I have been way too nuts recently to do a good job of dissecting a recent piece in Darwin (where I used to have amonthly column) entitled Enough With the Blogging Already. I guess this the start (or more) of the inevitable blog antihype from those that don't get it, don't buy in, or who hope it will all just go away. I refute the author's points one by one, below, in line.

Graeme Thickins

1. Business doesn’t do “passion.” That, according to the experts, is the prime requirement for launching and successfully building a voice with a blog. On the contrary, business is about logic, predictability, executing a strategy, even-temperedness, a steady hand – and, yes, earning a profit (something absent in the field of blogging). Name one successful CEO known for passion who’s lasted beyond a short flameout period (okay, besides Steve Jobs).

Yikes. I thought all sucessful businesses spon around the axis of some sort of passion: service to the customer, building the best product, or fighting to provide the absolutely lowest cost. Something. Companies operating without passion are doomed. But anyway, I think passion is only one of many key elements to successful blogging, not the key.

2. Business doesn’t like gossip. The blogosphere is well known as a caldron [sic] of innuendo and over-the-back-fence chatter. (That’s not to say some political blogs haven’t helped get to the truth in some notable instances -- such as the Dan Rather incident. But we’re talking business here.) The fact remains that business people still have two big questions when it comes to this blogging phenomenon: Who would I trust out there? And, what would I get out of slogging through all this uncontrolled chit-chat?

Hmmm. And the traditional media aren't? I know lots of firms that are trying hard to use media, in general, to spread "buzz" -- hard to distinguish from gossip -- and gravitate to places where people are exchanging information that is personally important to them with others that likewise are interested: gossip.

3. Business doesn’t like doing public experiments. Again, this seems to be one of the favorite recent themes of the hypesters: that businesses should start blathering with their “corporate voice.” But a mainstream business doesn’t let just one person speak for all its interests. And that applies even to the CEO – or, I should say, especially to the CEO in the current climate of ethics lapses and Sarbanes-Oxley.

The idea behind corporate blogging is to have a dialogue with your market, not just another vehicle for the corporate voice. That's why Sun, Macromedia, and Microsoft's efforts have been so effective. It's not Gates yammering, its hundreds or thousands of Microsoftees talking about what they are up to. It's not just another pipe, Graeme, its a conversation.

4. Business doesn’t bare its soul, and certainly not its personal diary. In fact, companies don’t do diaries, unless they happen to be one-person firms that do blogs. It should come as no surprise that business does not choose to hang out its dirty laundry for all to see, which is exactly what some proponents of blogs say companies should do. (I’m not making this up.)

Many businesses have been successful at involving their markets through an ongoing serialization of information regrading product roll-outs, response to critical issues (Bhopal) , and corporate events (like mergers). Many are not. The notion of transparency is not solely a question of blogging: blogging is merely a medium for such things. But, if a company is not interested in the benefits of that sort of interaction, they certainly won't gravitate to blogging.

5. Business is already time-strapped and blogs burn time like nobody’s business. Roger McNamee, famed Silicon Valley VC and private equity investor, recently appeared on CNBC business news. When asked where he thought the next big investment ideas and business opportunities would be, he said: “People don’t have enough time.” So, who has time to waste?

The implication is that reading blogs is wasting time, I suppose.

Pew Internet research has shown that every hour spent ont he Internet is an hour not spent watching TV. Robert Putnam pointed out in Bowling Alone that while most Americans feel they have no time to get involve in social actitivities -- like the Kiwanis, political activism or league bowling -- they still manage to watch a lot of TV. Over 4 hours per day in the US. This number has been steadily growing, and the more channels there are, the more people have been watching: at least until recently, since the rise of Internet 2.0.

Of course, I bet Graeme would make some convoluted argument about CEOs versus the rank-and-file -- but I don't buy into the whole corporate myth of the "Great Man" -- a subject for a different post.

6. Businesses already communicate well in various ways. And they don’t just do that willy-nilly. They carefully manage and account for their communications, especially those deemed to be “business records,” which includes e-mail and instant messaging. They must also comply with government regulations covering some of these forms of communications – archiving e-mail, for example – or face severe penalties and fines if they screw up. You’ll understand, then, why they’re not exactly clamoring for a new form.

Oh yeah, companies are in general doing a great job of communicating with their markets. I guess Graeme missed the Cluetrain, and isn't reading the wide range of writing about how business communications are desperately in need of rethinking, given the Internet and generational changes.

Anyway, the great majority will resist adoption of new innovations until all the risk is shaken out, courtesy of earlier adoptors. But don't try to tell me that those who move earlier don't gain an advantage: they do.

7. Businesses are advertisers, and advertisers don’t like blogs. Take it from an expert, Peter Horan, CEO of About.com (recently acquired by the New York Times Co.): “Advertisers don't want to advertise on someone's personal home page, they don't like advertising in forums, they don't like advertising in blogs. It's a media business. Media is about getting to critical mass and about getting advertiser support.” (From an excellent interview by Mark Glaser appearing on USC’s Online Journalism Review, in which Horan is also quick to point out that About.com’s business is not a blogging model, as many might think.)

Many blogs -- like those at Corante -- are not personal home pages. (Aren't home pages dead?) What advertisers want is cost-effective contact with qualified buyers. The plummeting percentages in analog media (see recent Chris Anderson post) demonstrate that people are defecting from print, TV, and radio, and going digital. Even digital media from traditional media outlets are dropping. So, no matter what people may say about what they want, ultimately they will go where the people are. If people want to read blogs, then advertisers will have to figure out how to advertise there, if they want to connect with people.

8. Business and politics don't mix well. If companies ever do politics, it's usually through their industry associations (which have lobbyists to play that game) while they do business. Only a tiny fraction of businesses employ their own lobbyists or government relations people. Most won't be online participating in endless chatter about what happened in today's city council meeting.

Ok, but I don't know what that has to do with blogs in general. It's a widespread misunderstanding -- based on the media frenzy at the national conventions last year -- that blogs are all about politics, but blogs can be about anything.

9. Business writing style and blogger style don’t even come close. Editing is the major missing ingredient in the latter. Most of the content of the blogosphere is badly lacking in proper usage, punctuation, organization and more. And there seems to be an unstated blogger’s creed of “Why say something in 100 words when you can say it in 1,200?” Once people see the alternative, they realize they actually do prefer copy that’s readable, coherent and to the point – puh-lease, to the point!

Spare me. The best bloggers are great writers, and basic business writing is in general soulless, superlative larded, and jingoistic. People in general want a point of view expressed in the first person: an authority expressing strong beliefs in lucid prose. Most business writing and journalism lasks those features: no True Voice.

10. Businesses have other ways of dealing with promoting their stances. The corporate communications and public relations profession is remarkably quiet in all the rah-rah hype of blogging. Here’s but one example of their lack of buy-in: the League of American Communications Professionals recently published a newsletter on the topic of “Converting a Corporate Cause to a Grassroots Campaign via the Web.” The b-word never even appeared.

The who? The American Marketing Association is running a national series of conferences on blogging (I will be speaking at one in NYC this June, for example), and the American Business Media association just held a meeting on the topic. There are scores of PR professionals blogging regularly, and recommending that their clients work to incorporate blogging into their media mix... as quickly as possible.

Well, a short rebuttal has become a long counterpoint. Graeme has run out all the classic parts of the Wet Blanket List: if this was important we'd be doing it already, there are better ways to do this, this is just the old stuff in new wrappings, the establishment (in this case, the old-line Communications folks) thinks this new stuff is dumb, etc. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions points out that the emergence of any new paradigm -- one that invalidates a previous worldview -- will be subjected to these sorts of attacks, independent of the actual issues that differentiate the new from the old. And, of course, those that espouse the new paradigm will be personally discredited and attacked by the establishment.

I don't know who Graeme Thickins is, or what he does, but he is playing the role here of an advocate of the Media Counter-Reformation. I expect that those arguing against blogging will get increasingly strident as more businesses adopt blogging as a core element of their communications plans, and the old ways start to fall down. Jobs will be lost, careers ended, and money that historically flowed through old line PR, communications firms, and media companies will find new channels into other pockets.