Authorship matters
Here’s a comment I just wrote as a response to Debbie Weil, who recently (among other things) discussed ghostblogging, i.e. the approach of having someone else write your CEO blog.
(Edit: this post, to which Weil refers, and the discussion that follows is really what this is all about.)
I believe that the debate about whether or not ghostblogging is acceptable is closely related to the importance of blog authorship in general. Let’s start by revisiting a few basic questions.
What are blogs not good for?
From the way they are used by most people, it seems blogs are not good for providing purely informative content that is largely independent of a specific context and derives its authority from an institution (in contrast to an individual). Examples for such writings would be legal texts, official documents, instruction manuals and - to a certain extent - press releases. Who the author is and in what context a piece was written (in terms of time, place and social situation) should not be reflected closely by the text, otherwise it cannot serve the purpose its users assign it (resolving a dispute, confirming your identity, figuring out how your toaster works, etc). A blog is also not independent of its individual author, which is precisely what these texts intend to be. Instruction manuals usually don’t credit the writer because they are meant to be used, not read to gain a better understand of who the author is.
Simplifying a whole lot, blogs are the direct opposite of these text types. Not only are they usually not meant to be “used” in any way, but they also tend to be more argumentative than informative and more subjective than universally objective. Just compare an entry on Wikipedia with any random blog post and check how often the personal pronoun “I” shows up - it’s usually 0 vs. a lot. The author of an encyclopedia entry will seek to stay as far “behind the scenes” as possible, because the article should not be about him, but about the topic described.
So what are blogs good for, then? From what I’ve seen, they primarily serve a social function. They allow me to meet Debbie Weil, Robert Scoble and Jonathan Schwartz in their own virtual living-room, furnished to their own individual taste, while I’m sitting right here in my office at the University of Duesseldorf. The fact that I can not only read what they have to say but actually respond and have a conversation with them is something that was unimaginable before the advent of blogging. There’s just one little catch: I have to know who I’m talking to. Because if I don’t, this miracle of communication unconstrained by time and space disappears in a big puff of smoke, as there is simply no level of trust, depth or relationship that can grow between me and an anonymous voice. Which is fine if the text in question is purely informative or instructional, but not if it’s supposed to tell me who the writer is, in his own language.
Now, you could argue that this is not the case with a ghostwritten blog - it has an author after all, just that he’s not the person under whose name things are published. True, but the problem remains that if people become aware of the disparity, they will probably find it unacceptable. Keep in mind that on the net authorship can never be validated in the same way that it is possible in person, and therefore any form of deception is likely to irreparably damage trust once it is discovered. And if that happens, you’re going to wish you’d never started a blog at all.
“But it works for ghostwritten speeches!â€, you might contend. Yes, but do those really serve a social function? Do they necessarily reflect beliefs, goals and ideas which belong to the individual delivering the speech? Are they directed at individual people or crowds?
Blogs aren’t (good) megaphones, they’re fireside chats. And who you’re chatting with is at least as important as what they have to say.
I also disagree with you that Ghost Blogs are bad. Think SEO - if your blog posts contains keywords that have been optimized for your site and if you continuoosly post content, this (according to SEO “experts”) will place you high in the search rankings which will drive traffic to your site. I agree that it’s best when the blog has a personal voice but there are other objectives to business blogging.
