Kanye Admits Ghostwriters Feed His Blog
This week Kanye West made a stir in the news, but not for the usual reasons. It wasn’t his latest rant over an award or a scuffle with the paparazzi that got the PR world buzzing (although that was in the news too), but his admission that his popular blog KanyeUniversity.com is written for him by two employees.
Kanye’s blog is one of the most popular music blogs online, its constantly updated, and feels just like its coming straight from him. Its full of the things we know he loves: fashion, design, travel, architecture. Now, if posts like his classic Bonnaroo rant from last summer are coming from his staff, that’s not cool. But since Kanye didn’t get into details about the blog in the brief chat he had with New York Magazine at the Metropolitan Opera’s 125th Anniversary Gala, we don’t know when these employees took over his blogging responsibilities. Honestly, it doesn’t bother me that he has staff to handle this for him, especially since most of the posts are so general, like fashion photos and clips of musical performances.
At companies large and small every day, employees write everything from letters to speeches on behalf of their bosses. Its understood that busy executives don’t have time to handle all those tasks on their own, and as a PR professional I don’t think it compromises my integrity to write something for someone else, as long as it has their approval. According to the interview, Kanye’s staff emails him what they find from sources he recommends, and he signs off on it. With his crazy music-fashion-social schedule, I can’t think of many people more in need of that kind of help.
Ghostwriting has been around forever—novelists do it, and we all know rappers do to. Ghostblogging is just the newest version of an old idea. I don’t think it was a good idea to deny it early on as he has done in the past, but now that he has admitted it, we can all move on and keep enjoying the blog until the next Kanye episode.
Category: Celeb 2.0, web 2.0
About the Author Lesly Simmons is a freelance writer and interactive communications and events specialist based in San Francisco, California.
See all posts by Lesly Simmons.
Nice piece Lesly!
Nice piece Lesly!
Unclaimed–you should check out the link to the New York Magazine blurb. It has quotes from him, and I noted in the piece that “Kanye’s staff emails him what they find from sources he recommends, and he signs off on it. With his crazy music-fashion-social schedule, I can’t think of many people more in need of that kind of help.” That makes it pretty clear that he's in charge of the approval process!
You should have included Kanye's direct quotes in this post, because you make it seem like Kanye doesn't have a hand in whats being published and thats not true.
He says his two blogging employees bring things to him and he tells them what to post (when it comes to pictures of celebs, clothing, art etc).
I wouldn't doubt that he has someone transcribe his rants verbatim to the blog, but for you to imply that someone as image-conscious as kanye could let his employees blast journalists without his participation is a little….far fetched.
I could have told you that. LOL.