The Ethics of Ghost Blogging
April 29, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Public relations people do so many things behind the scenes for organizations, so why is writing some blog posts different?
That’s the response by Topaz Partners to Bryan Person’s criticism of their work for Scuderi Group’s Air Hybrid Blog.
I’m with Michael O’Connor Clark on this one (see also the comments section of Bryan’s post). Disclosure is definitely a good idea, but the question is sort of moot because the newsy posts being written by Topaz Partners on behalf of Scuderi make the site more of a news update site that uses blogging software. It doesn’t read like a blog, and it doesn’t have the personal style most people think of when they think blog. So the whole argument that blogs need to be authentic and personal doesn’t really apply in this case.
Ghost writing news items is okay, but there’s no need to keep the authorship a secret if you’re calling it a blog, where the expectations of openness are greater.
It raises the question about whether there should be more transparency about the role PR folks play in general. Maybe more identification of the behind-the-scenes work would be a good thing. But in this case, I don’t think Topaz Partners was being excessively deceptive.
They changed some things about the site, acknowledging that some of Bryan’s complaints were valid. Did they change it enough? I’d say yes.
Could there be more transparency generally? I’d say yes, but with serious reservations. I don’t want a long credits list attached to every document, web page or e-mail. This isn’t the film business, where even the interns who deliver script changes to the actors get a credit.
See also: Kami Huyse, Topaz Partners,
Eric:
There was certainly an interesting comment stream that followed my post — thank you for highlighting it.
Topaz did a nice job of making some changes in response to both my initial points and another from Kami Huyse.
I think what I also came away from this discussion with is that, like some mentioned in the comment thread — the Air Hybrid “Blog” really isn’t a blog. It’s more of a site with news updates that is built and organized around a blogging platform. And if that’s the case, then bylined posts and formal disclosure probably aren’t necessary.
I agree with your points, Eric.
I would say, however, that no one owns the definition to the term “blog.” It used to be that a blog was thought to be a personal diary; it’s since evolved in many other forms. If posting straight news updates doesn’t qualify as a blog, I can think of lots of aggregation blogs that shouldn’t call themselves blogs, either.
Yeah, it’s a blog, but it’s not the kind of blog that people say should be “personal, authentic, etc.”
There’s a different standard for something that claims to be thoughts straight from the horse’s mouth. There’s an expectation that the words are, in fact, from the horse, and not some other entity pretending to be the horse.
I started talking about blogs, and now I’m talking about equestrian endeavours. I’m so confused…
A post from Topaz Partners on the issue– that pretty much covers what Air Hybrid Blog is meant to be and the reasons it exists as it is: http://topazpartners.blogspot.com/2007/04/topaz-turmoil.html