I’ve already said that the best thing the PR department in most companies can do with respect to corporate bloggers is to get out of the way.
I wrapped a caveat around this at the time – acknowledging the value of providing some elementary training on issues such as disclosure and media relations. Subsequent conversations, in the comments here and elsewhere, have picked up the topic of guidelines for corporate bloggers. It’s a topic worth noodling.
...continue reading.
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October 28, 2004
Posted by Michael O'Connor Clarke
It’s mailbag time at the FlackCave.
An email from a Flackster reader earlier today asked:
“What role should my PR department play in supervising corporate blog content?”
Easy: NONE.
Unless you’re actually going to be blogging yourself – or maybe helping promote other employees’ blogs by talking them up to your friends, family, customers, partners, analysts, reporters and so forth – you have no role.
A blog that is PR-sanitized, scrubbed for messages, spun, or otherwise adulterated by over-protective flackery can’t really be called a blog. We need to get it a new name. Maybe it should be called a “press release” – sure bears the same high stink of decay about it.
...continue reading.
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October 25, 2004
Posted by Michael O'Connor Clarke
2004 has been a big year in the blogosphere.
From credentialed bloggers getting the red carpet treatment at the Democratic National Convention back in July, to the spectacle of the massed bloggers flexing their collected muscle to bring about "Rathergate" – we’re clearly at (or already past?) something of a tipping point in terms of the mainstream media's awareness and acknowledgement of the influence of blogs.
This is pretty heady stuff for people so recently dismissed by former CBS News exec Jonathan Klein as a bunch of guys sitting around in their living rooms in pajamas.
Blogs are gaining increasing credibility as legitimate sources of news and opinion, at the same time as scandals such as Rathergate and the Jayson Blair affair have reanimated the perennial debate about the integrity and methods of "old school" news media.
The unabashedly partisan editorial stance of certain major news outlets is no longer accepted at face value – with the rise of the blogger, we now know who watches the watchmen. It's you and me – the citizen journalists. We can, and will, fact check your ass.
...continue reading.
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Michael O'Connor Clarke is proud to be a card-carrying flack. Currently based in Toronto, Michael has spent almost 20 years in corporate communications and marketing roles. He started blogging at almost the same time as he first moved into PR - over five years ago. Now he's trying to figure out how to combine these two areas of expertise for the benefit of clue-seeking clients. In his time, Michael has pitched people, products, processes and pop-tarts, but he has a congenital inability to peddle fluff.
