Debbie Weil and Dave Taylor are having an interesting conversation about the GM Fastlane blog over at the Business Blog Consulting site. Dave thinks GM is blowing it for not handling the recent announcement of 30,000 layoffs on the blog. Debbie wants Dave to be patient and give GM more time.

Steve Crescenzo would have a field day over the Taylor-Weil conversation. In a recent post to his own blog, Steve wrote, “Mostly because I find too many blogs spend far too much time talking about . . . well, blogs. They???re constantly reaffirming the importance of blogs, and the blogosphere. They are forever quoting other bloggers who are reaffirming the importance of blogs and the blogosphere. It gets boring, after a while. And it has a masturbation feel to it that I find makes me feel uncomfortable.” But this is an important conversation to have, since companies are still trying to figure out the role blogs play in their communication mix and communicators need to be able to provide effective counsel.

Update: Shel Israel has a nice little post about why bloggers talk about blogging.

I have long supported GM’s commitment to keeping Fastlane’s focus squarely on cars. Through declining earnings, labor issues, and a host of other business woes, GM and principal Fastlane author Bob Lutz—vice chairman and top car guy at GM—have understood that the blog is a conversation between the car company and car buyers who want to talk about cars. In interviews and even a Fastlane podcast, Lutz has praised the blog’s ability to provide unfiltered intelligence that informs his decision-making and should, ultimately, lead to better cars people want to buy. Infusing the blog with reports on financial performance, union negotiations, and other business-related matters would only cause the passionate car enthusiasts who read and comment on Fastlane to abandon the blog. GM has made a couple of missteps with Fastlane, the most recent a bit of advertising hype around the latest GM sales incentive. But Lutz’s posts in particular continue to pursue a conversation about cars.

Further, GM has plenty of other communication channels for addressing the layoff. There’s no requirement that a car-focused blog digress into irrelevant territory.

However, a review of comments to Lutz’s most recent post, as well as the RedTag post by Mark LaNeve—have me wondering if GM can maintain Fastlane’s credibility at all. Not one single comment posted to the blog even mentions the word “layoff.”

I have no issue with Lutz and team refraining from addressing the layoff proactively, since it has little to do with the theme of “what you want in a car.” But some reader must have offered a comment that read something like, “If you listened more to your customers, you may not have had to resort to a huge layoff to save the company.” No such references appear. Has nobody—not one commenter—used that word? Or has GM censored comments in which “layoff” or related terms were used? The Fastlane comment policy refers only to offensive language. And while the L word may be offensive to GM right now, it certainly doesn’t qualify under the policy’s terms. It will take only one reader noting on his or her own blog that GM didn’t post a comment that mentioned layoffs for the blog’s credibility to evaporate.

I suppose it’s not impossible that GM has received no such comments. Somehow, though, I don’t think it’s likely.