Human Resource Management, January/February 2010, Vol. 49, No. 1, Pp. 1–2 © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20330 T he focus of my note for this issue is on new media and the role that HR may play in this world. I was inspired by one of this issue’s ar- ticles on employee blogging, which addresses one new form of communication that can be used in organizations, not just by managers but by any worker. I use the term new media to refer to communications via the Internet or other types of electronic services. This may include social networks, blogging, the latest Twitter mania, e-mail, text messag- ing, or other ways to post information and communicate. One could argue that all of our articles in this issue deal with the topic of communica- tions in some way. One study, for example, addresses managers and how they think they can influence stock price. From the other papers, we can also derive that the effective- ness of any link in an organization is a func- tion of communications in some way. This includes managing communciations with different types of employees (for example, contingent works and MBA interns as studied in this issue’s articles) as well as cross-cultural challenges and work-family conflicts. In all of these situations, we deal with the ongoing work of listening, hearing, and communicat- ing with employees via formal or informal HR practices, leader interactions, or peer transactions. And, as the world of new media continues to emerge, we take the topic of communications to a new level. Commu- nication now involves faster connections and different platforms for writing, speaking, and presenting information in multimedia formats. Thus, the article on the ethicality of blogs addresses a topic that allows us to consider both the opportunities and the dilemmas as- sociated with new media for HR. New media presents an opportunity for employees to express themselves and have voice in a new way, meaning that new media may benefit employee morale. These forms of commu- nication bring with them the risk, however, that we may hear or see things we would rather not have discussed, particularly in public. The question then becomes: “Do we risk using the new media processes and hope the positive outweighs the negative?” This may be a new place for courage to play out in organizations. Leaders, managers, and HR need to be courageous and take a leap of faith that they will benefit from new media if they plunge into the process. Let me provide you with an example from an effort we launched with the journal’s edito- rial board and reviewers. We recently sent out a Web-based survey to our contacts at the journal and members of the social network (www.hrmthejournal .com). We asked questions about journals in general; however, we knew that the audience would write back about our specific journal— simply because I opened up the conversation. We also understood that we would get some positive and negative feedback about our editorial process, not because we specifically asked, but because we thought our journal’s processes may be a topic that would be on EDITOR-IN-CHIEF’S NOTE: NEW MEDIA: OPPORTUNITY OR CURSE FOR HR? THERESA M. WELBOURNE