While blog hopping today, I saw a fun post from blogger pal Chelsea at Someday, I’ll Learn. She was recently featured on NBC along with La Jolla Mom during a great segment about the business of blogging. I loved hearing both women weigh in about what’s been successful for their personal brands.
During the piece, it is mentioned that this is “A business that could easily be abused”, asking the viewer, “Can you trust a blogger that is paid to write about a particular toy, or camera, or baby food?” I hear this come up in most articles about professional blogging, and I have a perspective that I don’t often hear discussed. I’ve been a journalist for 16 years, and I ended up transitioning from freelance writing for other publications to spending 100% of my time writing for my own outlets; my blogs are essentially an online magazine that I own and edit. And because I am a journalist, I always chuckle when people tut-tut over bloggers – gasp! – getting paid for their content. These same individuals do not seem to have an issue with a magazine that features an advertiser’s product in their “Best-of” list, or product placement in television shows.
The FTC reasons that magazines and television shows don’t need to make the same type of disclosures as blogs, because the material connection is “Usually clear to the audience” by implication. I might disagree with that point, but I understand that blogs are a new medium, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. But it’s certainly true that bloggers are held to a higher standard in many other ways: For example, recent revisions in the FTC guidelines say that websites must place disclosures prior to any links, in case someone clicks off the page before they read the whole article. And that’s all well and good – but think about the last time you watched TV. For example, one of my favorite shows is The Voice, and Starbucks is one of their sponsors; you will see the judges drinking Starbucks in almost every episode. Does Adam Levine stand up at the beginning of the show and say, “Starbucks is paying advertising fees and provided me with this free cup of coffee?” No. You do see sponsor ad spots dotted through the commercial breaks – but what if you changed the channel before the ad came on? Would you then have been mislead into thinking that Adam Levine just buys a ton of Starbucks on his own? What about diet commercials the the back of magazines with the disclaimer in the fine print – are they responsible if the reader stops paying attention halfway through and doesn’t read the disclaimer in tiny font at the very bottom of the page?
Don’t misunderstand, I am happy and want to disclose my connection with all clients – I even joke about it, with posts where I am provided with big money compensation like mustard samples. I would just like to see my print and television colleagues be equally transparent in their work with clients, especially since they reach a much larger audience than I do. Journalism as a whole continues to take a nosedive in quality, with reporters so desperate to create a story that they publish ludicrous, unverified material as facts in an attempt to get a “Scoop” – take, for example the recent blunder of a news program reading out absurd fake names of Asiana Flight 214 pilots. I’ve always held journalistic integrity in the highest regard and at every point in my career, I have been painstaking to research every point and verify the accuracy of quotes, names and claims. When I quite literally put more effort into researching a blog post about biscuits than TV programs do for actual news, that’s a serious problem.
While I may roll my eyes at the grand accusations of bloggers being unethical and dishonest because they got a free pair of socks, it doesn’t unsettle me. There is a reason why I don’t even bother freelancing for print magazines or other traditional media outlets anymore – the future is in the Internet, so I spend that time continuing to build content that benefits my own brand. I’m actually stunned that so many of my print colleagues haven’t done this themselves; media outlets are only shooting themselves in the foot by crying foul about blogs while continuing to ignore their own sinking ship.
How do you feel about advertising in the media?
