Question - Mainstream news outlets have strict rules governing to what extent their palms can be greased - but not blogs. Should blogs follow the same rules?
In today's Wall Street Journal an article caught my eye - To Create Buzz TV Networks Try a Little Blogola' As I read through the list of freebies extended to a group of mommy bloggers who were 'encouraged' to write about The New Adventures of Old Christine I began to feel a little uncomfortable.The article states that "fed up with the jaded attitudes of professional critics and TV feature writers, studios and networks are flooding bloggers with free stuff in hopes the flattered recipients will reward them with positive coverage." So what did Warner Brothers do for this influential group? Twelve mommy bloggers were invited to spend the day on the set. They got free DVD's, watched a rehearsal and made videos with Ms. Louis-Dreyfus and other cast members to post on their sites. If you check out the shows web site, you can watch a video clip of the event.
For those in the Hollywood spin machine, flooding mainstream writers with gifts, trips etc., was a standard operating procedure. The article states that "TV networks are black belts on spin" I agree and would extend that 'compliment' to movie marketers and a host of substandard product and service marketers with not enough differentiation or quality to earn them business without spin, but that's another blog post. Back to blog payola - or Blogola! One of the most disturbing mentions in this article was the blatant admission by one of the bloggers who emailed her comments about Old Christine to CBS asking them if there was anything that they would like her to add, 'just tell me and I will'.
A quick check this morning led me to two bloggers who have read this article and already expressed their views. Rexblog - Rex gives his view of disclosure (something to think about in this day of transparency with a capital "T".) Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis readily admits that times have changed and formal critics opinions mean less and less in today's web 2.0 world.
One of the great promises of blogging when it burst into the online scene was the fact that it carried a promise of honest opinions. As a reader, I could agree or disagree with the blog's author, but I could count on the writing as being her/his opinion. Blogola changes all of this - it changes the very essence of blogging from a individual opinion driven communication into 'paid' advertising - if not careful, blogging could become just another untrusted channel of influenced information to be devalued because of it's behind the scenes 'backers'. To borrow a word from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's dictionary - blog shilling.
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