ChasNote

Techdirt has a great post on a recent spat between GM and The NY Times that began with an allegedly anti-GM column by Tom Friedman.

“Friedman apparently wrote a piece blasting GM. We’d link to it here, but, of course, the NY Times is working hard to keep their best columnists out of the discussion. In fact, they apparently want them so far out of the discussion that they won’t let those disparaged by those columnists respond in kind via the traditional ‘letters to the editor.’ GM apparently wrote a 490 word response to the Friedman piece, and submitted it to the NY Times, who rejected it as being ‘too long’ …. Finally, the NY Times demanded they take out the word ‘rubbish’ in describing Friedman’s arguments. So, what does GM do in response? They post the entire story to their own blog, which is probably going to get a lot more traffic and attention than the NY Times’ ‘letters to the editor’ would have gotten…. trying to limit a response to an attack column in a world where anyone can post online seems somewhat pointless — and, as in this case, pretty much guaranteed to have the opposite effect.”

If you want to read GM’s side of the story, it’s available without a password at GM’s blog, including the entire email exchange between the NY Times editors and GM’s communications department.

Kind of a coming-of-age moment for blogs, eh? There’s been so much fearful talk in the past 2 years about them crazy, malicious bloggers and the threat they pose to your brand. Now we have one of the world’s largest corporations recognizing blogs as a powerful platform for setting the record straight and publishing the facts or opinions that alternate media sources aren’t covering on their own. Go, free press!