University presidents blogging

In this age of digital public exposure, I've been thinking (and blogging) that parents will soon need to teach their kids spin control – or at least have family discussions about it. It appears public figures are already blogging for that reason. "While some colleges and their presidents have seen their reputations shredded on student blogs, and others have tried to limit what students and faculty members may say online, about a dozen or so presidents, like Dr. [Patricia] McGuire [of Trinity University], are vaulting the digital and generational divide and starting their own blogs," the New York Times reports. Another example the Times gives is Towsen University Robert Caret, who has "Bob's Blog." But he doesn't seem to approach his blogging quite the way his students would. An assistant types in his posts, while he dictates; and he didn't respond to one comment a student posted, he just forwarded it to a provost. The questions occur: Does he get it? And if he doesn't, why blog? As for teens, here's what social-media researcher Danah Boyd told me in our book, MySpace Unraveled: "Kids are getting all these messages saying, 'Expose, expose, expose.' If you don't, your friends will expose you. We're all living in a superpublic environment, getting the message that you have more power if you expose yourself than if someone else exposes you."