Blogging ethics and the effect of newspaper decline (updated)
Update: After posting this, I received comments from the owners of a couple of the blogs I referenced, one of whom felt like I was not characterizing her site fairly (mostly because I mistakenly attributed the wrong quote to her, which has been corrected). I want to point out that I am using the blogs in this post as examples of those who are doing this the right way and should be recognized. Unfortunately, for every one of the good ones, there are 10 with the wrong motives. Thanks to Liz Gumbinner of Cool Mom Picks for pointing out my mistake.
If I had a nickel for every complaint I hear about a newspaper, whether it be ours or another, I would have a ton of nickels (ton=2,000, 2,000 x 0.05=100) I would have $100.
As we have discussed here before, millions of people are taking their loyalties elsewhere, and the biggest winners in that trend have been bloggers. National blogs like The Huffington Post and Deadspin get millions of hits A DAY, and even local niche blogs like Kentucky Sports Radio are in the hundreds of thousands of views daily and consistently scoop mainstream news outlets like the Lexington Herald-Leader and WKYT-TV, particularly on UK recruiting info.
Those are news blogs with an entertainment factor. There is another camp of blogs that offer no news value, but rather are written in more of a journal style. Even though this blog is affiliated with a newspaper, I would lump myself in that group as well. You don’t come here to get breaking news — you are interested in hearing opinions, reading stories and clicking links that I have found fascinating.
One of the sub-categories of the journal-type blog is the Mommy blog, which is just what you think it is — mothers posting their motherly experiences online for other mothers to read. They often have very creative names like The Mommy Blog and The Mommy Blogger and Mommy Blog. Some get even nichier (made that up), like Cool Mom Picks, which is a mom that reviews mom stuff and Mom-101, who is sometimes crass and admits she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
In this article, the mom who runs MomDot.com says that companies constantly send her free products and in exchange expect her to review them favorably. She refuses, but she also said that there are many other mommy bloggers who start their sites solely for the free stuff. As a result, there is a significant bias in these reviews that mothers around the world are trusting for their purchases.
You obviously know where I’m going with this. Many of those who claim to be sick of the mainstream media really don’t understand the importance of what the French called the Fourth Estate. Newspapers and journalists have to report to their owners and associations and have to cite their sources and do their own interviews and not libel and use their own names in the bylines and are policed in a way so far beyond what blogs and bloggers are, it’s not even comparable.
All in the name of ethics.
Let’s make a parallel. If I got a package tomorrow that had a cake in it, and the person who sent me the cake wanted me to review the bakery it came from, I could not do it. If I took the cake home, invited a bunch of friends over to hang out and eat the cake, then wrote a review of the bakery, I would be in such violation of journalism ethics that I would be punished at work. Just a couple months ago, after an interview with some Alltech representatives, they gave me a gift basket with a bunch of stuff in it (can’t remember all of it, but I do remember there was a four-pack of Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, which I love) but I couldn’t keep any of it. I gave it all away. (For the record, the girl who gave the stuff to me was a college friend and former college paper co-worker, and she was just being nice — not at all trying to bribe me. Still couldn’t keep it, but just wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to make Alltech look bad.)
So let’s say I broke that rule a couple of times and really compromised our paper’s ethics. I would most likely be fired — I would hope so anyway. But what about this blog? I set it up, and nobody in the company knows the password, so I would be free to keep writing about whatever I want here without fear of censorship or discipline. See where that can become a slippery slope?
I’m not demonizing blogs at all — I own one, write for another, and read several every day — but I in no way think that bloggers could be trusted with the responsibility of being the fourth estate. With between 100-200 million blogs on the Internet, depending on who you ask, it would be impossible to find the trustworthy blogs and make sure they rise to the top or find the libelous blogs and squash them. The mommy blog article is just another example of that fact. So are scumbags like Perez Hilton (who doesn’t deserve a link here) and other smear writers.
So next time you think about shunning newspapers altogether, make sure you think about the consequences. You can disagree with them all you want — by all means, it’s what makes us better — but remember that they are working for you. There are far too many people on the Internet working for themselves.
Tyler Young 
Journalistic ethics? You’ve got to be kidding me; there’s no longer anything of that nature in the MSM.
I’ve written at least five emails today telling PR folks that I will not accept anything to write a favorable review, or any review at all. If I use something and love it, think others would benefit from it, or believe that something needs to be in more hands, I’ll write about it in the course of my regular writing, in the context of my life.
I can’t stand all the requests. Honestly. Perhaps the only reason I have readers despite a lame name is because I’ve never compromised my integrity.
