Courtesy of the Washington Post and Erin Shannon of YoungPRPros on Yahoo! Groups, the U.S. Army is working with Haas MS&L, an Ann Arbor, Mich., firm on a blogging campaign.
“The Army believes that military blogs are a valuable medium for reaching out,” account executive Charlie Kondek has written to a number of pro-military blogs in a January 6 Email.
“To that end, the Army plans to offer you and selected bloggers exclusive editorial content on a few issues youâre likely to be interested in.”
I say, hooray for the U.S. Army. Like any company or organization, if you want to expand your media reach — and even try to publicize information you don’t think is being picked up — look to bloggers and other media.
Now, like columnist William M. Arkin of the Post, I am skeptical of the “news” the U.S. Army will give bloggers. Will they give real insight into what is happening in Iraq?
Like others, I tend to view the news — mostly as reported by the national media outlets — to be negative. But, that is the nature of news. News is what is out of the ordinary. And, most stuff out of the ordinary is negative. You should report the deaths, bombs and debate. However, I think more stories on the rebuilding, day-to-day military and civilian life, etc., would also be interesting to hear.
What I find most interesting about the army’s approach is that it is offering “exclusive” content.
As I asked above, will that content really be news? Or, will it be information that the military feels traditional media won’t use?
Important qualities of successful blogging are original content and transparency or honesty. If the army doesn’t give a sincere effort to provide good content for military bloggers, its efforts will quickly fail. Everyone will see that. These bloggers — many are former or active military personnel, or families of military personnel — don’t want to be perceived as mouthpieces for the army.
This is evidence by this one post, which I assume echos the thoughts of other bloggers:
We got the email too. I suspect a lot of milbloggers did. And I sent back the same response Matt did - “Yeah, okay, send more details, and if it’s just stuff from ARNEWS or CENTCOMs websites, got that covered already, thanks.”
If the army fails, there will be more backlash from military bloggers and bloggers in general, than there ever has been from traditional media.
It’ll definitely be interesting to track the U.S. Army’s blogger relations
– Mike
Technorati tags: blogger relations, military blogs, U.S. Army, Iraq war
