Bribes to Bloggers?

This articles comes to us courtesy of the February 4, 2007 San Jose Mercury News.

Bloggers' choice: Free agents, or infomercials?
By Scott Kirsner

Just before Christmas, dozens of influential bloggers received an e-mail from Microsoft asking them whether they were interested in receiving a laptop worth about $2,000.

The company was seeking to promote its new Vista operating system, conveniently pre-loaded on the machines, as well as the microprocessor inside, made by AMD. ``While I hope you will blog about your experience with the PC, you don't have to,'' a Microsoft employee wrote in the e-mail. ``Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away on your site, or you can keep it.''

Microsoft's publicity ploy highlighted the growing influence of blogs (as well as other forms of digital self-expression, like audio podcasts and video clips), and a choice now facing bloggers: Do they intend to be a trusted source of insight and information for their readers, or merely the Internet's version of an infomercial?

Though most bloggers don't consider themselves journalists, and lustily criticize what they see as the hidebound ``mainstream media,'' they need to consider adapting some of the ethics and disclosure practices that guide traditional print and broadcast outlets. Ultimately, cultivating those practices may enable them to develop a more transparent and accountable relationship with their readers than the mainstream media have ever had.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, about 12 million Americans maintain blogs, and some of the most popular attract millions of readers. Many blogs, though they may adopt the pose of tomato-wielding outsider, are now every bit as powerful and well-connected as their older media brethren. On the day in January when Apple unveiled its new cell phone, the tech blog Engadget, which is owned by Time Warner, delivered 10 million page views, which translates into an audience of about 5 million readers. For comparison, the monthly print circulation of Wired magazine is about 620,000. (Full disclosure: I've been a contributing writer to Wired since 1997.)

So it shouldn't be surprising that marketers and public relations firms are now trying to sway people who publish blogs, produce podcasts or post video clips on the Internet. Shortly before Microsoft and AMD doled out free laptops, a company that customizes the interior of private jets flew a Lear-load of bloggers and vloggers (video bloggers) to Washington state for wine tastings and a dinner. Last year, in an attempt to counteract negative coverage of its employee health care offerings, Wal-Mart funneled rebuttals to right-leaning bloggers -- some of whom posted the material without noting its source -- and later surreptitiously helped fund a pro-Wal-Mart blog.

And marketing firms like PayPerPost.com, ReviewMe.com and SponsoredReviews.com routinely dangle cash -- as much as $1,000 -- before bloggers willing to write about a particular product.

The issue of blog disclosure -- making it clear to readers where financial relationships exist, and when a substantial freebie has been accepted -- has been igniting debate on the Internet for several years, as well as generating recent coverage in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Earlier last week, at the Always On Media Conference in New York, bloggers Jeff Jarvis and David Weinberger sparred with the chief executive of PayPerPost, Ted Murphy, about the company's tactics. ``It's a corrosive influence,'' Weinberger said of the practice of paying bloggers to review products. ``It makes the conversation less trustworthy.''

Public conversation
As both a blogger and journalist, I like to think that I am completely incorruptible, and zealous about expressing my true opinions or producing fair reporting, even if I've just been handed a free T-shirt by an interview subject (always uncomfortable) or schmoozed by a company's PR rep at a conference where I was paid to speak. But as a reader, I like to know about factors that may have had an impact on what I'm reading: Is the travel writer who is telling me about a fabulous new Fijian resort someone who was given a weeklong stay for free?

Newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets have developed ethical standards to try to ensure that journalists produce work that is as free as possible from improper influence. Blogs, podcasts and online video shows haven't been around as long. But as they've been evolving, they've been engaged in a very public conversation with their readers, listeners and viewers about what those policies and divisions should be. If most news organizations have come up with their guidelines in the confines of their newsrooms or boardrooms, bloggers and other online publishers are doing it in an open-air amphitheater.

When bloggers began receiving the laptops from Microsoft and AMD, blogger Amit Agarwal compiled a list of 25 people, including himself, who'd received one of the computers. Agarwal said he planned to keep it, as did about half of the other bloggers named. The debate on Agarwal's site erupted within hours after he posted the list. ``You just compromised your integrity. Congratulations!'' wrote one reader. Another reader defended Agarwal: ``Amit is not biased in my view, with or without the laptop!''

When blogger Brandon LeBlanc wrote that he was planning to keep the laptop he received from Microsoft, he noted that he doesn't make money from his blog. (LeBlanc earns a living as a tech support contractor.) That was fine with several readers, one of whom wrote, ``Don't return it. You've earned the laptop!'' But in his very first posting about his ``new laptop,'' LeBlanc failed to mention that it was a freebie, prompting one reader to declare simply, ``Blog: compromised.''

