Colin Farrington: I would like to see a civilized reaction against the alleged power of the ‘blog’

CIPR director general Colin Farrington has posted an article on the website Profile-Extra saying he thinks blogs are boring, that he'd like to see some action against their alleged power, and he's generally not that keen on them. "Can they really become a powerful medium?" he asks.

Sorry, what was that last bit?

Did Colin miss the fact that the highest profile blogs have more readers than many national newspapers? Or that the discussions on blogs break tomorrow's news before it happens, and are changing the way the press gathers its stories. Perhaps he hasn't read about the damage done to brands like Dell, Kryptonite or Cillit Bang because of blogs, or how blogging doubled sales for wine firm Stormhoek. 

Blogging has brought about a massive adoption of complimentary applications such as podcasts, vlogging, MySpace, and wider user-generated content (UGC) like YouTube and Digg. It will be UGC which we will see overtaking blogging. And when the BBC releases its new website, UGC will go beyond popular text-based blogging. the UGC revolution will be massive, and totally change the shape of the media.

Colin's not sure still, stating that we need more well thought out blogs. I would suggest Colin's advisors check out all of the daily papers and they will see plenty of well thought out blogging. Or just take a look at some of the multi-million earning pro-blog empires like Gawker or Weblogs Inc.

Colin ends his article saying CIPR president Tony Bradley is a blogging pioneer. I'm not sure he actually looked at Tony's blog. No offense to Tony, your blog is tidy and reads ok, it just isn't pioneering. With blogging having been around well over five years, setting up a basic version of something being done in really innovative ways all around us can't class as pioneering. Pioneering is Comment is Free, or BBC Backstage.

Simon Collister noticed the Colin Farrington article this morning, and posted a response pretty quick, slating it. Antony Mayfield responded by reminding us that Colin's old, and maybe doesn't get it all, still thinking typewriters and telegrams for his press releases. This is probably all mind blowing to him. But most readers are wondering, as Rainier's Stephen Waddington is, "how someone in an industry leadership position could be so out of touch?"

Comments

[Darren]

Are you sure that piece wasn't written by Montgomery Burns? And he truly undercuts any point he might be trying to make with his clumsy promotion of Tony Bradley's fine but (as you point out) totally average blog.

[Dennis Howlett]

Hey Drew - I count as 'old' and have certainly counted as a 'grumpy old git' for more years than I care to remember. Does that mean I'm out of touch?

Pioneering is also in the content - let's not forget that part of the equation.

[Antony Mayfield]

I'm not stressing the age thing, Drew. It's more the ability to keep up with now, to remain relevant. that's what Colin's not doing - he's sounding out of touch - and I think when someone in his position is doing that it's a very sorry state of affairs.

There a good few grey hairs on the heads of the people who have inspired and continue to inspire my learning with social media.

Talking of grey hairs - take a look at Rupert Murdoch's interview in the lastest issue of Wired (available online). There is a man who is nearly 80, but I wouldn't describe him as being

Perhaps Mr Farrington should listen to his elders, like Mr Murdoch, who have called this a revolution that you have to go back to the invention of the printing press to find a parallel for.

[Justin Hayward]

Perhaps we need to add a timescale to the assessment of how successful blogs will be in the long run. I absolutely believe that now, at this time, they are a significant impact in terms of influence, but for how long? There is a generational element to all of this, it has to be said, but perhaps it's a 'mental age' thing - I know more young fuddy-duddies than old ones!

Are we (those who participate in the front line of assessing and working with the blogging community) guilty of doing the same thing with blogs as with technology - over-estimating the importance that they will have in the future in the long run whilst underestimating the way in which it is changing our jobs?

If anything though, regardless of the channel, customers will never again feel that they can't be vocal when it comes to addressing the issue of bad customer service, trust, integrity and shareholder value. And without connecting to this community, Colin is missing the point that, however boring they are, even boring people have the power to influence!

[Ian Betteridge]

It's fairly typical of the ill thought-out reactions that blogging engenders that you're slating Colin for things that he ackhowledges - such as the fact that he's out of touch!

And the fact is that a lot of what he says is correct: Lots of blogs are very boring. There's hundreds of LiveJournals that are interesting to no one (other than, perhaps, the friends of the writer - and even then I'm not convinced).

Most blog posts are "write first, think later", and their comments (as on this post!) are doubly so.

Your own post shows a lot of these points. You claim that Colin says that "Tony Bradley is a bloggin pioneer". Of course, this isn't true. He says "These would be of the quality being pioneered by CIPR President Tony Bradley", which is a very different proposition.

You say "'Can they really become a powerful medium?. he asks." Unless I'm reading a totally different article, I don't see anywhere he says this. So you're attacking him for something he doesn't say. Perhaps this is because you want to score some points - which indicates perfectly the kind of "low quality" that Colin's referring to.

We DO need more well thought-out blogs. We need to encourage people to (1) use their critical faculties, (2) do some follow-up work of their own, and (3) think before they post. Sadly, I think your post is guilty of exactly the kind of thing that Colin's complaining about.