Pegasus News is a self-styled “Journalism 2.0” company that I’ve been enjoying reading about. In fact the whole “grassroots journalism” movement is interesting, because there are a lot of experienced journalists throwing themselves into the Read/Write Web (the philosophy, not my blog) with incredible gusto. Jay Rosen and Dan Gillmor are two in particular that I regularly read. Anyway I came across this post by Pegasus News today which I thought had some good lessons for the Marqui ‘pay for blogging’ program that I’m involved in. Pegasus News believe that transparency is the vital ingredient in the new journalism 2.0 world when it comes to dealing with advertising and advertorials. In Peg’s words:
“Here’s how I believe the world, or this aspect of it, works:
Even in old-model advertising, what advertisers are buying is access to readers/viewers. (In our model, that’s doubly so, although that is manifest in reader action rather than theory.)
From the dawn of time, people– in the long haul– only spend their time on news and information that they find credible.
Ergo, the most precious asset you have is your credibility. Credibility = readers = advertisers = profit. There’s no other way to do it. No shortcuts. No dodges.
You can’t fuck with your credibility. That’s not because it’s wrong (which I suppose it is), but because you WILL get caught. Immutable law. It WILL happen. Cheat once and you’ll get caught twice.
You might be able to short-circuit some of the above over a short haul, but it will catch up with you. I’d say that in recent years, technology and the information society have dramatically accelerated that cycle. Jeff can tell us a bit about that.
You can’t depend on pure ethics to do the job, because humans are inherently flawed. It has to make inherent sense in the Business Model.”
Now I’m taking Peg’s words out of the context he placed them in, which was about advertising in Web-based journalism. What’s worse, I’m blatently using Peg’s words as part of my weekly sponsor’s plug! But I’m being transparent about it 🙂
It’s a new media world of free-flowing atoms and content set loose from its containers. Marqui are hitching a ride on my atoms – and don’t worry, they’re paying me a decent fare for the privilege. But everybody has to remember: they’re still my words and so I have to be 100% credible and transparent about what I publish. Because who knows where my words may end up.
Disclosure: I mentioned and linked to Marqui as part of my sponsorship arrangement with them. See here for details.
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)