Over three quarters of reporters get story ideas from blogs

Here's yet another reason to get into the corporate blogging game in 2008...

According to a survey by communications firm Brodeur (announced at the CES in Las Vegas last month), journalists are heavy users of the blogosphere for research and quick reporting. [Download PDF of the survey.]

" ...New media (social media and blogs) is having an impact on many different aspects of reporting, particularly the speed and availability of news," according to the Brodeur press release.

Journalists are using blogs to get tone, nuance and story angles. No, they don't believe everything they read in blogs but social media is a great source of additional information when a reporter is on deadline.

So get yourself into the blogosphere if you're not there yet. And be sure to put your company or contact phone number in a visible spot on your blog. Reporters on deadline tend to pick up the phone and call, rather than email. And if your company blog is revealing and useful, you may find yourself quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Big Blogs Meet Big Media: Wall Street Journal quotes Google corporate blog

The WSJ quoted Google's corporate blog in a story earlier this week (sorry, can't find the article) about Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo. The Google blog entry was written by David Drummond, a Google senior VP and Chief Legal Officer, and - of course - put the Google spin on the story: the acquisition could stifle competition and innovation.

This is exactly what I talk about in The Corporate Blogging Book (I even used Google as an example): why put out a press release when you can say something more directly (and often, more credibly) in your company blog?

The real revolution: print interviews can no longer be truncated or edited

I've been talking about this very phenomenon for a while now. Today there's an article by media columnist Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post titled: Don't Quote Me.

The point he makes is that executives often prefer to do an interview with a reporter by email these days. That's because the exec can post the *full* version of the exchange on her blog if the reporter edits or truncates the interview in a way she doesn't like.

GM lashed back at The New York Times' "ban on rubbish"

Remember this? In June 2006 GM's Brian Akre posted a rant to their FYI blog, protesting both a Tom Friedman column and The New York Times' refusal (or lack of cooperation) to publish GM's side of the story.

Useful Links

A revolution in corporate communications is coming your way soon

Fleishman-Hillard Paris releases a survey of French media and their attitude towards blogs: French journalists remain skeptical

  Fleishman-Hillard Paris L to R: Cyrille Arcamone, Debbie Weil, Florence Giuly-Davis, Nadège Hariti, Nadia Graf and Céline Becam 
  Originally uploaded by wordbiz.

Had the pleasure of working with the folks at Fleishman-Hillard Paris to introduce The Corporate Blogging Book to an audience of French PR & marketing professionals as well as journalists. I made a presentation last night on Corporate Blogging (what, why and whither) at F-H's cool office on the Boulevard Haussmann.

Paris launch of The Corporate Blogging Book

Paris in December is, well it's always Paris and wonderful. But it was pouring rain and pitch black at 6:30 PM when the event began. A pretty good crowd straggled in nonetheless. After I spoke (in English), F-H Paris released intriguing results of their recent survey of French journalists: "What is the French media's perception of the blogging phenomenon?"

Download PDF of Fleishman-Hillard Paris blogging survey (Note: it's in French.)

Results of Fleishman-Hillard Paris survey of media and blogs

French journalists remain skeptical - as well as ambivalent - about blogs. A few highlights of the survey:

- only 45% of the 81 journalists contacted for the survey said they regularly consult blogs for story ideas, research, etc.

- 55% (a majority) said they don't, citing blogs' lack of credibility, not interesting, etc.

- Blogs most often visited by French journalists include Fred Cavazza (covers Web 2.0); Loïc Le Meur (the French rock star of blogging, heads Six Apart Europe) and Gilles Klein (writes for Le Monde - I thnk)

- French media rarely look at corporate blogs although most were familiar with Michel Edouard Leclerc's blog - one of the few French CEO bloggers

- In contrast, 63% of the journalists acknowledge that blogs influence public opinion

- In a bit of a contradiction, 40% said blogs will become increasingly important as a tool for media (23% say they won't; 37% weren't sure or didn't answer this question)

All in all, sounds like French media is in transition when it comes to acknowledging the importance of blogs.

