I’m not that keen on ‘blogs’.
But then I wasn’t keen on DVDs, mobile phones, Ipods and Blackberries until they suddenly became an essential part of business and social life. I guess there’s a special marketing category for middle aged male professional ‘catchers-up’.
But aren’t most ‘blogs’ boring?: ill-informed, rambling descriptions of the tedious details of life or half-baked comments on political, sporting or professional issues They read like a mixture of the ramblings of the eponymous Pub Landlord and the first draft of a second rate newspaper column. The concern of some public relations people as they worry about this new media for consumer comment, engagement and reputation destruction is a bit overdone.
It’s really the sense of most blogs being first jottings and half thought through that bothers me. I value the language of Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett and Hemingway too much to see its daily massacre. ‘Blogs’ seem in many cases to spring straight from a semi-engaged brain on to the page. I cringe at the inability of people to stand back and critically assess their thoughts before committing them, arrogantly, world-wide (or so they think – most get read by a few saddies and surfers).
Of course many ‘blogs’, in the USA (with its cavalier libel laws) are more dangerous and more sophisticated than that. But how many of those ‘blogs’ are actually committee products, like US sitcoms? They look suspiciously carefully crafted to me.
At any rate I predict in the UK: either a civilized reaction against the alleged power of the ‘blog’, which is what I would like to see; or the production of incredibly high quality, thoughtful and innovative blogs that will prove me wrong. These would be of the quality being pioneered by CIPR President Tony Bradley.
Down with bad blogging!
No pressure Mr President, you understand?
Visit CIPR President Tony Bradley's blog, PR Voice, at www.prvoice.typepad.com.
Colin Farrington is director general of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations