Communicating With Communicators

For John, BLUF:  Prominent people should engage the Blogosphere just as they should engage the other Media.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

This is a month-old article, but I think it is relevant to the ongoing discussion in the Greater Lowell area about the Blogs.

There is a tendency to hold the Blogs at arms length, but as the more traditional media change, the blogosphere becomes relatively more important.  Yes, Facebook and Twitter are growing in importance, and are more easily controlled by politicians and government and business leaders, but there is still the possibility of pushback from others.

Thus, there may be some value to those in the news in reviewing the points made by Reporter Willy Stern in the above linked article.  The Press, and the blogosphere, is not your friend, but it is your partner.  Here are the first two paragraphs of the Forbes article:

The evening before he was sworn in as CIA chief, I emailed David Petraeus seeking help with a story. The message he sent back is privileged.  But I can share that he banged out a 2-page email of approximately 40 sentences.  I learned how his last run went, where his aches and pains were, and what spy novel he’d just finished.  I also got some meaty on-the-record quotes.  That’s the work of a master–disgraced today, to be sure–but a master of the craft of media cultivation.

Wonder why Petraeus got a lot of good ink before his inexplicable fall from grace?  Wonder no more.  In the world of journalism, I’m a relative nobody so how, one wonders, must Petraeus have treated scribes from the NY Times and Washington Post?  Let’s not forget that Petraeus, like all truly sophisticated modern military leaders, never missed an opportunity to make a friend in the media.

Regards  —  Cliff