Blog Post Number Coincidence?

For those traditionalists in public relations, I think not. Very interesting piece on the Obama rapid response team from Time. Explains a bit of how they have shifted into attack mode rather than fact check or convince mode.

Speaking of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs in the piece:
White House officials offer no apologies. "The best analogy is probably baseball," says Gibbs. "The only way to get somebody to stop crowding the plate is to throw a fastball at them. They move."

In many ways, this reflects my earlier points that we continue to move away from the Age of Cronkite back into the age of advocacy, well on the edge of a "golden" age of partisan journalism unlike anything previously seen during the Yellow or Muckraker periods. I say golden in quotes because it took an Upton Sinclair months, if not years, to have an impact; a H.L. Mencken could only touch so many Americans from his east coast paper columns.

Imagine their power with the time and space crushing ability of the networked media.

Not sure whether to shudder or cheer. Know this much, if you plan on wading in, better be more than right or one risks a reaction not only from the media, but the order of magnitude power of social media amplification.

Or to quote more ancient advice: They sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind.