Jim Horton at Online PR makes a great point in response to a new company called, Blogversations, that aims to pay bloggers to discuss certain topics. Jim response to this idea is this:
There are fundamentals in PR that must be preserved to keep credibility. Paying for editorial, no matter how you do it, is a breach of fundamentals. Credibility comes from impartial consideration of a topic, product or service and impartial discussion of facts and opinions about it without payment. The PR person resorts to persuasion and only persuasion to get someone to write because it is essential to preserve credibility.
I think Jim says is perfectly. It'll be too bad if this idea takes off and we have to question each and every blog post we read. Part of the reason why the blog community has taken off is due to a growing skepticism around "big media" and it'd be a shame to see that same skepticism permeate the blog community.
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