Forbes Continues Its Blog Credibility Issues

Forbes magazine has long been seen as a major player in covering the world of business and finance. Their reporting is generally credible with excellent insight. Blogging as a communications tool continues to grow in the business world but for some reason, Forbes just can't seem to get it right. PR Blogging guru article by Tom Taulli on blogging. In the article, he quoted Bob Wyman of PubSub. Ochman, on her own blog noted that the quote seems a bit odd and out of character for Wyman. It seemed to have been taken out of context: "To get noticed by bloggers, companies should appoint internal bloggers and start them blogging," said Wyman. "Of course, the blogs must be authentic. Also, companies can sponsor blogging events and meet the bloggers themselves to see what makes them tick." After she posted the comment about the quote on her own blog being out of context, she received a comment from Salim Ismail, Wyman's co-conspirator on PubSub that said: Very perceptive of you... "In a quote no doubt taken out of context....." Yes, the quote was taken out of context... especially in that it wasn't Bob's quote, but mine. You very rightly have noticed Bob would be much more complex and accurate - it's generally impossible for him to be otherwise... (I work hard at balancing him out a bit :) And, the response was to a different question (around how companies can better understand bloggers rather than get 'noticed'.) I think we should applaud Forbes for at least more objectively reporting the space (subjectively speaking, of course) Posted by: Salim Ismail at January 27, 2006 11:34 AM So, what's up with this? I wouldn't necessarily call this bad journalism, certainly nothing like Jayson Blair did, but it's certainly sloppy. I'm not always the bastion of absolute perfection, but something like this comes under the category of sloppy journalism. In their defense, people have some pretty unrelenting standards for journalists of professional publications like Forbes and lots of others. It's just that in the past, Forbes has been particularly here.") Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo My Web John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.