To the uninitiated -- of whom there are ever fewer -- the headline to this article sounds like something your doctor might tell you after you've missed a few annual check-ups. ("I'm sorry, Bill. The tests have come back positive. You have a serious case of...blogs. Now, this won't hurt a bit. Do you have insurance?")

		It's fairly evident that the PR community has yet to understand blogging

Blogs -- short for "web logs" -- are online journals, published on the Web by either an individual (i.e., yours truly) or a community that shares a common interest, such as Slashdot, Kuro5hin, or Living Without Microsoft. Of the latter variety, some are edited by the blogging host or a team of affiliates, while others are anarchic free-for-alls. Often, blogs offer hyperlinks to stories or items of online interest that have interested the blogger and inspired commentary that runs the gamut from the truly insightful to the ridiculously banal. So-called "traditional" media outlets with online properties are even doing it, such as FORTUNE's blog. Even the Lord God Almighty is getting into the act.

As an online activity, blogging certainly isn't a new thing; it's just that it now has a really cool name that's entering the popular lexicon. In fact, people have been keeping daily journals on Web sites for almost as long as there has been a World Wide Web. 

(Actually, online journals have been going on in some fashion even before someone thought to bolt a graphical interface onto the Internet. During my systems administrator days, people even ran daily trailing, dated commentary on their so-called ".plan" or files created within their UNIX command-line-based accounts. These were text-based, user-created files linked to the identification data of their creators. These files were accessible using the arcane "finger" command-a name that opened itself to a significant number of dirty double-entendres and incessant childish giggling within the server room between helpings of Skittles and Mountain Dew.)

What has changed is this:

• It is easier than ever to build and maintain a blog, thanks to incredibly easy-to-use services like Blogger.Com. As a result, and like the Web that provides its foundation, blogging means that virtually anyone who wants to publish his or her thoughts on any particular topic can do so.
• Journalists and media outlets that run their own blogs -- such as eJournal from The San Jose Mercury News' Dan Gillmor, MSNBC, or the aforementioned offering from FORTUNE's Peter Lewis-offer previously unattainable insight into their work.

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Growing Pains
By any measure, blogging has yet to mature as a widespread communications form. Even the best blogs suffer from some common fallacies native to the phenomenon. I've uncovered a few, and have chosen to discuss a couple. John Dvorak can handle the rest.

"We're Changing The World. Read All About It. From Us."

Blogging is so new that many of its participants spend plenty of column inches on their respective blogs discussing...how great blogging is! In many ways, it mirrors the "Internet Bubble" in the sense that many dot-com news sites used to loudly and uncritically trumpet the same industry in which they participated. (Thank God there aren't any grandmas putting retirement money into blogging.)

For example, MIT's Media Lab offers the Blogdex, an incredibly useful ranked listing of the most hyperlinked stories within the blogging community. As of this writing (June 10, 2002), three out of the top eight entries in the Blogdex linked to articles that had something to do with blogging. Of course, as a news-driven personal journal, blogging is naturally based on what is new and current, and blogging is a hot topic these days. But think how funny I would appear if I jammed PR Newswire with press releases extolling the virtues -- actual, potential, and wished-for -- of our often-rightly excoriated profession. The extensive use of a medium to provide the platform for evangelizing that medium amounts to a bizarre, meager, homogenized gruel upon which to nourish it.

"Blogging = Journalism. Q.E.D."

The big discussion these days is whether blogging is "journalism." The question "What is journalism?" is about as controversial as "What is art?" and has confounded university communications department undergrads and media pundits alike forever. This rhetorical briar patch was certainly bad enough before blogging took off.

The most ardent bloggers breathlessly fancy themselves as watchful, vigilant campers who pitch their tents, teepees, lean-to's, picnic tables, and refrigerator shipping boxes on the front yard of the Fourth Estate. Blogging is journalism to them -- its next wave and its ultimate savior -- and woe to he or she who tells the most passionate of the blogger community any different.

The blogging craze is so feverish, in fact, that one respected journalism school has even begun to offer courses in blogging. Just as the MBA students of the late 1990s scoffed at their elder and wiser professors for being "just sooo 'Old Economy,'" I wonder if J-school programs nationwide are going to suffer at the hands of students who demand significant curriculum changes based on a nascent, unproven trend. While there is certainly no doubt that blogging is here to stay, online journaling in its current, contemporary form could stand to benefit from perspective before curricula is formed around it (i.e., an actual graduate course on the subject), rather than adapted to it (i.e., incorporating blogging principles in order to keep existing courses current).

The idea of trying to shove the blogging concept under the rubric of journalism is perhaps a matter of perspective; many of the people who do so happen to be journalists. Working and living in that world constantly, it's only natural that a concept is made to fit into the most familiar paradigm.