Over time, I expect readers will grow suspicious of bloggers who never disembark from the gravy train. All that free stuff can begin to strain the perception of bloggers as free agents operating outside the establishment.

In October, the Washington Post reported that the blog ``Wal-Marting Across America,'' which had chronicled a couple's RV trip across the country and focused on their rosy conversations with Wal-Mart employees and customers, had actually been funded by an advocacy group created and financially supported by the giant retailer. The bloggers neglected to mention that their travel expenses were being paid by the Wal-Mart group until after the Post's story appeared.

One of the site's bloggers was James Thresher, a photographer who worked full-time for the Post and who eventually repaid his share of the trip expenses. This came less than a year after some political bloggers posted material sent to them by a Wal-Mart PR representative -- often word for word -- without mentioning its origins.

Disclosing entanglements
Author David Weinberger, who maintains the technology and business blog Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization, has a disclosure statement linked prominently from his front page that details his work as a marketing consultant. ``When you think that your entanglement with a company might affect what you're writing, you should disclose that entanglement,'' Weinberger says, ``and the entanglement might be that you consult with them, or you've been using their product for 15 years, or you went to school with one of their product managers. If that's affecting your judgment, you should mention it.'' (Among the companies for which Weinberger has consulted are Microsoft and Edelman, a public relations agency that represents both Microsoft and Wal-Mart.)

One of the earliest reported attempts to pay bloggers in exchange for coverage occurred in 2004 when a Vancouver software company called Marqui doled out $800 a month to bloggers who agreed to repeatedly mention its company name.

Today, there are at least three marketing services that offer to pay bloggers money for writing posts about specific products: PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews. All of them now make it mandatory for bloggers to disclose the arrangement -- a policy that, in some cases, is the result of pressure from high-profile bloggers who decried paid postings that were not disclosed as a ``cancer'' that damaged the reputation of all bloggers.

Many of those now pioneering the emerging forms of podcasts and video dispatches concede that they are still engaged in exploring questions of ethics and disclosure. ``I went to school for computer science,'' says John Furrier, CEO of the Menlo Park company PodTech, which produces audio and video programming. ``I'm trying to deploy social media in a new way.''

I asked Furrier about the sometimes-hazy distinction on his site between sponsors and content. Seagate and Cisco are major sponsors, and video coverage of those companies has been featured prominently on the site, including a tour of Seagate's booth at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Furrier noted that interviews with executives from such large Silicon Valley companies are newsworthy and points out that the PodTech site also scored a sit-down with Bill Gates earlier this month (Microsoft is not a sponsor).

Establishing credibility
But Furrier acknowledged that drawing lines between what's paid for and what's not is a continuing process for the company. ``Credibility is the ultimate key to success, and we're trying to establish that,'' he says. For some readers, it may be enough when PodTech's star interviewer, Robert Scoble, cheerfully declares, ``Seagate is the only sponsor of my ScobleShow, so consider that I've been paid for telling you about Seagate stuff.''

I believe we will soon see a bifurcation in the blogosphere, with trusted bloggers letting readers know about connections that may influence what they write. Blogs where payment for reviews seems to dominate -- or where every third posting is about wonderful free dinners and gifts lavished upon the blogger -- will be regarded much more skeptically. How many more people have relied on Julia Child for cooking advice (who never endorsed a product), rather than Ron Popeil, star of late-night infomercials for the Showtime Rotisserie Oven?

``If your blog is remotely influential, people will attempt to influence you,'' writes blogger, author and entrepreneur Seth Godin via e-mail. ``The more often a blogger accepts the temptations, the less influential her blog will become.''

The blog world also is self-policing, with every reader and fellow blogger a potential ombudsman. ``If you try to be secretive or sneaky or tricky by integrating marketing messages, you will get nailed and you'll get embarrassed,'' says David Pescovitz, an editor of BoingBoing, one of the Web's most popular blogs, and a researcher at Palo Alto's Institute for the Future.

Bloggers may not need a uniform code of ethics. But they will surely benefit by being clear about the principles that guide them and by responding to their audience's concerns. That sort of openness can be a model for any media, new or old.

SCOTT KIRSNER edits the blog CinemaTech (http://cinematech.blogspot.com) and is the author of the book ``The Future of Web Video.'' He wrote this article for Perspective.