Thursday, January 20, 2005

Jay Rosen needs to get over himself


Jay Rosen has set up shop as assignment editor for PR Blogosphere. He is upset that we failed to sufficiently vilify the hapless Ketchum Associates. According to Rosen: For PR bloggers especially, this was a moment for them to shine and for the most part they did not show up.

Rosen goes on to say, “Bloggers are supposed to be a little more curious than most. They are supposed to apply a second degree of scrutiny as they do "their job" in the new ecosystem of news. When the press pack goes that-a-way they ought to look this-a-way more. And they should be alert to events in the moral life of the people whose world they chronicle.”

Sez who?

Initially Rosen gave credit only to Jeremy Pepper and Rick Edelman for commenting on the story. Actually many PR Bloggers commented on the pathetic affair; Tom Murphy has a round up of all of all the posts.

A blog is simply electronic paper on a network. Other than the laws on libel, invasion of privacy, and copyright, bloggers have no obligations. That is the beauty of blogosphere, it is entirely up to the reader to judge what, if anything, is worth reading.

Note - Ben Silverman has his own marvelous take on this.

3 comments:

Jeremy said...

At the end of the day, who cares who had what written when and where. Although, I feel pretty neat for being in Romenesko today.

The issue is that our organizations are not picking up the slack, are not fighting to keep PR's nose clean. Should that slack be picked up by PR bloggers? PRSA failed us (partially), the Council of PR Firms embarassedus (totally), and IABC ... well, I can't tell what they've done because there is nothing on the homepage.

Or maybe not. Everyone should blog on what they want to blog on, and if that includes Ketchum/Williams, that's great. If it doesn't, so be it.

Alice said...

I share your disappointment with PRSA. But what do you expect, they invited Torrie Clark to speak at their 2003 conference for Clark's excellent work in lying us into the Iraq war.

Congrats on getting mentioned in Romenesko, I would be thrilled if it had been me.

marcsnyder said...

Jeremy said:
At the end of the day, who cares who had what written when and where. Although, I feel pretty neat for being in Romenesko today.Well, Jeremy, I do. To have a journalism professor lecture the "PR bloggers" community (if such a thing exists) without doing adequate research, well, that's just priceless.

MS