Is this an inflection point? The New York Times and Wall Street Journal source TechCrunch to break the news about Google's acquisition of YouTube

Today's NYTimes and Wall Street Journal both have front page stories about Google's possible aquisition of video hosting service YouTube for $1.6B (yes billion).

If it comes to pass, that's a big story. Amazing really. YouTube launched less than a year ago as a way for folks to upload and share videos online. Today about 50 million people worldwide are using the site. And 100 million video clips are being watched everyday.

A couple of my favorites:

Chevy Tahoe spoof ad

Dell's exploding laptop

The real story is TechCrunch (which broke the news)

But the real story here (what I'm calling the inflection point) is that both the Times and the Journal got the story from a Top 100 blog (#10 on Technorati), Michael Arrington's TechCrunch AND both papers credit TechCrunch as a source.

Michael's Oct. 6th entry had a blog-style title: Completely Unsubstantiated YouTube Rumor. Within hours, the Times had jumped on the story with an oh-so-serious headline: Google In Talks to Acquire YouTube for $1.6B.

I don't know if this is the first time that mainstream media (MSM) has acknowledged a blog in quite the same way as a source for a big story. (This would be Google's biggest acquisition and the highest-dollar acquisition of an Internet company since the dot bomb of 2000.)

But it's the first time I've noticed it -- or really thought about it.

There's something fascinating going on here. The line is beginning to blur between influential blogs and MSM. Will we look back five years from now and say, "oh yeah... of course?"

If you have any lingering doubt about blogs as a media, marketing and communications phenomenon that's not going away, they (your doubts) should be dwindling by now. Dontcha think?

Forbes bites back the blogosphere with "Attack of the Blogs" but overstates the case; where was Daniel Lyons' editor?

With this over-the-top teaser on the Nov. 14, 2005 cover of the magazine, They [My edit: A tiny number of blogs] destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there any way to fight back? the folks at Forbes have stirred up a whole lot of predictable blacklash from the blogosphere.

Yes, of course there are examples (upsetting, frightening ones) of blogs gone bad and of bad people (i.e. lowlifes) who blog. Nothing new here except the channel. Rumor and inuendo have erupted and swarmed and wreaked havoc on people's lives since time began. [See EFF parody.]

But the number of blogs and bloggers that fit into the ugly smear category is miniscule, as the story mentions ever so discretely, about half way through:

"Attack blogs are but a sliver of the rapidly expanding blogosphere. A hundred thousand new blogs are created every day, more than new blog per second, says Technorati..."

Having worked as a reporter and editor for MSM myself I'm surprised an astute editor didn't call out that fact to reporter Daniel Lyons and ask if perhaps the story weren't just a teensy-weensy bit lopsided.

At any rate, the article makes a perfectly valid point - namely, that the blogosphere is an unpredictable place where memes can pick up surprising momentum and quickly enhance OR damage anyone or any brand. (Fear of blogging is quite justified. I devote a whole chapter to it in The Corporate Blogging Book.)

Surprisingly - or not so surprisingly - a number of well-known bloggers are playing right into Forbes' hand by jumping on the story like "an online lynch mob" (All wrong! All Wrong!). When in fact the article uncovers (and I have to assume accurately describes) some pretty unnerving examples of blog smear.

Also covered is the notable fact that blog hosting services such as Google's Blogger and SixApart's TypePad are not liable for content they host because they're protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. So it's frustratingly difficult to get back at or stop those who are smearing you.

See more balanced reactions to the Forbes' story by Jeremy Pepper, Stephen Baker and Dave Taylor.

Clueless about the flap over DaimlerChrysler's Firehouse media blog... but not wrong

I seem to be a couple of steps behind these days. But that's the way it goes when you've got your head buried in writing a book. I was doing a Technorati search on something tonight when I realized that half a dozen bloggers had flamed DaimlerChrysler's restricted-access media blog as being wrong wrong wrong and un-bloglike... before I came along last week and blithely logged in and was given immediate access. See here and here and here and here for the flames. And a more considered write up by Laurie Mayers here. (Honestly, I was oblivious to all that had been said.)

