Bernhard has beaten me to the bar with his Brew Blog post which covers most of what I was going to say.

There’s one more thing that interests me though and that’s how Miller is using it “power to publish” to get ahead of the competition.

Increasingly the point of differentiation for brands online is going to be the original stories they can tell and content they can produce. That might take the form of conversational microsites or fully-blow online contract publishing.

The Miller model is different as this paragraph from the WSJ makes clear:

Brew Blog is the brainchild of Paul Pendergrass and Pete Marino,
communications consultants for Miller who wanted the brewer to have
more influence over what’s covered in the industry. In 2006, they
recruited Mr. Arndorfer from Advertising Age and told him to cover the
sector like a beat reporter would.

Except a beat reporter would normally profess some level of objectivity or at the very least no outright allegiance to one major brand. Brew Blog model, owned by Miller, surely can’t make those claims and while it does break news about the competition it also creates further problems for anyone hoping to find transparency in “news” online.

- Matthew