BuzzMachine

Blog biz

: Ad Age has an uncharacteristically numbnutty story on blogs and marketing in the current issue (not online). After saying that there was a “controversy” with “hackles raised” and a “brouhaha” by Gawker’s sponsor blog for Nike’s Art of Speed — without ever saying who had what problems — it goes on to give marketers a list of Don’ts and Do’s for blogs, starting with this:

DON’T throw money at bloggers. These influencers will not respond to outright, traditional ad placements.

Horsecrap. Look at Blogads. Look at the room filled with bloggers eager to accept advertising at Bloggercon.

How could an advertising magazine suggest that advertisers shouldn’t advertise? It could be because the source of the chart is Edelman Worldwide, which is a PR company. PR guys sometimes don’t get advertising. The other source is Intelliseek and right now, I’m listening to a webinar from those folks right now and they’re arguing that “PR tactics work better than advertising.” I disagree. Advertising is a clear and straightforward relationship — somebody bought this space. PR is and always has been about influencing the influencers and it’s important for bloggers (as it should be for reporters!) to reveal that. I’ve long said that if I ran a newspaper, I’d create a flack-free day to eliminate all PR just for one day to force reporters to go out and talk to real people and real sources. Or if reporters talked to PR guys, they should reveal what comes from such spokesmen and spinners.

Steve Rubel — a PR guy who really gets it — and I talked about a lot of this last week at an enjoyable lunch.

To the barricades, fellow bloggers!

: No, I’m not talking about Rathergate (more on that later) or anything American.

The real blogging revolution is happening in Iran — and the powers that be are fighting back in frightening ways.

Hoder reports that the father of blogger Sina Motellebi has just been arrested.

It was when Sina himself was arrested in April, 2003, because of what he wrote on his blog that I first discovered Hoder and the incredible Iranian weblog culture. Thanks in some measure to the attention brought to his case by bloggers and then Big Media, Sina was released from prison and he fled Iran for Europe, where he has continued to write about what is happening in his homeland. And now, to pressure him to shut up, the mullahs have arrested his father. Iranian blogger Davood calls this what it is: hostage taking.

Tyrants play dirty.

Hoder sums up other arrests of people related to blogs and online. And he emphasizes:

Hardline consrvatives are very concerned when it comes to foreign press. So please help us spread the word in the blogosphere — by linking to the post or to other related resources — and give the news maximum exposure.

Please spread the word. Tells the mullahs that the whole world wide web is watching.

Now this is truly sick and disgusting big media

: Spanish newspaper El Pais runs a truly sick and disgusting and wrong and evil ad showing two skylines of New York — one with and one without the World Trade Center towers — over the headline, “You can do a lot in one single day; just imagine what can happen in three months.”

You’d think that a newspaper would have more sense. Well, I would. Once upon a time.

And you’d think that a newspaper in Spain, victim of a horrid terrorist attack itself, would have more humanity.

They don’t print with ink. They print with slime.

This from Spanish blogger Franco Aleman, via many bloggers.

Hurricams

: As long as the power holds out, you can watch the storm coming into New Orleans at Nola.com here and here and here. (Our fabled Bourbocam is out of commission because they slapped plywood onto the window in front of it!)

Note also that the Times-Picayune is using Movable Type at Nola.com to update school closings and such.

Rathergate: Who’s on first?

: I’m working on an op-ed on Rathergate, etc. Help me out and leave comments telling me which sites you think deserve the most credit for fact-checking Rather’s bony Texas ass (and fact-checking the fact-checkers, in turn). I don’t want to get into a debate of the finer points of modern typography; that’s being argued effectively elsewhere. I just want to make sure I give credit where credit is due: Who was first? Who had the best evidence and arguments? Thanks.