It's a good point, Richard (although to be fair, the commenter did provide a name - whether you think it's a real one or not is another issue).

It's actually not the first time this has happened either, by the way. There was a similar incident in the UK (that small, insignificant market) a while back that even made it into print.

I'm interested to know how agencies like yours and ours can be sure it's not going to be one of our interns next?

Forget Dell, what about the reputation of summer interns?! I'm glad that Jarvis took the high road and wished Chris the best, but as a peer I can firmly state that Chris atrociously dropped the ball: with respect to PR technique, technical skill (why not leave your snide comment from an Internet café?) and general common sense. But, to praise Chris, this spurred a lot of healthy conversation and can be forever held up to communications interns everywhere as "what NOT to do."

Companies, and agencies, need to realize that their employees that interact with the blogosphere are 'official spokespeople' for the company. Would an agency put a summer intern on 'The Today Show' to talk about a client? Of course not, but they may not have thought twice when they said,'Hey the intern needs a summer project, how about that blog thing?'

Might it also make sense to arrange some sort of event for Jeff Jarvis and other bloggers? While it might not be feasible to fly them out to India, what if they could be given the opportunity to spend a day as a Dell representative? In addition a "favored media" access of an exclusive interview, might it also be worth challenging them to, as it were, walk a mile in somebody else's shoes?

--|PW|--

Richard,

This story identifies the problem with blogs -- and exactly the issue that we discussed in your previous posting regarding Michael Eisner.

In this case, a summer intern's rantings are given virtually the same credibility as an AP reporter.

Within hours of the post, CEOs were emailed, reputations were soured, and even you are now in the mix. All from the whimsical comments of a 20 year old kid.

This is just a 'harmless' example -- but I am sure that Internet Wire (Market Wire) knows how painful it can be if the wrong person has access to the public news domain. Blogs have now enabled that -- and this example should frighten all communications professionals. The keys to the kingdom are available to all.

EC,

I love the Dr Z ads—there should be a pr campaign along side to make it even more real

C Span for companies there is an interesting idea!

Hey Josh,

good to see you in the blogosphere. Keep in touch

A Jarvis commenter cites the concept of "The Strategic Corporal", a near-entry-level employee who can make a real strategic impact -- not the kind you hear about in employee empowerment happytalk, but the kind that reverberates around the world.

Looks like today's businesses could use that concept even more than today's armies.

Hi Richard,

I'm curious on your take of GCI's response?

It seems a bit like "we're kinda sorry, but you know, interns will be interns."

Perhaps GCI is taking a hard look at its policies for the blogosphere, but shouldn't they have been more explicit in how they will handle queries like this in the future?

Hope all is well with you and your Dad.

You say: "First, the comment is personal, not substantive. Jarvis is alleged to not have a life and is called a worm."

I thought the whole promise of the blogosphere was its admitted (and cherished) bias (opposed to MSM's pretend non-bias). Of course the comment is personal. The kid was sifting through spam trying to find a relevant post on his client (we call that blog monitoring, right), probably at 7:30 a.m. before the office opened because the interns are the only ones you can get to do media monitoring before the Senior VPs are out of bed, and all he found about Dell was gripe after gripe from Jeff. He did the intern equivalent of going postal without actually going postal. I'm not saying it's right, but don't pretend it couldn't happen inside of your doors.

If I were to counsel the young intern on how to gain a foothold in the blogosphere and become an opinion maker like Jeff Jarvis, I wouldn't change anything except for telling him to start his own blog and tutoring him a little on grammar.

Chris: "In this case, a summer intern's rantings are given virtually the same credibility as an AP reporter."

And that's the beauty of what we do here, isn't it? Except--OH WAIT!--Jeff and everyone else has a chance to respond instantly in this environment. It's a lot more difficult talk to the subjects of an AP story that's released on the wire.

As David Weinberger has said, the Internet is self-correcting. It also has a long memory. Who's a worm and who's not a worm will be sorted out-- but not until after this message from our sponsors....

Blaming a Summer Intern is a complete cop out (and may not even be the reality of what took place). Management must train and guide people and take full responsibility for the actions of any staff member. In the post on my blog I stated that senior people need to be the ones blogging. I'm sorry this explanation is not sufficient.

