Usually in the newspaper business, The Guardian is heralded as the most Web 2.0, new media savvy example.
And usually, they exhibit fairly good awareness, such as quoting me on a recent widget ‘scam’ which I fell for.
And yet, within the space of a few days, they’ve gone and made a has of something as simple as publishing a blog about a 19-year-old going travelling. You can see the offending blog and uproar, here. (I picked up on it thanks to the nice people at NixonMcInnes)
For those who don’t want to jump, here’s the summary.
- Blog started by 19-year-old, slightly rich and posh kid travelling to Thailand.
- Comments are a bit disparaging.
- Comments get more critical as suspicion grows that it’s the son of a Guardian employee.
- Comments peak as it’s discovered that it’s the son of Guardian travel writer Paul Gogarty, and he had taken his son to Thailand at the age of 13.
- Moderators close the comments on the blog post with a day.
All of this could have been avoided by Max admitting who his dad was from the start and putting up with some ribbing. It could also have been mitigated by Max responding to comments and admitting his background. And it could still have been rescued if comments hadn’t been closed.
All of this seems blindingly obvious, but I’m guessing that there are plenty of people at The Guardian who would also think the same, and have probably read The Cluetrain Manifesto, and believe in honesty and openness.
The issue it raises for me is whether it’s possible to scale the understanding that an individual blogger, or a small team can have about social media and how it works, and expand that out to an entire brand, business or company? And can it happen to the level that events like this would not just be avoided, but wouldn’t even occur to people? Is there a large scale firm who achieves it? I’m going to avoid putting my own personal opinion on this, as I want to hear other opinions, but my job title probably gives a big clue as to what I think…