Companies resorting to blogs to break news ahead of media

Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times writes about how some companies are breaking news about themselves, such as layoffs, on corporate blogs instead of allowing the business media to control the message.

Miller writes, “Unlike more traditional firms, many of today’s Web companies were built on the mission of creating transparency for users. Executives have lived that mission, blogging about company successes. Now that bad times are coming, some of them feel the need to make that public, too. A blog post also comes across as more heartfelt than a press release with canned quotations.

“Steven A. Carpenter, chief executive of a two-year-old investing advice site, Cake Financial, had blogged about the company’s new weekly video show and its move to new quarters in San Francisco. On Oct. 19, the night before he laid off 30 percent of his employees, he wrote a post about the cutbacks.

“The next morning, he met with the six employees he was letting go. Afterward, he clicked the button to publish his post about the ‘extremely sad day for all of us who have to say goodbye to a group of great people.'”

Read more here.