Is Kaiser Hijacking the Blogosphere?

An anonymous blogger with the well-chosen nom-de-plum of Gadfly writes a crusading blog about Kaiser issues (Kaiser Permanente - Corporate Ethics). I have written a number of notes here about Kaiser's IT challenges and Gadfly has commented in response to a couple of them. He recently posted a note entitled Kaiser's Blogger Relations Strategy, an excerpt from which I copy below (boldface emphasis mine):

Over the last week I've toured the health care blogosphere to express my concerns about the recent Healthcare Blogging Summit. My chief concern was that the Summit reinforced the credibility of PR bloggers and other professionals (physicians, lawyers, consultants, etc.) who already enjoy the advantage of being backed by corporate resources and favored by the mainstream media - while helping to further marginalize and suppress bloggers who are trying to criticize corporate heavyweights....Kaiser is very interested in working with bloggers and may even deploy its own public facing blog in the future. As a result, they are very interested in working with bloggers to communicate their position on the Deal e-mail and other issues....This is part of my complaint: Kaiser is trying to hijack the platform for communication and block or swamp criticism instead of addressing it. Kaiser can throw money and hordes of employees at this endeavor: the people with the technical skills and willingness to put in herculean amounts of unpaid work to hold onto a place for alternative points of view are very, very few. Kaiser already gets to push their story through canned news. They should leave the blogosphere alone.

Gadfly raises a number of very interesting points about blogs in general and "corporate blogs" in particular that I want to respond to here:

• First of all, I believe that "corporate Kaiser" is entitled the same advocacy and communication opportunities in the blogosphere as any other party, whether functioning in an individual capacity as a Kaiser employee or in some sort of orchestrated corporate fashion. The blogosphere need to function as a marketplace for the exchange of ideas with a spirited give-and-take. As far as I'm concerned, come one, come all.
• To the extent possible, I prefer to know the identity of bloggers, which is useful to better understand and assess their positions. This applies equally to both individual and corporate bloggers. However, I understand and respect Gadfly's need to remain anonymous and understand that he is vulnerable to retaliation if he is, in fact, functioning inside the Kaiser organization.
• With regard to the corporate spin that the official Kaiser organization may be mounting in the blogosphere, I believe that this is the supreme complement that can be paid. The fact that this enormous and powerful organization even bothers to pay attention to the rantings of various bloggers across the country is evidence that these voices are being heard.
• In my humble opinion, "healthcare corporate blogs" do not have much of a chance of influencing enlightened readers. They frequently lack all of the very elements that make blogs successful including creativity, authenticity, and humor. They tend to be overseen, directly or indirectly, by multiple layers of hospital bureaucracy. Healthcare bureaucrats are inherently cautious and always looking over their shoulders in order to hold to the party line. The result tends to be boring pap.
• This is not to say that corporate blogs will lack readers. There will always be an ample supply of healthcare aparchiks who will be anxious to discuss how "Old Charlie really hit the target in his blog yesterday" when participating in various hospital committee meetings. Everyone else around the table will nod wisely in accord while rapping on the table.

Comments

[gadfly]

Thank you for taking the time to think about these issues. I'd like to clarify my main objection to corporate influence in the blogosphere is that they can't seem to participate without putting a PR department, lawyers, a clickfarm in India, and 9000 cannons behind it. Corporate participation soon becomes the marginalization and suppression of individual bloggers.

Interestingly, emerging blogger institutions, such as the Media Bloggers Association, seem to be internalizing the corporate point of view. :-/

If you're interested, there's been a turn in the Justen Deal situation. I've written it up and posted a damning email from Kaiser here:
http://corphq.livejournal.com/80506.html