Ragan Report is not required reading

Well, I’ve been seriously rapped over the knuckles by the Ragan Report newsletter. They’ve called me to task for critical commentaries I’ve posted in this blog about the IABC Chair blog. I’m accused of being hysterical, harrumphing, making teary posts and sobbing. Not only that, I also ‘admit’ to having a thing about communication and technology, and shaking the two together (I say this in my blog profile page).

Blimey! Is their chain jangling, or what?

While I don’t subscribe to the Ragan Report, I have read it in the past and regard it highly. The ignorant rant they published on their website on Monday changes that view.

You can read the article here: Blog wonks need chill pill (cool headline!)

I’m not offended by RR’s personal criticism. My skin’s as thick as the next blogger, so I can live with that. Par for the course if you write a blog and have views about something, anything. One of the joys of blogging!

What I find remarkable, though, is that this quite influential newsletter articulates a view of organizational communication that illustrates nothing more than a woeful lack of awareness and understanding of the significant developments in communication technology that are happening, and that will have equally-significant influence on the practice of organizational communication.

Instead, RR naively pooh-poohs the concept of blogs and communicator-bloggers – using me as a whipping boy – and presents its readers with a diatribe that does a disservice to those readers in dressing up an emotional rant as balanced commentary.

For balanced commentary on the topic, look no further than the extremely thoughtful post by Shel Holtz, written as an open letter to David Murray, the RR writer, which offers a powerful and detailed view on what’s actually happening that just makes RR look totally irrelevant, and which is a real service to the communication profession.

Not only Shel, but also B.L. Ochman who writes with additional points. Allan Jenkins has commentary, too.

With commentary by communicators like these – blog wonks, if you want to take RR’s view – I suppose I could harrumph to Mr Murray: What’s your follow-up piece going to look like? But why should anyone care?

Comments

[Steve Crescenzo]

Neville:

Steve Crescenzo here, one of the editors of the Ragan Report---thought NOT the editor who wrote the rant about blogs.

I just wanted to clear up that, while the rant appeared in Ragan Report, it was written as a column by one of the editors, David Murray. Please don't give up on the Ragan Report as a publication because you disagree with one particular column.

RR is a supporter of blogs (I have my own on Ragan's web site, in fact), and do our best to cover emerging technology in general. In fact, I just finished an interview with Shel Holtz on wikis and wireless technology and what they mean to employee communicators. It will run in the next issue of RR.

Just wanted to weigh in.

Steve Crescenzo

[Neville Hobson]

Steve, thanks for your comments, I appreciate your making them here.

For me, one thing that's come out of this is that I am now paying more attention to the Ragan Report website than I was before!

As I commented earlier today in Shel's post (interesting discussion developing over there, by the way), I discovered another new Ragan article about blogging that is in such contrast to David's rant: balanced, thoughtful and very much worth reading. I was totally taken aback to learn that the writer of that article is none other than David Murray.

Maybe he was just having an extremely off day when he wrote his rant.

I'll look forward to readiing your interview with Shel.

[B.L. Ochman]

Glad to see that someone at Ragan bothered to weigh in. Murray's attack was uncalled for. He clearly hasn;t read anything Neville, Shel or I have ever written in our blogs. Or maybe he misquoted us just to make noise. How do I know he never even looked at my blog or my website? My picture is all over both of them and he referred to me as "Mr" Ochman twice. Sheesh! At least find out who you are bitching about before you rant!

[Neville Hobson]

Spot on, BL.

One of the interesting things said in the conversation on Shel's blog (over 40 comments so far - an excellent discussion!) is a continuance of the type of comment I see a lot of, namely: blogs will sort of evolve by themselves into the mainstream; they don't need anyone's evangelizing.

How much further off can one be? I do agree that blogs themselves are gathering increasing momentum. As with many new things in the field of organizational communication, though, you have to thrust this in the faces of many communicators. Inevitably, with that comes resistance.

In fact, I think David Murray's rant is actually performing a great service in this regard: it's forcing it onto the agenda.

[Leon Rivest]

I saw a reference to Murray's post in 'The Blog Herald' and read the article. The author refuses to see what is happening on the net and really wants us to share his blindness. He is not alone in his view. It was nice to see that Steve Crescenzo got involved and showed us that others at Ragan do look around.

Whatever people think about blogging they should not take it for granted or dismiss it. This phenomenon is growing.
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I have a design complaint Neville. At 800x600 in Mozilla/Linux your scroll bar at the bottom works, but your left sidebar is unreadable because it extends further to the left than the scroll bar allows.

[Neville Hobson]

Good points, Leon, I agree. Do take a look at the discussion going on on Shel's blog - some excellent views there.

Re the design, thanks for mentioning that. I've tested how the blog looks at various screen resolutions but not at 800x600. The template was designed to support at least 1024x768 screen res.

I can't fix that without a signficant rework of the whole blog template, unfortunately. Not something I want to do just now, frankly.

I'm curious re the left sidebar being unreadable with Firefox. I use Firefox but on Win XP not Linux. I just viewed the blog on a PC (again, Win XP) where I set the screen res to 800x600. The sidebar is readable. Is this a Firefox on Linux issue perhaps?

[patirck]

I saw a reference to Murray's post in 'The Blog Herald' and read the article. The author refuses to see what is happening on the net and really wants us to share his blindness. He is not alone in his view. It was nice to see that Steve Crescenzo got involved and showed us that others at Ragan do look around.

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