Clueless Manifesto?

I had a chance to catch up yesterday with my blogging consigliere Constantin Basturea, director of new media strategies for Converseon. When I asked how to grow my subscriber base, he politely chastised me for not giving enough link love to my fellow PR bloggers (or any bloggers for that matter).

He’s right. I definitely need to do a better job supplementing my mainstream media links with those mined from the online conversation.

To this end, I’ll start off with a news story appearing in today’s Washington Post wherein the court that’s about to try I. Lewis Libby (think Valerie Plame leak) has allocated two (!) media credentials for journalists of the citizen variety. Apparently, the Media Bloggers Association lobbied hard to earn these seats at the working media table.

(Of course, we all remember the travails of faux blogger Jeff Gannon, followed shortly thereafter by the journalistic milestone of mediabistro’s Fishbowl DC gaining a press credential for the daily White House media briefing.) Not everyone is happy by the new journalistic clout doled out to bloggers.

But then again, this blog has frequently opined on our industry’s changing media pecking order as bloggers grow in influence and cache. My fellow PR blogger down under Trevor Cook, whom I plan to visit next week, posts on a post of a post that outlined a successful PR strategy to “manipulate” the most influential personal tech bloggers. His take: so much for blogger engagement being different from mainstream media engagement:

“Easy to do, and it works. Time after time. How silly is the Cluetrain Manifesto and naked conversations kool-aid of a few years ago starting to look now? Blogs will cut throught the marketing and PR hype? Think again buddy.”

Now, Trevor, tell us what you really think.