Lowly PR Bloggers not Worthy?

Ryan Lack was one of the more gentle responders to a post by guest blogger Daniel Bernstein on the Silicon Valley Watcher blog.

Bernstein put both feet and a few other appendages into his mouth in a piece suggesting the seasoned public relations veterans should be leading the way in blogs, and the rest of us should watch in mute admiration:

"I believe blogging, as the delicate olive branch of PR, must be handled by the absolute best-of-the-best our industry offers. These are the Tim Dysons, the Richard Edelmans and the Andy Larks."

Ike Pigott responded in the comments section:

 

"Blogging is very much a meritocracy. Over time, the good tend to attract an audience, and the bad generally attract cobwebs. I think we're running into a logic bomb if we expect some "elite" to designate "the rules" for everyone else. Whose to say that I don't have a better idea for how to blog? There really are a bunch of nobodies out here that add to the sum of human knowledge. I think your Linux example bears me out."

Another noble Nobody, Ryan gently rebuked Bernstein.

Others weren't so gentle.

Comments

[Elisa]

The opportunities for the good blogs to rise to the top are diminishing. For instance, as big celebrities set up blogs staffed with main stream media stars, this has a tendency to suck up the audience. The more traffic you get, the more people will come to your blog to pimp their own links.

A lot of people in the blog-punditry world have been looking at the problem in terms of rankism. A lot of the impetus came from Mary Hodder, who had access to the technorati data and could run some numbers: http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000513.html

[Daniel Bernstein]

Hey, look, I'm a real person. As Ike said, things are just getting started. More to come...

[Ryan]

Thanks for taking notice. I knew when I read Danny's post that it was going to attract attention, but certainly didn't see the firestorm coming.

In general, I think a lot people overreact to things like this, just too emotional. I tried to avoid that because, ultimately, a lot of us are still trying to figure all of this out. Also, the "nobody" concept seemed very appropriate in this situation. Does this mean I'm officially a nobody? :)

[Ike]

I had an interesting conversation with Daniel yesterday. (Real, live, voice call. Not Skype.)

There is an idea a-brewing, and there's room for a bunch of Nobodies in it...