One of the drawbacks of living on the West Coast is that, by the time I wake up, events are already unfolding on the East Coast and in Europe. It’s tough to break a story, or even be right on top of it, when it started making waves in the blogosphere while I’m still slumbering away at 3:30 or 4 a.m.

A case in point is the flap over Jay Rosen’s diatribe aimed at PR bloggers. In case you’re just catching up yourself, here’s a quick recap: Rosen, a noted NYU professor and media critic, wrote a lengthy post in his blog “PressThink” taking PR bloggers to task for ignoring Ketchum’s breech of ethics. Ketchum, one of the big players among PR agencies, brokered a deal that put $240,000 in the pocket of Armstrong Williams, a conservative pundit. In exchange, Williams used his media presence to report favorably on the White House’s “No Child Left Behind” education program. Rosen searched Technorati on the issue and came up with only two posts by PR bloggers: Jeremy Pepper and Richard Edelman. The silence from the community of PR bloggers is shameful, Rosen asserts. The problem is that several PR bloggers did post on the subject, myself included.

Since many PR bloggers have already commented on this, I’m not going to rehash the excellent points they’ve made. Instead, I’ll list links to their various posts at the end of this item. I would like to make a couple observations, though.

First, what is a blog? In his post chastising PR bloggers, Rosen writes, “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.” That’s true, assuming the blogger’s intent is to be part of the ecosystem of news. I know of one blog—written by a highly-regarded professional communicator—that is an entirely fictional soap opera that takes place in a made-up corporation.

I was incensed recently at a response I got from a representative of an organization I was engaged with. I had been advising the organization, which maintains a blog, that it needed to post more frequently. The individual who responded to me wrote, “A blog is really just a lightweight CMS/journal.” I took issue with this, noting that a culture has emerged around blogging that transcends its technical underpinnings. But at its core, this statement is exactly right. A blog is a software application. What you do with it is entirely up to you. You can choose to be a reporter, an observer, a commentator, a soap opera writer, a customer service center, whatever. There is no obligation to engage in participatory journalism merely because you’re using a blogging tool.

I knew even before I read Steve Rubel’s response to Rosen’s wrist-slapping exactly what his point would be. Rubel, who writes Micropersuasion, arguably the most visible of the PR blogs, was one of the bloggers who did not cover the Ketchum scandal. But if you read Rubel’s blog, you can see right at the top, in big letters, that Micropersuasion is about “how blogs and participatory journalism are impacting the practice of public relations.” The Ketchum story, for Micropersuasion, is out of context. There’s no oversight or omission on Steve’s part.

Elizabeth Albrycht makes a similar point in her CorporatePR blog: “Speaking for myself, to date I really haven’t considered myself as a reporter via my blog.  In my mind, my blog doesn’t exist for me to report news, but rather to explore theories and issues with a rather academic bent.”

Thus, the assumption Rosen makes that all PR bloggers who failed to address the Ketchum story are culpable is flawed. Only those who position themselves as watchdogs of the profession should suffer that rap.

Second is the issue of accuracy in reporting. Like many in the PR business, I got my start as a journalist. I have a degree in journalism and put in time at weekly and daily newspapers. I was trained—both in school and on the job—to check the accuracy of my reporting before I submitted it for publication. Then my editor would question statements to ensure they were correct. If I were covering the tale of the failure of the PR blogosphere to report on Ketchumgate (sorry), I would have contacted some PR bloggers and asked if they knew of anyone who had posted on the topic. In short order, I would have had a list of names. Rosen, however, conducted a Technorati search, found two posts, and went to press.

In the debate about bloggers vs. traditional journalism, it’s journalism that takes the heat whenever reporters fail to abide by the standards of the profession. (The CBS/Rathergate story is the prime example.) Journalism gets this attention precisely because such standards exist. Lapses such as CBS’s are exceptions to the rule. I can’t think of a time that anybody has held a blogger’s feet to the fire for a similar lapse, probably because there is no standard of professionalism or accuracy or fact-checking for bloggers. This is why traditional journalism will not wither in the face of blogging’s emergence. Rosen made excellent points in his post that needed to be made. But his reporting was flat-out inaccurate. As Tom Murphy notes in his post, he and I are sitting at our desks this morning feeling both “smug and unloved” for having posted on the Ketchum story but not getting credit in Rosen’s diatribe.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Technorati is clearly inadequate as a blog search tool if it failed to produce accurate results in Rosen’s search. Don’t rely on Technorati as your sole source when conducting such reseach. A better blogging search tool—and improvements to Technorati—is sorely needed.

Here are links to PR bloggers’ posts on the Rosen story:

Elizabeth Albrycht
Trevor Cook
Neville Hobson
Tom Murphy
Jeremy Pepper
Steve Rubel

By the way, I still love living on the West Coast. Here in the Bay Area, it’ll be 54 degrees and sunny today.

Update—More PR bloggers comment:

Mike Manuel
BL Ochman