Everyday, there are new front page stories about the impact blogging is having on business. This morning it was USA Today weighing on on executive bloggers on the front page of the Money section. No surprise that the ongoing characterization of blogs and bloggers is meant to discredit us and what we are up to: just like the computer companies of the early '80s characterized PC makers as hobbyists. Blogging is messy and dangerous: Steer clear!

Del Jones

[from CEOs refuse to get tangled up in messy blogs]

Blogs, short for weblogs, are personal Web sites for posting thoughts, rants and opinions in chronological order. One written by a CEO would slice through traditional media gatekeepers and bring him or her unedited to the desktop of customers, employees, Wall Street analysts and competitors. A blog by a prominent CEO would attract instant traffic, could influence public opinion, perhaps steer legislation and maybe sell a few widgets.

But despite all of the power and sway that awaits an early adopter, it's going to take a brave CEO with thick skin to enter the blogosphere. The corporate sphere likes its skeletons packed away, or at least vetted through legal and public relations departments. Companies have been trained to be inoffensive.

The blogosphere, on the other hand, wars against harmony. Its mission is to air dirty laundry. There is even an undercurrent of radical bloggers who say all companies are evil and should be brought down.

The blogosphere does not war against harmony, and its mission is not to air dirty laundry, and, while there may be people in the blogosphere that say that all companies are evil and should be brought down, that is by no means a widely held view of the supermajority of bloggers.

How do these mainstream journalists get these ideas? Are they really that clueless? Do they ever research the blogosphere before launching into these pronouncements, or do they simply cage their invective from other news stories?

The blogosphere is no more unharmonious than the world in which we live. While bloggers are likely to get involved in pulling down the pants of bloated media figures -- like Dan Rather, for example -- we are moving into the gap left as traditional media have decided not to police themselves effectively, and have taken their eye off the ball in other ways, like the tarnishing of their much lauded journalistic ethics: most people just don't trust mainstream media like they used to.

The blogosphere is today's Wild West, where people post indelicate responses and react with incivility, known as "flaming." Blog readers can be counted on to hurl insults that insulated CEOs are not accustomed to hearing. Even more civilized blog readers are impatient with executives who are uninteresting or inauthentic.

Thank god someone is getting away from the kid gloves, softball pitching nonsense that so-called "objective" journalism has fallen into, which is increasingly a subliminal support for the status quo. That's why there are so many white males telling people what they should think on TV and in the major newspapers. And the reaction of traditional media to gonzo journalism is to reject the message because it doesn't fit into the now archiac canon of journalistic rules.

My metaphor is that traditional media try too hard to be polite because they think being invited back to the next dinner party is more important than calling someone a sexist after an insensitive joke.

My prediction is that dozens of CEOs will be blogging in the near future, but don't expect it to start with the buttoned-down types, first. Look to media executives, entertainment, sports, high tech, and serial entreprenuers who have moved across many industries. And the conservative bilge of the media establishment will not slow this a whit. The ones that are likely to launch CEO blogs have already shifted to reading blogs rather than, or in addition to, the tired, tired tabloids.