I find it maddening how widely held the belief is that blogs are personal journals about unserious topics. Not out of any sense of professional pride on my part, but because of the huge loss this represents to organizations that could benefit greatly from a these powerful tools of self-publishing with global reach. (Not to mention authenticity, dialog and the benefits of social bookmarking and RSS!)

So I love it when ever I find examples of serious blogs.

• Terry Teachout just wrote a column in the Wall St. Journal about the impact of blogs on art criticism. This excerpt via Jeff Jarvis:
  

  The emergence of the practitioner-blogger has the highest potential significance for arts journalism. Many, perhaps most, of the greatest critics in history — George Bernard Shaw, Virgil Thomson, Edwin Denby and Fairfield Porter come immediately to mind — were also practicing artists. But with the growing tendency of mainstream-media journalists to think of themselves as members of an academically credentialed profession, the practitioner-critic has lately become a comparative rarity in the American print media. Not so on the Web, which is one of the reasons why readers in search of stimulating commentary on the arts are going online to find it.

  I find myself rather than asking “why aren’t more writers practitioners” instead, “why aren’t more practitioners writing?” The benefits of writing (blogging) about your practice, whatever it is, are innumerable.

• Harvard Law School now has an official blog for the admissions department. Written by the Assistant Dean for Admissions, the blog’s sidebar reads
  

  This blog is intended to make the admissions process at Harvard Law School more transparent while providing a venue for those tips, nuggets and ideas that get lost in the wave of information greeting law school applicants.

  Blogging for your organization must be a thousand times, no ten thousand times, easier than getting into Harvard Law School. But if you’re the type who likes signals from authority figures that something is a good idea…

• So No Child Must Wait is a blog network for surgeons traveling to the poorest parts of the world to perform complex surgeries for children. It appears to be posted to irregularly, which is a shame, but it is a demonstration of one more wonderful use of the technology.

These are just a few of the most recent examples of great applications of this technology that I’ve found. I cannot emphasize enough the potential for communication, visibility, dialog and learning that is enabled by blogging. It’s not just about cats anymore.

Technorati Tags: blogging, web2.0, art, Harvard, surgeons, net2

Reader IANG posted a comment yesterday asking about convincing an organization to blog. I thought it would be of general interest, wanted to get others’ thoughts and so I moved it here.

I am having a hard time trying to convince my organization (a small non profit) to blog on area of expertise. they seem to think it will require a full time person (based on some comments at a seminar PR folks went to without me) and that it will not add anything to our fairly good PR/Media out-reach we already do. How can I get them to understand the importance of blogging vs. our traditional media outreach?

Here’s my response:

It is very hard to convince someone to blog if they don’t want to. I suggest you find out who in your organization most highly prioritizes open, regular, two-way communication with people in the field. You and they can blog, or just you, about your work in the organization and/or your thoughts on the issues faced by people in your field. It’s ideal to get support and participation from upper management for such a project (though they are apt to take a week to write a 2000 word essay!). But short of that, perhaps your blog could prove its own worth and then move towards the inside of the organization – or into another organization that more highly prioritizes such values.

I think that if you set up a good suite of search and other RSS feeds about your issues, then you will have lots of very timely fodder for regular blogging. If you set up your blog to maximize participation by others (one-click RSS subscription and subscribe by email options, etc. -) then you should be able to establish yourself as a person at the center of the online discussion and a good source of news. (Those are the kinds of things I help people with.)

Perhaps your organization will see the vibrant communication you’ve got going on and make a paradigm shift. People who aren’t familiar with this type of media go gaga over seeing strangers make good comments! That really helps them see that the communication is real and valuable.

It is a time investment, but I don’t think it requires a full time person by any means.

What thoughts do others here have about “convincing people to blog”?

Technorati Tags: blogging, adoption, nptech, net2, media