I'm not a journalist, but I am a frequent letter-writer. I love written correspondence -- usually electronic, but often otherwise. Often, I distribute my letters quite widely among family, friends, and colleagues over email. As such, I've always thought that blogging heralded the return of the true "epistolarian," or one who crafts rich, thoughtful correspondence with perhaps the thought that it might enjoy a longer life than the initial sender-recipient communication. When I began to blog, my view of it was shaped accordingly.

Let's compromise, then. I argue that blogging isn't so much journalism as "meta-journalism" in that the best blogs rely on traditional news outlets to provide fodder for thoughtful discussion and commentary relative to the communities they represent. ("Meta" implies a higher level of abstraction.) Just as H.P. Lovecraft or William Burroughs based their missives on items of personal and local interest (today widely available on the web or, perhaps more legally, at any bookstore), so do the most thoughtful and relevant bloggers widely offer their perspectives on the events that shape politics, industry, and other critical issues.

In sum, blogging is a tool for communication, not the exclusive domain of any one profession or hobby. People who adopt a more journalistic frame of reference have just been quicker to build the metaphors around their own professional worldview and, as it so happens, are supplied the ideal platform for spreading those metaphors. However, just like a pen, word processor, or wet clay tablets can be used for journalism or personal writing, so too can blogs. Again, just like any other tool.

Not to mimic blogging's most bullish proponents -- of whom I'm obviously somewhat critical -- but the day may come when we'll find that traditional news organizations will cover what matters to a community, while the bloggers will deliver what really matters to that same community.

"What Is A PR Pro To Do?"

The question now for my readers is "What is PR to make of blogging and bloggers?"

From what I've observed and based on informal conversations with bloggers and journalists, it's become fairly evident that the PR community has yet to understand blogging. As a matter of fact, there have been some instances where PR and bloggers clashed with unfortunate (and publicly archived) result.

Second Verse, Same As The First

The same rules of PR strategy apply as before. Just as you would evaluate any other journalistic medium on behalf of your client, you must look at how various weblogs affect the communities with whom your client seeks to communicate. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff, the Police Academy's from the Police Academy 2's, the Roth-era Van Halen albums from those made during the band's other iterations...You get the idea.

Go Where They Go

In the technology industry where I ply my PR skills daily, it's very obvious that bloggers look to the same news outlets for blog-fodder that you would have pitched in the first place. 

On any given day, any one (or several) of the major blogs have linked to a story from a wire service (AP, Reuters), a major newspaper (The New York Times, The Washington Post), national broadcast concern (CNN), industry trade (eWeek, EETimes), technology culture news site (Wired News), or scientific publication (Scientific American, Technology Review). In short, you should work with the publications and media outlets that mean the most to your organization; the blogs that represent those same communities will follow. 

Cameron Marlow is somewhat uniquely positioned to see how blog-borne news is generated and spread. As a member of the Blogdex team at the MIT Media Lab, he sits in one of the best seats for monitoring how online news moves throughout the blogging community.

"What I've observed in the nearly eight months of Blogdex activity is that you can never tell exactly what spreads," Mr. Marlow says. "The source usually isn't important, but it's the ideas."

Mr. Marlow has also observed that content from membership or registration-based news sources are at a disadvantage in terms of spreading virally throughout the blogging community. This is because bloggers must log in or give personal information in order to access that content, creating what he refers to as "a hurdle for readers." He says that many bloggers instead opt for registration-free sources such as The Washington Post and other free news sources if given the choice. Nevertheless, The New York Times -- famously offering "All The News That's Fit To Print" in dead-tree and virtual form -- is a registration-based site that ranks among the most blogged.

Don't Misrepresent Who You Are

Some blogs, like Slashdot, offer readers the opportunity to sound off of the topics that the site's masters have sifted from the hundreds of topic submissions they receive daily and have anointed as topics for discussion. If you must post to the discussion, do not masquerade as a member of the user community while under the retainer of a company with a vested interest in the outcome of the conversation. (Faking a grassroots movement is known as "astroturfing.") Many bloggers are quite technically savvy or have access to people who are. Chances are, your access to the discussion -- and your Internet location -- has been recorded somewhere. The backlash would be severe, like when Ziff-Davis caught Microsoft stuffing the virtual ballot box in an online poll.

Finally, just as blogs offer a new, more focused lens into a writer's work, I invite you to read my further thoughts on blogging. Posted to my blog, of course.

That's it for now, gentle readers. I'd write more, but I have to go counsel the CEO of Strategically Integrated End-To-End Solutions, Inc. not to brag about his board-approved executive pay and squadron of Gulfstream jets during his next Mother Jones interview. Why are there so many unemployed PR pros when there's so much *&#@ work to be done? Later. 

Phil Gomes is an account manager at Phase Two Strategies, a San-Francisco-headquartered public relations firm that specializes in high-technology companies. His views on PR, technology, culture, and the coprophagic habits of the Egyptian vulture can be found at http://www.philgomes.com/blog/.