The Naked Blogger: Authentic and Transparent

Adam Tinworth
Adam Tinworth

I must admit that I’ve never been a great fan of the Blog Herald. All too often it felt like a bunch of fanboys running what purported to be a news blog. To me, it failed to live up to its aim of being a news source for the blogging world. However, since the blog’s purchase, a whole bunch of new writers have arrived.

One post, by new author Liz Strauss, stuck a chord:

Authenticity and transparency are the reason I love blogging. They are what connected me. They make strong, brave, and vulnerable. They are the power of the truth. Nothing can undercut, overwrite, argue down what I say, if I write in my own authentic, transparent voice from the truth I know. I am safe and I am able to add something valuable.

She’s right. These two ideas are what make blogging so powerful – and why it’s hard for journalists to become good bloggers sometimes, as we’re trained to take ourselves and our processes out of what we write.

Which is why the observation about two-faced reactions to Le Web 3 made by Tom and Nicole puzzles me so much. Says Nicole:

It is not new, but it amazes me to see the amount of people being two faced.

As for example people telling you �you voiced exactly how I fell and I will never talk to him again� (being far over the top on this) and then suddenly when writing their own posts or giving comments they state that everything was great, wonderful and no problems to be seen?

Tom points out that people will notice, and he’s absolutely right. The web is a transparent medium, where all your comments and posts are easily collated and compared. People will read around a subject and will make comparisons.

So why on earth do it? Are these people really savvy enough to be reading blogs discussion the cutting edge of social media, without being savvy enough to know that unexplained contradictory positions will come around and bit them on the bum?

Perhaps this is just the result of a transitionary stage, with people seeing the possibilities of social media, without really understanding the full and total implications. If that’s true, we’re in for some very red faces in the blogosphere in the years to come.

Technorati Tags: [blog herald](http://www.technorati.com/tag/blog herald), blogging, blogs, honesty, leweb3, transparency

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Adam is a lecturer, trainer and writer. He's been a blogger for over 20 years, and a journalist for more than 30. He lectures on audience strategy and engagement at City, University of London.

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