"I don't think you really understand what a blog is..."

So, I work at a PR firm. Evidently some of the publicists recently discovered these nifty little things called blogs. Quite frankly, I think they discovered them about two weeks ago when NY Magazine did an expose on the topic, but it might have even been a few days later when Slate.com "outed" blogs, stating their opinion that the popularity of blogs has indeed peaked. Either way...

Since I stole the office's copy of NY Mag for my own personal use, yesterday one of the other publicists thought my punishment should be to make her a list of political blogs for her to pitch a story to. I felt horrible as I've been meaning to bring it back, so I got a hold of the article and made such a list. The article she was pitching was posted on the internet yesterday morning, meaning that it was already too late to get proper coverage. It had been up too long by the time she was going to pitch it. This morning I checked all the blogs she pitched to and informed her that none of them had picked it up.

Now, let me back up before I get to the part where she tells me that I don't really understand what a blog is.

Before pitching the article yesterday, her, me and another of our colleagues had a discussion on the effectiveness of blogs and the exposure they can or might offer.

I sided with the argument that the exposure was invaluable; that people are making millions of dollars off of blogs and that some get more eyes than many print media outlets could ever dream of.

Our colleague said that I am younger than her, so I might know better than her (true, true), but she thinks it might be a bad idea to post one of our client's articles on a blog because of what the moderator and/or readers might say about it.

The girl with the account in question opted to pitch the article last night. Again, way too late to get it attention as it was originally posted yesterday morning.

So, anyway, I went into her office and told her that none of the blogs picked it up. I told her it might be wise to give blogs the heads up the night before the article in question is posted, so that the moderators can feel that they're "breaking the news," as this is how bloggers like to do things.

She argued that she couldn't do it the night before because she just received word of her client's article yesterday and she pitched it yesterday. Then she said it: "Well, I don't think you really understand what a blog is... If you don't know how blogs work, they usually link to other articles."

"Um yeah, I understand that, but they like to do so in a timely manner..." I refuted.

She got offended, clearly thinking that I was saying she wasn't working fast enough. Nope, not my point at all. In reality, what I was trying to do was suggest a better way to tap into this medium. That? Get the article and its link the day before.

"I'm not going to argue with you on this." She added.

Okay. That's probaby in your best interest because I'm pretty much right, and, well..."


Update: She has since apologized and asked for my advice. Good girl.