Thanks,
James Rowley

One of my sucessors had an experience that made him less unclear in his opinion. He had been raised in the LDS church. But he went far astray as a teenager and ended up an alcoholic who needed several weeks of inpatient rehab to get back on his feet, which he did. Along this life’s path he married a woman, a fellow rebel from an Islamic country with an extremely attractive figure. She visited our ward activities and allowed their children to attend primary, but she did not gain a religious conviction and did not get baptized.

Joe (not his real name) was a recent graduate from the singles ward, without honors. He got into a quarrel with fellow singles ward dishonorable graduate Bob (not his real name) over a dating relationship with a girl that Bob supposedly “stole” from Joe. In order to get even, Joe took some digital pictures of the EQP’s wife in her typical skimpy summer clothing at a quorum picnic on a hot day and electronically undressed her. He sent pornographic images of the “naked” EQP’s hot young wife socializing with various quorum members to the entire quorum mailing list and he made it look like the pictures came from Bob.

The Bishop disfellowshipped Bob who denied doing it and he lost his girlfriend and disappeared into inactivity. The police eventually figured out that Joe made and sent the pictures and prosecuted him. He narrowly escaped a jail sentence. This EQP was a close friend and he confided with me how much this angered everyone involved especially his wife; who already had issues with modesty having been raised wearing a burka and thought she had found the right nitch in expressing her physical self without going too far. She felt like she could never come to a Mormon gathering again as long as she lived. He asked me what I thought he should do to Joe. I explained the old principle of Blood Atonement and volunteered to execute this punishment, which made him laugh. We also considered Biblical flogging. Needless to say, the quorum E-mail was shut down for a few years without protest from me. (But it is back up again.)

I’d say to be very careful how you use these tools. The potential for good and for evil is great.

However, the real debate PR right now is what you do beyond tracking. Some organizations don’t respond at all; some respond only to make factual corrections [which seems to be the Church's policy]; some designate staff to interact with blog/social network communities and do so in above the board way; some spam bloggers with pitches; some create fake identities and use them to make comments. Those who engage in that last approach are invariably outed and (justly) derided.

Not really. I’m pretty sure its part of recent trends in PR. I practically certain that such people exist for large corporations like Microsoft, Apple, and other large computer firms, as well as very forward-looking firms, have employees with this job description.

If you really like reading blogs, it might be a fun job to have.