Well guys, I follow a lot of you and you're great. But I disagree on this one. It's just plain myopic to say that DaimlerChrysler blew it by setting up a media-only blog. It makes perfect sense to me that restricted niche-audience blogs will become more and more common as we wade deeper into this corporate blogging thing.

Blogs and blogging are a tool, remember? They're a communications channel as well as a way of communicating. They're about conversations. If you choose to have your conversation with a certain, specified audience, who is to say you're doing it "wrong?" So what if it's a hybrid of public-facing and internal, password-protected blog?

The more important question is not who has access to the Firehouse media blog. But whether it will prove to be an effective way for the DaimlerChrylser PR folks to have a backstory conversation with automotive media types. And I don't know the answer to that... Although so far I don't see anything terribly revealing in the blog.

The blogger / journalist hall of mirrors

I was a journalist, reporter and editor, for a decade plus (for The Atlanta Constitution, Roll Call and other publications). Yeah, there was life pre-Web. Now I'm a... well, blogger among other things (speaker, consultant, e-newsletter publisher). Even so, I've been shaking my head about this new hall of mirrors. Am I a blogger to be courted by...  journalists? Am I a journalist... to be courted by corporate PR execs? Both? Neither??

The hall of mirrors thing has happened to me twice now.

Last week Heather Green of BusinessWeek, co-author of Blogspotting.net, called me for a quote for the BW article about Microsoft (Troubling Exits, Sept. 26, 2005 cover story). She asked what I knew about the Mini Microsoft blog. Not much, I confessed. (I didn't get quoted.)

We hung up.

Five minutes later, she called back to make sure I wasn't going to blog BW's forthcoming story based on Mini Microsoft. Forbes' story on Microsoft's middle age was already out. I won't, I promised. And didn't. Until the story was published. See Corporate Blogging 2.0.

Three days ago I decided to register for DaimlerChrysler's new Firehouse blog - "open to media and industry analysts only." I didn't expect to be approved as I'm not really a member of the media. OK, like any other self-respecting blogger I try and get free passes to conferences. But you know what I mean...

To my considerable surprise, I was "approved" and given a login to get into the Firehouse blog within minutes. I was puzzled...

Here's why I was let in, from Firehouse blog editorial director Ed Garsten:

"Thanks for the fair coverage on your site and your generous use of my comments. I have to say, several other blogs resorted to kneejerk non-sensical rhetoric without once contacting us. 

I did grant you access because I researched your credentials and I thought it would be a good idea if someone who seemed like she would make a fair, open and educated assessment of TheFirehouse had  a chance to come inside, perhaps we'd get a fair shake. You didn't disappoint me."

Make of that what you will. I'm still mulling it over. One conclusion... I'm not snarky enough and Ed knew it. Darn.

Corporate Blogging 2.0

Could it be?? Yes, I think we're there. It's the second wave of corporate blogging. Things are starting to shake out. It's our first peek at the ugly underbelly...  Turns out our window into the new transparent Microsoft via 2,000 employee blogs gives us a view that isn't all, shall we say, a bed of roses.

Read about Microsoft at middle age here in BusinessWeek's Sept. 26, 2005 cover story. Read BW's sidebar: A Rendezvous With Microsoft's Deep Throat. Then dive straight into the source of the story: Mini-Microsoft, the blog by an anonymous Microsoft employee, aka Deep Throat. The blog is a great read and pretty much "tells all" about too many meetings, sagging morale, the slow schedule of new releases, etc. It also mocks CEO Steve Ballmer's relentlessly upbeat, non-answers to BW.

Interestingly, the anonymous blogger insists that he loves his juggernaut employer and only wants to make it a "lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine."  But then Mini (he admits he's a man; that's the only identifying detail we get) agrees to meet with a BW reporter at a Starbucks in Seattle.

I'm finding this fascinating. And I'm not sure why. But I think it's this:

Perhaps there really is a connection with Deep Throat. Mark Felt met with Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for a reason. Not for the psychic reward of helping with a "big story." But because he felt a moral responsibility to expose malfeasance at the highest levels of U.S. government. He wanted the story to get told... and for something to happen as a result. And of course it did.

