Critics Snark Lamely at Chris Elliott
Brendan Hodgson of Hill & Knowlton and Liz Cox Barrett of the Columbia Journalism Review have some harsh words for Chris Elliott over his recent column about business travel blogs.
Now maybe I’m just a teensy bit biased because he mentioned inFlightHQ - our Connexion by Boeing-sponsored blog about business travel - in the piece. But the critics are pretty off base on this one.
Elliott’s response to Hodgson hit the nail squarely on the head. In a recent e-mail, which he gave me permission to share, he wrote that “[Hodgson's blog] appears to [come from] a PR firm. Seems ironic that any firm responsible for ‘creating’ trends in order to place its clients in a story would criticize me for reporting on a perfectly legitimate trend.”
As for the Columbia Journalism Review, nobody ever said that this piece was a revelation. If Barrett expects that every piece to hit newsprint should reveal another Watergate scandal, she’s in for a lot of disappointment. What’s more, the her piece rants all over the place without much of a point. Ok, so some of the issues in the article are obvious. Does that mean it’s not a worthwhile thing to cover?
Furthermore, Elliott reveals that Barrett, “couldn’t even spell my name right. I had to ask for a correction, and she didn’t even make a notation that my name had been misspelled in an earlier version. I just can’t take anything she writes seriously.”
I think the original intent of Elliott’s piece was to explore business travel as a bloggable subject and the possible reasons why it wasn’t being paid more attention in the blogosphere. The article also draws attention to resources that might be beneficial for Elliott’s frequent readers, many of whom are business travelers themselves.
Sometimes I wonder if people do these sorts of things just so they can have something to criticize.
Take that, detractors!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Erroneous articles are great opportunities to respond blogistically, by quoting the article and adding your remarks. It’s my favorite type of post, two text voices interacting against each other, blogocombat, buddy boy.
You’s good at it. It’s a it dat.
“manufacture a trend to insert client into it” is a funny way to describe blogging in any form.
Any form of blogging is no “fad” or “trend” or “gimmick.” Blogging is, along with all new social and private media, a revolution, an upheaval, something we must reluctantly or joyously study up on and implement in our own situations…or sink.
Irony is that any PR firm would kill for the press we got out of that article. In fact, as Elliott notes, PR firms are in the trend business. Maybe they’re too cool for this trend, or wished they’d thought of it.
Ahh, that’s it. They’re just resentful because we bypassed them. IFHQ got Connexion, Blog Business Summit, and itself coverage in the New York Times without a press release.
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