Amanda Chapel has launched a PR blog called Strumpette.
What better way to kick-start some traffic than to play games with one of the most popular and well-respected bloggers in the world? Right?
No. Wrong. Very wrong.
She leads off by discussing an office pool she is in concerning how long Steve Rubel will stay at his new employer, Edelman. She goes on to give some alleged insight into the politics at Edelman and then she starts blasting Steve in the name of attention and traffic.
I’m not going to go point by point because I don’t know squat about the PR business or the politics at Edelman and because I don’t want to give this story or this approach legs, other than to join Doc in betting that Steve runs Edelman one day and to chastise Stowe a little for not calling BS on it (Stowe is one of my favorite reads, notwithstanding this momentary lapse).
In blogosphere politics, just like in real life office politics, some folks believe you can rise faster by throwing rocks at those around you than by just working hard and letting the results take care of themselves. I see it happen all the time with Scoble. People call for him to get fired and worse, all in the name of traffic and eyeballs.
These blogs are great, but behind every one of them is someone who is trying to make a living and live a life. It’s fine to disagree- I do it all the time. But how you disagree with someone tells more about what you’re made of than how you agree with them.
Blogs are getting to be like cars. It’s easy to shoot the finger at someone from the safety of your car. It’s getting too easy to do that from your blog. Snarky may be fine when we’re disagreeing about music, movies or politics. The rules ought to be different when we’re talking about our lives and jobs.
I think disagreeing with someone, be it Steve, Scoble or anyone else, in a way that may impact their life or their livelihood is one big bucket of wrong.
Newsome.Org 