The Blog Run has written a critical response to my post on Blogging and PR Career Advancement. Blog Run states, “One PR firm is having everyone at its firm blog … but is missing the bigger point: passion. Don’t force employees to blog to “understand” the blogosphere, as it defeats the whole purpose. Blogging comes with passion, and without that passion, it’s astroturfing and forced and … well, crap.”

Blog Run should read my post again. If they did, they’d discover that I said:

I believe that, as an employer, my company has an obligation to encourage all of the practitioners in my firm to explore blogging. As a minimum, everyone must be familiar with it as a communications channel. And those who have the inclination, passion and viewpoint necessary to express their own voice must be given the tools to explore active participation in the conversation.

(…)

We’re making these blogs available behind our firewall so that anyone who has the inclination to test their voice can do it in the safety of our corporate environment. We’re encouraging people to use their blogs to share project information, to express opinions on business issues, to entertain, whatever they want.

I know that many people will not post to their internal blogs. That’s OK. Active blogging isn’t for everyone. But we’re making the tool available in the same way that we offer all our employees media monitoring services, media list generation databases and word processors and spreadsheets.

So, Blog Run has failed to accurately portray what I said. In fact, their point of view isn’t really out of line with what I actually wrote. Active blogging isn’t for everyone. Bloggers must have inclination, passion and viewpoint.

As for making internal blogs available to be used by each of our employees? I’m sure not going to apologize for giving my employees the tools and resources to explore a new communications medium that I believe will revolutionize the practice of public relations.