For the record, I was the first to use “The Mommy Blog.” I thought it was stupid at the time, but I needed to open that account and I couldn’t until I’d named it. I also created “The Grandma Blog” that day, but it hasn’t caught on.
I’m stuck with the name, because it has been part of my brand since 2002. I had no idea it would become a genre, or even that anyone else would read it. It really might as well be “The Cell Phone Blog” or “The Kleenex Blog.” And I can’t prevent anyone else using it unless I want to lawyer up. Which is so much fun, and so affordable for a mother and a blogger. 🙂
Great post – hit a few nails right on the head.
Wow. Where to begin with the corrections.
First of all, as one of the two publishers of Cool Mom Picks, you entirely misquote me and mischaracterize my website when you assert that I said “companies constantly send [me] free products and in exchange expect [me] to review them favorably.”
Where did I say that? Those words have never once come out of my mouth, not to CNN and not to anyone. Because it’s simply not true.
We operate much like a magazine, recommending items we see at trade shows (we attend on our own dime), on showroom visits, press tours, in stores, and occasionally through PR. We give away the vast (as in vast) majority of the items we receive for review to our readers at our own cost. It’s all clearly spelled out on our website and has been since we started operating 3 years ago long before there were “mommy review blogs” and long before PR wanted anything to do with us.
This model is in part the reason we’ve gained such trust with our 100,000+ monthly readers and why we believe it’s possible be successful without operating a quid pro quo product review website. It’s also why I agree with much of your assessment in principle, and why I was in part responsible for the Blog with Integrity campaign.
I would greatly appreciate a strong correction of these disparaging statements. Journalistic ethics and all. Feel free to email me if something about it is unclear.
By the way, I also write the sometimes crass Mom-101 on which I don’t do product reviews at all.
Liz Gumbinner is right, it was the MomDot.com founder, not her, who said she is bombarded by PR reps. That has been corrected.
In case it’s unclear, I am referencing these sites because of their integrity, not as violators.
Thanks Tyler, much appreciated.
I think however what’s tough with this analogy is that bloggers are not journalists. Some are simply passionate consumers. Some operate more like magazine editors than newspaper journalists – if you review beauty products, you call all your contacts and have them send over the sparkly nailpolish du jour for comparison sake. If you review movies, you accept free screeners from the studios. If you review books you have stacks of them on your bookshelf.
So not all bloggers who receive items for review are ethically compromised.
By the way, love you for not linking Perez.
I agree that bloggers are not journalists, and you’re right about the exceptions to the “free stuff” rule. I think the point of the post (in which I obviously butchered clarity) is that:
1. Bloggers should be held to an ethical standard, which is what you are working toward, and I am very interested in following your progress in that venture.
and even more to the point
2. Those people who think the mainstream media (see poster #1) should be excommunicated and news left to the people have to realize that because universal standards for ethics is impossible on the Internet, there will never be a place for individuals to bring us news. There have to be checks and balances out there that hold reporters responsible for what they write or say, or we’ll never know who to trust.
Thank you for keeping me in check, as well, and good luck with your campaign.
Glad we can hate Perez together.
I don’t really think that the MSM should be “excommunicated and news left to the people.” That wouldn’t work very well, both due to a lack of resources and a lack of standardized ethics among the “citizen journalists.”
That being said, the MSM is no bastion of “journalistic ethics.” Few, if any of the “infotainment” outlets that pass themselves off as news possess anything resembling ethics at all. A few people within these outlets, like yourself, my possess such ethics but you and they aren’t normally the ones setting policy for the outlet, nor are you the editors.
I see what you mean, I maybe shouldn’t have used the term Mainstream Media since that often is taken to mean the elite media as Chomsky described them or the “infotainment” media as you describe them. I meant it as the traditional media — local newspapers, television and radio — the majority of which, in my opinion, are firm in their ethics.
There’s no question that corruption and deception are problems in journalism — any other profession as well — but I don’t know that it is as rampant as some of the critics believe.
By the way, checked out your site after your second comment. Interesting stuff — don’t necessarily agree with all of it — but it’s passionate and supported with facts nonetheless. Thanks for stopping by.
Yes, I have to admit that there’s a huge difference between the MSM or Elite Media and the local newspapers – or even local television news. The local outlets do seem to have a much better track record for ethics.
Thanks for your compliment of my blog. One thing – which fits in with this article – I always tell people though; my blog is, at kindest, OpEd. It’s not news, though I think I back up my opinion with more primary sources than many other such blogs choose to do.