Who pays for this blog?
David Akin has started something that ought to become standard issue for all blogs: An upfront disclosure statement of who pays for the blog and where the conflicts of interest might be. (This should make Zephyr Teachout of the Dean campaign happy; I spent some time with her at the Demo Convention and she wanted to see something just like this happen.)
So, now we can argue for the next 9 months about exactly what ought to go into one of these statements, and who’s more disclosive than whom, but let’s at least get started. Here’s a first draft of mine. I’ll fix it up and link to it somewhere prominently on this page.
Disclosure Statement
I pay for this blog. No one pays me to write it or to say particular things in it. That includes all forms of compensation, including offering to shovel my walk or tell me that I look like I’ve lost some weight. I don’t run ads, no one pays me under the table, and I don’t sell JOHO t-shirts or coffee mugs. I don’t own stock and the couple of companies I invested in went broke a long time ago, so I’ve got nothing to tout except the companies and people I’m enthusiastic about. So, what the hell am spending so much damn time blogging for? Now you’ve got me all depressed.
I use Movable Type, for which I was happy to pay Mena and Ben Trott. I get a great deal on hosting from friends of mine, and I’d be happy to say nice things about them in my blog if they wanted me to because those things would be true.
I make much of my living as a marketing consultant and as a speaker, although I spend most of my time writing. When I write about one of the companies I’m working for, I note it in the body of the entry. I’m not going to list the companies I’m currently working for because that’s between them and me. I will disclose them (and have disclosed them in the past) if I talk about them on my blog. (None of them has ever asked me to mention them, btw.) Also, I’m on a bunch of advisory boards, including: a John Kerry tech policy advisory board, Metacarta, Microsoft (for OneNote), SocialText, Technorati, and Yahoo! (for their local services). I don’t get compensated for participating in these boards, unfortunately.
Authors sometimes send me free copies of their books. Often, explicitly or implicitly, they are looking for a mention. If I like the book, I may indeed mention it. If the author is a friend of mine, I’m pretty likely to mention it – because that’s what friends do – and I’m also much more likely to like it than some book that arrives from a PR agent. I’m probably not going to tell you that I got a free copy. Why? Because it doesn’t matter, because it makes me feel like I’m boasting, and because it encourages people I don’t know to send me copies of their books. Also, it reads funny.
Inevitably, I use my judgment. For example, there are times when the mention is so slight or inocuous that the disclaimer would be out of place. For example, my service to the Microsoft OneNote board seems to consist of my filling out a product survey for them occasionally, so if I write something about, say, why Microsoft’s MediaPlayer’s digital rights management policy sucks, I probably won’t bother explaining that I’m on an uncompensated advisory board for a different Microsoft product. I also wouldn’t mention that from about 1991-3, when I worked for Interleaf, I managed that company’s marketing relationship with Microsoft, unless it seems relevant. Life’s too intertwingly. That’s why we make judgment calls.
All I can promise is that I will be honest with you and never write something I don’t believe in because someone is paying me as part of a relationship you don’t know about. Put differently: All I’ll hide are the irrelevancies.
If you don’t like this or disagree, let me know.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Hello,
I think it makes perfect sense. I enjoy your blog and find it to be a useful resource.
Now, please do not take the following the wrong way, because it is intended in a friendly manner.
One thing I especially love about your writing? Your ‘word manipulation’ … as in ‘intertwingly’ … now that’s a word! And ‘dislosive’? Is that ‘disclosive’, as in disclosure? That, too, would be a new one to your credit. It would rank with ‘infopinions’, which I’ve followed with interest.
Don’t get me wrong, you aren’t giving Yoggi Bera or George Bush a run for their money, but you are making inroads.
OK, enough kidding.
Your disclosure is one that adds credibility to your blogging efforts (not that you needed it), in my opinion. It is important for all to follow your lead. You are setting an example. For those like you – the a-list, the most read – who have significant influence, it is most refreshing.