AS,

Easy to throw stones. I would hope this would not happen at Edelman but now ensuring our policies are even more clear

First JS thanks for finding hole in our system of posting comments. We check every weekday morning and yours came on friday pm. We will now check each day in morning and evening

As to your main message I respectfully disagree.
Yes blogging is personal but there can be no real advantage in name calling or personal slurs.
I would prefer a passionate and substantive retort to jarvis, not simply a diatribe

David,

I could not agree more. We have to establish rules then train our young practitioners.

Leave the poor kid alone. We'd all be hard pressed to find a total lack of mistakes in our junior years. I'm sure we all have stories.

Jeremy Pepper: "Leave the poor kid alone. We'd all be hard pressed to find a total lack of mistakes in our junior years."

That's not an excuse to leave the poor kid alone. When we made mistakes as kids, if our parents were any good they didn't 'leave us alone'.

If the intern wants to learn from his mistake, he should set up a short 'crisis' blog of his own, and explain his mistake and what he learned from it. He'd almost certainly find himself not only forgiven, but praised. We all love people who've seen the light.

Well, quite a story here...took me a while to track all the events...
What really touches me is the disrespect expressed to a poor customer, trying to get some attention and get his problems solved...Is that too much to ask? Is it being a worm to try to get a satisfactory service when you already had paid for it? and come on...being honest...successful companies depend on this...
I’ve worked too long for world wide companies which seem NOT TO CARE A BIT about customer satisfaction; and I literally had to calm down overwormed-crying customers whom were absolutely right but had to take it the way it was “Company Policy” they told us to say...And I never had to use “Actually...” as much as I used it on those “non-customer-service days”...
So...I think it is great to be able to express yourself, and this blogsphere makes it so possible and quick, but I think that GCI as well as Dell have not taken this issue as seriously as they should have...We all are customers, in one way or another, and we all want and DESERVE respect...
They say (or might be thinking...) “It was nothing but a summer intern’s comment...what is the worst that could happen...) Well, here I am, in Argentina, about to get a couple of NON DELL computers...
Best regards...

Jeneane,

With great power comes great responsibility -- and there is no responsibility over blog comments. The real scary thing within the blog space is the possibility for opinion, or just lies, to be treated as fact. I think this is why Michael Eisner thinks there were eventually only be a few reputable blogs.

Because a blog is virtually anonymous -- I could claim to be Bill Gates and mention a very negative comment about Microsoft. That could send the stock crumbling -- affecting millions of peoples lives. The stock wouldn't fall because of a real reason -- just because of a preceived reason. And imagine if a couple of decent terrorist hackers would infiltrate popular blogs -- similar things could happen.

Blogs are a nice venting place for consumers -- and possibly a place for a conversation between companies and their customers or stakeholders. I honestly think that blogs are only hip now because of the name. When people called them bulletin boards in the 90s -- it was so chic.

As a PR professional, blogs are barely media. IF you are interested in guerilla marketing -- blogs are very powerful. But to somehow christen www.Iamsupermedia.blogspot.com as some legitimate media site really degrades the rest of the media -- and our job to communicate to the media.

Andrew, give me a break. A blog is not the golden ticket for everything, and setting up that crisis blog would be the worst thing in the world.

As for making mistakes, yes, we correct them. That's a private thing in any company, and not laundry to air. Not any other agency, but the one agency involved.

Andrew Denny: "If the intern wants to learn from his mistake, he should set up a short 'crisis' blog of his own, and explain his mistake and what he learned from it. He'd almost certainly find himself not only forgiven, but praised. We all love people who've seen the light."

As a PR intern myself I can respect AD's position on the need for an image cleansing by "Chris," but I would disagree fully. The very fact that we are debating whether "intern" is being used as a scapegoat by GCI means "Chris" has little to worry about. Why bring himself into the industry spotlight? I would suggest changing the subject of your proposal from intern to GCI, for it is the company, whose brand is much more important than Chris', who must explain what IT has learned from ITS mistake...if in fact the culprit was an intern.

A strong training program is very important for interns, who should realize that everything they do reflects back on the team managing an account. I was educated thoroughly on this back in the day when I was an intern at Edelman. I can't imagine having thought, even at that age, that it would be okay to say things like that. You're representing your company when you are doing behind the scenes work.

GCI can't completely blame the intern because someone was supervising and instructing the young man. I can't imagine this happening at Edelman. I had an excellent supervisor who was always available to answer all and any questions I had and give me clear instructions.

Perhaps Edelman should share the secrets of their intern training program with agencies with less established training programs. It's unfortunate that this young man made such a mistake.

RD,

We are inviting professors of PR from 20 colleges in the US to our offices in NYC for two day training in new media for this express purpose.