Some in the PR industry have predicted that Amanda Chapel, who exited the scene recently as a blogger using the handle “Strumpette,” may indeed surface under a new guise.
Robert French’s expose of Chapel gave several others an opening to reveal the same ugly side of a PR blogger they experienced. One called her a front for a Libelous Troll Brigade. Another, an avatar. French simply calls Chapel “it.”
Indeed the approach it took – a blog that called itself “A Naked Journal of the PR Business” — drew many in, with vituperous attacks both online and off. The Washington Post had some theories too. I was one of its lesser targets, with comments to a post here, that went from mild insults to name calling. When I threw in question to see if its comments were really serious, the response was telling –dismissing Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory a bunch of hooey, etc.
To be sure, Strumpette was an half-brained experiment. Many others, just like last year’s Lonely Girl, have tried to massage the blogosphere and the social media eco-system to see what happens. Jeff Jarvis suggested it could have been a book proposal badly done, or someone slighted by a loss of clients.
Moving on. This brings to the surface once again an issue that’s uncomfortable for some: anonymous blogs and ghost blogging– a topic that’s been debated over and over again by PR folk for more than a year. Let’s see how this evolves.
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I’m fairly new to the whole blogging scene, but I don’t see much harm in the act of ghost blogging, so long as it’s implemented ethically.
If a document filled with false information is published as a means of generating positive publicity, it’s an unethical act. But how many times do CEO’s assign their PR professionals to write shareholder letters, speeches and news releases in order to accurately reflect company values? CEOs are trained to run a company and many, I’m sure, are intelligent enough to communicate the progress their company makes in relation to their mission statement, but when it comes to crafting a document that reflects these values, leave the writing to the trained professionals. They know which words to use and not to use, which methods to apply in communicating with certain media, and they just know what sounds best.
A PR professional is supposed to represent his or her client or organization, doing so by communicating via the written word. If backgrounders and fact sheets are produced by PR professionals, what’s so different about the same professional conveying the same degree of information through a blog instead of…any other method of mass communication?
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