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	Phil's Blogservations Friday, October 28, 2005 Posted by philgomes 10:40 PM Forbes' Hit Piece On Blogs Wow... Um... Wow... Last night, I read the Forbes cover story on blogs. I saw the links to the story in various places and had to see it for myself. A quick Technorati search even uncovered this blog, apparently created just for the occasion. I remember when Douglas Rushkoff had his extremely critical (and ultimately correct) analysis of the AOL/TW merger spiked by The New York Times. Mr. Rushkoff said the Times told him that he "was misreading the landscape to such an extent that for them to publish such a view would be irresponsible." Someone at Forbes should've applied that test to this article's author, don't you think? The thing is, Forbes would've been one of the first magazines I might've guessed would appreciate the possibilities for business that blogs represent. I remember, in particular, when I gave a Forbes' reporter her introduction to wireless mesh networking and she said "Now this is something with the kind of subversive angle we like." The sidebars are just funny. "Fighting Back" is a manpage for squashing bloggers, using tactics that were rather dusty in the Nixon era. "Who is Pamela Jones?" forgets that the journalistic Ahab who attempted to get the dirt on the Groklaw host had more in common with tree-climbing paparazzi than anything else. The mob mentality the piece describes, I strongly believe, is an extreme. The writer apparently seeks to cast such activity as the norm. I didn't get any real sense that the article was framed as, say, a peek into a seedy underbelly of what has largely been a positive phenomenon. Had Forbes done that, they might've dodged a few arrows. And what's Forbes going to do to all of the people who are using bugmenot to get around their registration wall? Log IP addresses? Hunt them down? The article seems to say "Blogs are a threat, ye boardrooms everywhere. Here are the blunt instruments you can use against them." To those boardrooms, I say this: Follow this article's tenets and watch whatever goodwill you've earned fly down the drain. The people you most want on your side will stay away in droves. | HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil's demented imagination. Hell, to be perfectly honest, even Phil disagrees with what he thinks sometimes. This site has virtually no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Clicking on a link doesn't automatically send a 1/2-cent donation to UNICEF. You can't buy, sell, auction, swap, find a date, win friends, influence people, cross the chasm, or decode the human genome using this site. You won't get free email. You won't win a PalmOne Treo or a Playstation2. This site will not end world hunger, foster peace in the Middle East, help you smell better, teach you how to swing dance, or move the global economy from petroleum to hydrogen fuels. You'll learn a lot about this site's master, though, which amounts to a haphazard collection of strange and useless facts that pretty much won't help you at all.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This is the blog of Phil Gomes, VP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes.com View my page on PROpenMic SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.