from the other side

When I pick up my dry cleaning and scan the groups of shirts tied together on the carousel while I wait, I wonder about the owners of each bunch of clothing. In this town most of them are light blue or white shirts worn for the government or legal employee, but occasionally there'll be a bunch that are just stripes, or some really fabulous party gurl shirts. Who owns which bunch, and what do they do for a living?

The new job definitely has my mind working, with all my former skills and classwork put to use. It really is a good fit for me. I'm writing, analyzing rhetoric, devising social marketing plans, building clear messages and studying new and interesting topics. It even involves looking at activist blogs, and it's interesting being on the other side of that technology striving to understand the opposite side of a particular issue, rather than from the punditry/activist side of an issue. While this blog has remained mainly a journal over the years, I've certainly expressed my opinions on particular political and social topics, but now I have to think and work as the person on the other side of issues written about on blogs.

Does the organization respond to each and every blog in the comments section, or through its press releases and website? Will responding to an activist blog's statements elevate the rhetoric and allow a new platform for opposing views, or will a statement successfully rebut an argument? From the other side, I think it will at least be useful to compile a list of the various stakeholders writing about a particular issue, and what arguments and beliefs they are putting forward in their blogs whether they are right or wrong. At the very least blogging is a resource to understand a wide variety of opinions and feelings about a particular issue. Of course there are other channels that an activist or pundit is using to broadcast their position and those must be considered as well.