Dear Bill Gates,
:
: Jay Rosen sends Bill Gates an open letter with suggestions for his rumored blog.
Do a newsy blog. Something like: Bill Gates reads the headlines. Gates on politics and world affairs. Gates on the spread of freedom and markets, war and peace, public education, AIDS prevention, the limits of technology, the misery of Africa, and the difficulty of solving messy global problems. Gates on why the politicians are sometimes a joke. The big picture Gates. The occasionally angry Gates. Even the ranting Gates. The man who had to expand his knowledge in order to extend the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to its practical, global and problem-solving agenda.
Jay, ever the media historian, says there have been three ways for the rich, powerful, and famous to deal with media: (1) Lock them up. (2) Ignore them. (3) Hire a flack. This is a fourth way (a la Mark Cuban): Speak to your public directly.
Jay also gives Gates some practical suggestions: Hire a blog assistant. Ignore the lawyers.
I’m with Jay on the overall notion: Who needs to be humanized more than Bill Gates? Who needs a means of talking directly to the people without enough filters to clean up the Hudson more than Bill Gates? What modern business mind would be more fascinating to step into more than Bill Gates?
Plus, we fellow bloggers can suddenly find ourselves in the same club with Bill Gates. And we can all hope to get a little Gates link love (a microlanch?).