Hmmm... so what happens next at MSFT? Maybe I'm drinking the Kool-Aid myself when it comes to the power of employee blogs. But surely one thing is bound to happen... more companies will be crafting Corporate Blogging Guidelines. Close to 70% of companies do NOT have guidelines, according to the recent white paper on employee blogging published by Edelman & Intelliseek.

Useful Link

Microsoft's Midlife Crisis in Forbes

When business, blogging consultants and big media collide

Here's a sad tale of business blogging gone wrong... really wrong: Blogging As You Go Belly Up (Aug. 15, 2005 issue of Business Week ). Paul Purdue, CEO of iFulfill.com, blogged away (here) as his company went down in flames and irate customers posted scathing comments.

Now comes a remarkable point-counterpoint in which blogging consultant B.L. Ochman (liberally quoted in the BW article) demands a retraction from BW reporter Stephen Baker. In the original version of the article (it's in the Aug. 15 print edition) he quotes her as telling Purdue to "create a scandal" to create buzz for his blog.

B.L. denies using those words... and gets a retraction here on BW's Blogspotting blog. Amazingly, the plot thickens...

If you scroll down after the short post by Baker ("Correction in iFulfill story"), you'll see several long comments left by an "anonymous" reader (signed as "ifulfillvictim@yahoo.com"). "Anonymous" accuses B.L. of giving iFulfill's Purdue poor advice... and of taking advantage of the fuss over the retraction to create buzz for her own blog.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Suffice it to say that this is a fascinating example of the new interplay between blogs, mainstream media - and their readers. Blogger Glenn (last name?) comments on this particular episode:

"You just have to believe that there is something truly powerful going on here. It's the conversation, the instant notification, the response mechanism, the correction, the feed and the speed."

(Yes, I stole from the Blogspotting tagline: "Where the worlds of business, media and blogs collide.")

Carole Matthews of Inc.com on Fear of Blogging

Was interviewed yesterday by Carole Matthews, senior editor of Inc.com. She's writing an article about "top blogging tips" (I'll post the URL when it's published) and asked me a bunch of questions. It was more than an interview really. We had a great conversation. We found ourselves musing over "fear of blogging" as a possible impediment to businesss blogs. We agreed that there are several components to the "fear":

1. Stagefright... fear of writing and being published
2. Fear of what other bloggers are saying about you or your company
3. Fear of negative comments that readers might leave on your blog

As for #3, I tell business types that getting any comments at all should be a greater concern. If you're lucky enough to get dozens of comments (as GM's Fastlane and Go Daddy's Bob Parsons do) then start worrying about negative comments. Hey, you can always delete them.

There's a bit of a self corrective mechanism at work when it comes to Comments: the commenters know (or should know) that they're leaving a permanent, public statement on your blog site. Most folks don't want to leave a public trail of vitriol on the Web.

I'm writing a book about Corporate Blogging for Penguin

It's official! I've just closed a deal with Penguin Portfolio to write a book about corporate blogging. Pub date is 2006. Penguin is the publisher of Seth Godin's books, including Purple Cow and his new All Marketers Are Liars. As well as some other nifty business books. Of course, there will be a "book blog" to accompany the creation (and, er, promotion) of the book. I can't promise that I'll post every chapter as I write it, as Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are doing over at The Red Couch. But I'll be asking for input and hope you'll speak your mind. Stay tuned...

Update on IABC blogging panel

I'm delighted to report that Gary Grates, VP Corporate Communications, North America for General Motors has accepted my invite to be the third panelist on IABC's corporate blogging panel on June 27, 2005. (Here is the description of the session, part of IABC's international annual conference in Washington DC.) Gary, who is known as a "thought leader" on change management and effective employee-management relations, is a regular contributor to GM's Fastlane blog. The other two panelists are Paul Rosenfeld, GM of Intuit's QuickBooks Online Edition and Kevin Holland, VP Communications of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and the force behind ACCABuzz.

