Is blogging killing planning?

Richard Huntington has been provoked to ask this question ‘Is blogging killing planning?’ As more and more planners start blogs some elder statesmen of planning have begun to question the validity of the learning experience that blogging provides.

John Lowery of Grey London says:

“One thing I noticed as I hyperleapt from one planning blog to another was an almost total lack of quantification of anything anyone said, at all. To that extent I thought perhaps one could make a case that blogging is killing planning, or at least planning as I know it. The publication of baseless pontification has, it seems, been democratised and offered up as a glamorous new role-model to a whole generation of ‘planners’ who wouldn’t know what a tracking study questionnaire (not to mention an awareness index) was if it bit them in their left hemisphere”.

John Griffiths has similar concerns and believes that the plannershpere has failed to deliver the basic craft skills that planners need.

Richard argues:

“As far as I am concerned, the plannersphere has created a kind of intellectual soup for a global community of brand thinkers to feed off, contribute to and create value from. As such it is and has the power to significantly improve the quality of planners and planning in the brand advice business.”

This whole debate has kicked off some interesting comments.