Categories: OLD Media Moves

Ford Motor courts bloggers

Josh Cable of IndustryWeek writes about a recent conference that Ford Motor Co. held for journalists included a number of unusual bloggers.

Cable writes, “For three days, Ford executives, engineers and communications staffers rubbed elbows with a ragtag group of self-proclaimed ‘social media geeks’ from all walks of life, armed with iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, BlackBerrys and Droids. They represented social media sites with handles like connectwithyourteens.net, seejanefly.com (custom travel guides and tips for women), earth911.com (an environmental-services site for consumers and businesses) and sugarjonesblog.com (‘short and sweet, sometimes bitter’).

“This was not your grandfather’s gathering of the ‘automotive press.’

“For every ‘traditional’ automotive journalist in attendance, there was at least one ‘Enviro Dad‘ (a Toronto-based media consultant, blogger and former protégé of Al Gore) or ‘New York Mom‘ (a New York City-based mother, dance choreographer and ‘social media creative’).”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.