It's niche marketing, stupid

Great post by Paul Chaney in response to THE BusinessWeek blog article (as it's being referred to). Mass marketing is out; niche marketing (or one-to-one) is in. As BW puts it: ""Blogs could end up providing the perfect response to mass media's core concern: the splintering of its audience." Chaney also refers to online marketing pioneer Ralph Wilson's emphasis on "defining and thriving in a tiny niche." From Chapter 4 of Wilson's Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy (written in 2001.)

Blogs as big as the printing press, according to BusinessWeek

Blogs Will Change Your Business says the lastest issue of BusinessWeek. A great read (written in chronological blog format) with good  resources and links. Don't miss the sidebars: 6 Tips for Corporate Bloggers, Blogging: A Primer, and Stonyfield Farm's Blog Culture.

Jack Welch's book-blog on Winning

I picked up Jack Welch's new book, Winning, over the weekend and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a quick read. More important, it's written in blog-speak! I.e. in a surprisingly informal voice. Turns out Jack "talked" the book and, with a lot of help from wife Suzy (former editor of Harvard Business Review, etc. etc.), got it organized and down on paper. Here's an interesting  Q & A with Welch that explains the process.  Hmmm... could this be a new trend? Blog writing style seeping into mainstream publishing?? Perhaps another reason for CEOs and top execs to think about writing a blog. Press a key, do a few edits... and you've got a book.

Blink... and you'll see white male bloggers

I'm embarrassed about my earlier rant. It got a little garbled at the end. But I need just a wee bit more airtime on the WMB (white male blogger) thing. It's this simple: the problem is NOT a dearth of smart women bloggers... or talented minority bloggers. There are plenty of them. (See Halley's TEN NEW VOICES report card.)

The problem (if you agree there is one) is that the MSM (mainstream media) primarily points to A-list white male bloggers when they're talking about the blogosphere. Why? It's an unconscious bias. It's what MSM reporters (who tend to be white males) "see" when they scan the blogosphere.

Malcolm Gladwell devotes a whole section of Blink, his new book, on unconscious bias and how we engage in it all the time.  He cites some hair-raising examples. For example, a study showed that car salesmen spit out different prices depending on who walks into the showroom. A white male gets the lowest price, presumably because he'll bargain harder and drive the selling price lower. A black male gets the highest price... a black woman gets the 2nd highest price quote. A white woman gets the 3rd highest. The point of the study is to highlight the instant, unconscious assumption that minorities and women aren't as adept at negotiating the price down... so the salesman stands to make more money off them. Pretty creepy, huh?

Which explains, perhaps, the sub-title to Newsweek columnist Steve Levy's article, Blogging Beyond the Men's Club:

Sub-title: Since anyone can write a Weblog, why is the blogosphere dominated by white males?

Answer: It's not. Just looks like that to a lot of white male journalists... and probably to some female ones as well.

Do you agree? Click that comment link.

Peggy Noonan's cogent essay on blogs vs. the MSM (mainstream media)

I read it in the WSJ and have also read comments about the column in several other blogs. Thanks to London-based Adriana Cronin-Lukas for one pointer. Peggy Noonan's cogent essay on MSM (mainstream media) vs. the blogosphere (Feb. 17, 2005 Wall Street Journal) should be required reading. Her key points:

• The blogosphere isn't really the wild, untamed West. Bloggers are using the time-honored tools of journalism (computer, keyboard, willingness and desire to ask tough questions).
• Bloggers don't have editors. So they can decide what's a story, how long it's a story and how they want to cover it. (She doesn't say this, but... some bloggers could sure use a good editor when it comes to syntax, style, grammar, etc.)
• Bloggers can post immediately. No constraints due to institutionally-mandated deadlines.
• Bloggers are often "selling an original insight, a new area of inquiry" (her words).
• They're doing it free...
• BUT that "doesn't mean commerce isn't involved" (Peggy's words). "It is intellectual commerce." Hey, neat turn of phrase. What she's saying is that we as readers are giving bloggers our "attention and intellectual energy." Good bloggers entertain us. The more we read them, the better known and more influential they become.

Anyway, it's worth reading the whole essay. You can print it out.