Take care.
Robert
P.S. Why does the “– Security Code Check — end of Security Code Check –>” show up in Firefox, but not IE, on your blog?
heh eheh heh…rationalized justifications are like frequent flyer miles…they take forever to add up to anything…heh heh…
Robert, thanks for the encouragement.
Believe it or not, I generally know when I’m yoging words. Of course, I don’t know about the ones I’m mistaken about. I like doing it. I generally don’t do it anywhere except in my blog and my newsletter, now that I think about it.
I know “disclosive” is a bent word. But I didn’t make up “intertwingly.” It’s the name of Sam Ruby’s blog (intertwingly.net), and I believe it has a longer history than that, although a very quick google of it didn’t turn up anything that obvously pre-dates Sam. I think it it’s delightful.
Since Firefox is my default browser, I know about the security code bug, and I don’t understand it. I believe a long time ago I tried installing an MT extension to keep spambots out, and for some reason Firefox notices the shards of that experiment. I haven’t cared enough to try to fix it.
I have tried to fix the bad character problem that both IE and FF notice on my home page, though. Search for “search this site” and you’ll see that block bookended by an accented A, the sign of a bad character. I just can’t see what character has gone bad. Damn computers.
Aside from the entertainment value, I think you’re setting a dangerous precedent for disclosures, David. People might actually understand and believe them if they’re written like this ;^) Hats off to David, a fellow Cannuck journalist (I’m with CBC), for taking the lead.
Always enjoy following your digital footprints, down whichever interesting rabbit hole they lead.
Keeping a warm thought,
Sue.
fyi, some references for intertwingly (which, I’ve always assumed, is a play on Ted Nelson’s “intertwingle”):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertwingularity
http://www.mozilla.org/blue-sky/misc/199805/intertwingle.html
David, thanks, I find some of this fascinating, as a kind of anthropology of the A-list environment.
The hot word is “transparency”, but I think the key concept is more like “perspective” or “social position”.
Disclaimer: I Can be Bought
Both David Weinberger and Frank Paynter reference a bizarre posting about issuing disclaimers on who pays for the blog.
Mr. Weinberger took it seriously, but I prefer Mr. Paynter’s response:
You people have got to be kidding. Conflict of inte…
“I will be honest with you and never write something I don’t believe in because someone is paying me as part of a relationship you don’t know about. ”
That’s good to know. Next question:
Will you ever write (on your blog) something you don’t believe in because someone is paying you as part of a relationship we _do_ know about?
(or rather, we know who’s involved in the relationship, but not the details of what the relationship consists of)
(Analogous case: newspaper owner instructing publisher and/or editor as to what position to take in editorials, when there’s no disclosure in newspaper that this occurs. I don’t know if this kind of thing goes on, but would very much like to.)
Anna, I didn’t cover that possibility because it didn’t occur to me. So, no, I won’t say nice things because someone is paying me, whether or not I disclose the relationship. One point of disclosing the relationship is, however, to help you counter what might be my unconscious prejudices. The truth is, though, that I’m far more likely to be blinded by friendship than by a commercial relationships.
Disclosure and trust
Over at my other blog I’ve posted a bloggy disclosure statement, an idea I got from David Akin of Canada’s Globe and Mail. I think it’s a good idea, although I’ve also got my doubts. It’s good because transparency is…
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Aside from the entertainment value, I think you’re setting a dangerous precedent for disclosures, David. People might actually understand and believe them if they’re written like this ;^) Hats off to David, a fellow Cannuck journalist (I’m with CBC), for taking the lead.
Always enjoy following your digital footprints, down whichever interesting rabbit hole they lead.
Keeping a warm thought,
Sue.
Confession
Confession time. I have to come clean with you about something I’ve been feeling pretty dirty about. So here goes….
Disclosure
Confession time. I have to come clean with you about something I’ve been feeling pretty dirty about. So here goes….
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