The Double Standard on Compensation

Earlier this week I wrote about how ZDNet is compensating its bloggers based on traffic to their posts. What's unclear is how long they track the clicks. Even though a particular post may not get a lot of views immediately, it might later thanks to Google Juice. As John Battelle noted yesterday, nearly 40 percent of blog readers in come directly from Google searches.

Further, The Editor's Weblog yesterday reported that UK newspapers are teaching their reporters how to write search-friendly articles. In addition, newspapers are also buying keywords on Google. Could this all play a role in compensation? Possibly.

Clearly the way journalists and bloggers are being compensated is changing. However, everyone really should disclose the mechanics of how they are rewarded. Why should there be a double standard for the level of disclosure for journalists vs. bloggers when it comes to new models of compensation? We're all part of the media fabric now. This should especially be revealed when anyone is being compensated based on traffic.

The blog community is still not going far enough either. Earlier this week BlogBurst reached out to inform the top 100 performing bloggers in its network that they will be issued a check for their hard work. As an alternative, we can donate the money to charity or not accept it. I donated my $150 to charity.

So did all top 100 disclose? Not yet, according to a Google Blog search. Todd Bivings is one who did. Blogburst isn't exempt here either. Once the checks are doled out, they should be publishing a list of who was paid. Why rely only on us?

Clearly this is going to be a big issue going forward. But the point I want to make here is that no blogger - full-time pro or part-time paid - is exempt from disclosing how (not necessarily how much) they are paid and who is paying them.

Comments

[Pascal Venier]

Steve, with all due respect, I must say that it really make my roll on the floor laughting when Public Relations fat cats like yourself have the cheek of wanting to play the role of the moral conscience of the blogsphere.

[Steve Rubel]

That's fair. We need to abide by the same rules. That's why I disclose whenever I can who is a client of our firm.

[Shel Holtz]

I've met Steve. He's actually quite svelte.

[Jeremy Pepper]

Can I do the eye-roll? Steve, you have a history of non-disclosure, where I have dinged you: articles, clients, self-promotion.

And, wow, deja vu. I wrote this post about disclosure at the end of December and the beginning of January. But, well, this is not the first deja vu experience.

[Steve Rubel]

Jeremy, I unsubscribed when you started putting curse words in your posts.

[Jim Turner]

Does this mean that you figure that most people don't recognize when people are being paid for blogging, or should we expect that since you have climbed the ladder to where you are because of blogging and your traffic that you will disclosing that Edelman is paying you? I think at some point we have to recognize that bloggers are being paid for certain services such as Google Adsense and other obvious sources of income. You have Technorati logos on your site here does that mean you need to disclose whether you are being paid by them? Perhaps there is a point of the obvious and the not so obvious.

[Jeremy Pepper]

What are you, a little kid? You live in NY and never heard those words?

It's about content, and profanity aside, good content is good content.

As for subscriptions, people IM me posts with their own commentary, and then I read the stuff here.

Oh, and thanks for addressing the real issue in my first comment, instead of taking the easy road of "I don't read your blog."

[Chris Knowles]

The only disclosure I need is if a blogger is being paid to comment favourably on a topic, in which case I'll be unsubscribing from the feed.

Reading is about trust, be it a blog or a newspaper and I don't believe that that trust is enhanced or gained by the reader knowing where every penny of the writer's income comes from.

My concern with compensation schemes based on popularity is that mainstream journalists will naturally want to go for the populist / sensational content aimed at the 18-34 male in order to get the hits in order to increase their compensation.

I appreciate that this happens to some extent anyways for those sites whose sole revenue is advertising but I wonder if we'll shortly need need a PBS of the blogging/online newspaper world in order to get some intelligent, non-biased, thoughtful content that might only appeal to 10% of the population.

[Tina]

I think Associated Content is the only company that has a 100% proven model for paying writers. Writers are paid quickly via paypal.

[david weiner]

I think this whole over-disclosure thing is getting a bit ridiculous. Obviously certain things need to be disclosed: the writers of a blog, whether the focus of a post is a client, etc. But for a company like BlogBurst/Pluck to have to disclose who they send checks to, etc., is a bit of a stretch. Kudos to you for disclosing how much you received and what you did with it. What charity?

[Jon Harmon]

Agreee it's getting over-blown. Missing the forest for the trees. Yes, bloggers should disclose payola and if they position themselves as impartial, they should not tout clients (or avoid criticizing clients). But we should also be aware of the feeding-frenzy mentality on the blogosphere (for example, attacking Edelman/Wal-Mart's "flogging across America"). Be aware that there are those who can profit handsomely from the next feeding frenzy and they won't hesitate to set it off. (For example, plaintiff attorneys looking for a sweet pay off in a national class action lawsuit. How many times have you seen a settlement for $30 million that nets the plaintiff lawyers a cool $10 million while 40 million people in the class split the remaining $20 million for a grand total of 50 cents each, barely paying for the stamp for the letter they had to send in to the lawyers. I'm making up the numbers in this example, but you get the idea). Watch out citizen bloggers, there are cynical, greedy people out there looking to play you like pawns. For more, see: http://jon8332.typepad.com/force_for_good/2007/01/will_you_be_rea.html

[Paul Ding]

Focusing on money, and ignoring other factors is a bad idea. The value of a blogger's posts depends on his reputation - and his reputation depends on his posts.

Lying about compensation may be unethical, but "no comment" is honest - and quite adequate.

Walt Mossberg, John Dvorak, and Dave Winer all use Macs and write about Apple, but they have different POVs. Is it because someone's getting paid under the table? I seriously doubt that. Winer is a programmer, Mossberg a journalist, and Dvorak a fool, so not only are their comments going to be different, but readers will value them differently.

[ema]

The syndication services (BlogBurst, ScooptWords, Newstex) shouldn't be exempt from disclosing how they pay bloggers. But the bloggers? It's up to their audiences to decided if disclosure should be a requirement.

[John Sobol]

When you say that there should not be a double standard with regard to who pays journalists and bloggers, it presupposes that the general public still believes that newspapers and journalists provide 'objective' coverage of isssues and events. Older folks still think this way but many younger people, especially those who engage with the blogosphere, do not. They would argue - and I would agree - that in practice many individual journalists are as beholden to personal and corporate agendas (political, cultural, economic) as bloggers with professional agendas. Having spent years as a mainstream journalist and now working for a PRfirm and blogging, I will say that I have a lot more editorial freedom now than I did then. I'm happy to disclose that part of my professional role is to blog (tho I'm not paid specifically for that) but I also think that by and large people don't care very much who's paying you so long as what you're giving them is useful in some way. If it ceases being of use they will tune you out.

[John Sobol]

When you say that there should not be a double standard with regard to who pays journalists and bloggers, it presupposes that the general public still believes that newspapers and journalists provide 'objective' coverage of isssues and events. Older folks still think this way but many younger people, especially those who engage with the blogosphere, do not. They would argue - and I would agree - that in practice many individual journalists are as beholden to personal and corporate agendas (political, cultural, economic) as bloggers with professional agendas. Having spent years as a mainstream journalist and now working for a PRfirm and blogging, I will say that I have a lot more editorial freedom now than I did then. I'm happy to disclose that part of my professional role is to blog (tho I'm not paid specifically for that) but I also think that by and large people don't care very much who's paying you so long as what you're giving them is useful in some way. If it ceases being of use they will tune you out.