Thanks for the response. I understand the distinction you make. I have gotten the feeling in the past that Nortel often “knee jerks” reactions to bad press, rather than 1) coming clean 2) finding humor when there is irony. It seems overly defensive and a bit paranoid sometimes.

I don't cut John Roese and Phil Edholm too much slack on their blogs. They started them and if they don't intend to stay engaged they should bow out gracefully. They have never been very engaged and it seems to me to be a random set of postings and presentations rather than discourse or conversation. To me, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the medium and the audience.

Thanks for the response. I understand the distinction you make. I have gotten the feeling in the past that Nortel often “knee jerks” reactions to bad press, rather than 1) coming clean 2) finding humor when there is irony. It seems overly defensive and a bit paranoid sometimes.

I don't cut John Roese and Phil Edholm too much slack on their blogs. They started them and if they don't intend to stay engaged they should bow out gracefully. They have never been very engaged and it seems to me to be a random set of postings and presentations rather than discourse or conversation. To me, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the medium and the audience.

To many's comment on why the need to “pitch”. I agree that being up-front and factual is best (that's hopefully our policy at Nortel and on Buzzboard). But a pitch and a spin are two different things. The same news item can be interesting to different reporters for different reasons depending on what the pub focuses on, the reporter's hot buttons, etc. All a pitch does is wrap up the story into a few sentences to get that particular reporter's interest. It doesn't necessarily mean spinning it.

Regarding Roese and Phil's blogs. Not every blog can be run like Buzzboard and AAN. Roese and Phil have “real jobs” to attend to. That said – thousands of people (including you probably) care enough about what they think to read their posts. That they don't always respond immediately to every blog comment is a reflection of their broader responsibilities, not their reluctance to engage…as they are two of the most vocal, interactive, and frequent speakers/spokespeople we have at Nortel.

Good dialog. It amuses me to watch old-world companies attempt to use blogs as cheap marketing channels. It almost always backfires because a visible forum for opinion is created and in that kind of channel the credibility of the dialog has a lot more impact than the original posting. That's why I'm lost to understand the Roese and Edholm strategy of post-and-run. They introduce a topic for discussion and then they abandon it and leave it to the commenters to control the main messages. Makes no sense to me. Phil used to engage but lately he's as bad as Roese.

I agree with your statement about two-way interactivity, I only wish your executives shared that feeling. One more comment on interactivity; the tone of each posting is often set by the original poster. It can be resonant or dissonant to the reader. However no response is worse in the world of blogging that challenges or disagreement. For example, when compared with Roese's early attempts, Rybchinski's postings are dissonant and do not receive much in the way of responses even though he is a much more prolific poster.

I dispute the accuracy of tools that measure “tone” in an article. Very often the spin is far too subtle. I use lightreading as an example. Further, articles are often turned on their heads by the comments, does your tool measure the comments as well?

All that said, I have to ask why is there a “pitch” at all? I mean the most trouble companies (and anyone else) seem to get in is when there is a real or perceived difference between the facts and what they are saying. Of course mistakes happen, and the best way to deal with is an immediate mea culpa with a factual accounting. Additionally, n this business it is very hard to get past the product. Telecom/Datacom is a smaller and more tightly knit community of users/operators today. We talk a lot more amongst ourselves. Word spreads quickly about who responds and who does not, what works and what does not, where there is useful documentation, why products fit and how to solve problems. We also flag bullshit and FUD when we see it, so why put it out in the first place?

I will never understand why this posture seems so difficult for Nortel to understand. Nortel has a good story, why does it need to be dressed up, twisted, spun and “pitched” to suit marketing's perception of what the audience is thinking or wants?

But I think the point Ronald was trying to make is that you can't always pitch the same story to a blogger that you would pitch to a traditional reporter. And here's why…

As a reporter, your main goal is to write an article that your readers will find interesting. Sure there's room for some opinion, but in general the vast majority of journalists are bound by the notion of “report the news” (Mark you can correct me on anything I missed there).

Bloggers, on the other hand, have a different goal — which is to write an article that stimulates debate and conversation. Many blogs, including Buzzboard, are seen as more attractive and successful when there's an active 2-way conversation going. And we all know that neutral, factual articles don't do that…by default a blogger has to be more opinionated, controversial, edgy.

You can see this through tools that measure “tone” of articles — 75% of “traditional” articles are considered “neutral.” Compare that with blogs, which almost by definition can't be neutral.