Blog

Real Baking with Rose: General Mills’ First Blog

November 9, 2005

It’s hard to think of an activity older than baking, or a newer activity than blogging. That’s why I’m so excited about the newest blog we’re launching: Real Baking with Rose. It’s a blog about scratch baking by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Rose is not only an expert baker, but she’s also got exactly what I think it takes to be a good blogger—an ability to write, a desire to share stories and an instinct to help people learn.

This is the first blog from the enormous food corporation General Mills, and (so far) they’ve done everything better than I could have hoped, especially for a first foray.

The blog is sponsored by Gold Medal flour, but, having been around for conversations between General Mills and Rose, I’ve been impressed by the total hands-off nature of the sponsorship. When Rose asked if she ought to add Gold Medal flour to her “sites i like” section, General Mills immediately said, of course not, unless you like the site—that’s so refreshing! General Mills’ awareness of the line between editorial and advertising was sharper than at some publications where I’ve worked *cough*VarietyLATimes*cough* and is a nice change from some of the blunders in corporate blogging we’ve seen elsewhere.

For Rose, blogging is a shift from the book writing she’s been doing, so we’ve been giving advice and training in addition to our technical and design work on the blog. We’re also setting up a mailing list and will be doing some site promotion.

Not only is this going to turn out to be a popular blog on a hot (get it?) topic—the Washington Post has already written about it—but I’m going to get many new recipes for brownies and cookies. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Posted by Travis Smith at 10:54 AM