Blogosphere Spreads News of Colbert’s Performance at White House Correspondents’ Dinner Far and Wide

The New York Times reported yesterday that while the mainstream media (or MSM in blogger talk) has largely ignored Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner a few nights ago, the blogosphere has spread the news far and wide.

Colbert’s wry, ironic spiel at the fête is now widely recognized in the blogosphere as a brilliantly crafted attack on the White House. As he does on his nightly show “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, Colbert expertly aped the antics of the largely pro-Bush anchor staff at FOX News.

The fact that the bloggers have made this a hot topic says a number of things about the overarching culture of the blogosphere. We all know that blogs are a great tool for politicians and political junkies to get the word out about their perspectives and beliefs. In fact, one of the overwhelming perceptions that non-bloggers hold about bloggers is that we’re all a bunch of political pundits of one stripe or another.

But beyond our tendency toward political activism, bloggers also tend to grab hold of stories that the mainstream media has missed. It’s another issue that businesses need to be aware of when they’re dealing with the news cycle. Perhaps the MSM decided not to report the press conference where your company spokesperson said something unwise - but you can bet that at least one blogger was paying attention. And one blogger is really all that it takes to create public relations challenges for your business.

Now I don’t mean to harp on the negative. We Blog Business Summit types don’t like to paint an overwhelmingly frightening portrait of the blogosphere for our readers. Bloggers are largely welcoming to businesses that are willing to engage them. The point I’m trying to make here is a very old one: companies need to pay attention and respond in one form or another when the blogosphere decides to talk about something important to them.

Why? Because even though relatively few people are thoroughly blog-savvy at this point in time, the MSM most certainly is. And if the MSM ignores something the bloggers find relevant, you can bet that they’ll pick up on it later on in the news cycle once the bloggers have been buzzing about it for long enough.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is just one more example of this principle in action, and it’s absolutely worth paying attention to.