{"id":232,"date":"2007-02-09T04:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-09T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgillin.com\/2007\/02\/shady-ethics-in-the-blogosphere.html"},"modified":"2007-02-09T04:10:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-09T11:10:00","slug":"shady-ethics-in-the-blogosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/shady-ethics-in-the-blogosphere\/","title":{"rendered":"Shady ethics in the blogosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Kirsner, former Boston Globe writer, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/mld\/mercurynews\/news\/editorial\/16621026.htm\">has a thoughtful piece<\/a> on disclosure in the blogosphere. He points out the ethical dilemmas posed by business&#8217; efforts to court bloggers with free stuff and even cash payments for positive coverage. There is no code of ethics in the blogosphere, of course, outside of perhaps the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cluetrain.com\/\">Cluetrain Manifesto<\/a>, so it&#8217;s up to the readers to decide whom to believe.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I believe this issue will work itself out at the grass roots level. Look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/\">Engadget<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boingboing.net\">BoingBoing<\/a>, which are two of the most popular and successful blogs. They need to uphold high standards or their audiences would quickly desert them. The same holds true at less-popular titles. The blogosphere is self-policing, and any popular blogger who tries to deceive his or her audience will be quickly smoked out. Once you get a reputation for shady ethics, it&#8217;s very difficult to recover. Any blogger who wants to build a long-term franchise will be very careful not to cross that line.<\/p>\n<p>There will always be con men in social media, but their influence will be limited. The readers will see to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Kirsner, former Boston Globe writer, has a thoughtful piece on disclosure in the blogosphere. He points out the ethical dilemmas posed by business&#8217; efforts to court bloggers with free stuff and even cash payments for positive coverage. There is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/shady-ethics-in-the-blogosphere\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-3K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}