Journalism’s Critique of Blogging – A Great PR Tool

Interesting piece over at What Next Blog looking at the way the Wall St. Journal and New York Times are Still Dissing Bloggers.

‘It went on to create tension by saying that “Bloggers push stories and theories that make big media look slow, defensive or part of some far-fetched conspiracy.” Noting that “competition is rarely welcomed by the incumbents,”, the article admitted that “it can help make them better.”‘

I actually think that the more they critique blogging the more successful they will making it.

In my early days of blogging I had a little blog that hardly anyone ever read – it had a readership of 10 to 20 a day (which I thought was pretty decent!), mainly just my family and one or two friends. I wrote mainly on issues of spirituality and faith.

However one day I created a bit of a stir by posting about how I’d visited a local Mosque’s open day. This was the first day that ‘Greg’ appeared on my blog. ‘Greg’ (I do not know if this is his real name) was offended by my visit and subsequent post and made it his business for the next month or six to be my personal troll. He commented on anything and everything that I wrote.

An interesting thing happened though – whilst Greg’s critiques, arguments and dissing were aimed at hurting me they actually were the reason that my blog became quite prominent in the community of bloggers that I was attempting to become a part of.

Greg sealed my popularity one day by surfing to around 100 blogs in this community and leaving a comment accusing me of being a “F#@$ing muslim loving, liberal”. Thankfully he did so with a link back to my blog.

The next day my traffic was in the thousands with the link ups. 99% of the traffic was supportive of me and many remain readers of that blog today. The dissing not only energized me and motivated me to write more – but it also intrigued many potential readers and drew them to what I was doing. I could not have publicized my blog any better if I’d done so myself. Of course I wrote a big post thanking Greg for his help and have not heard from him on my blog since.

Now I’m not arguing that we all find ourselves trolls, or pick fights with one another – but I would argue that whilst the blogosphere might seem under attack from time to time that there might be some truth in the old adage – ‘any publicity is good publicity’.