Blogging for dollars

Kelly Heyboer, a Newark Star-Ledger reporter who is attending the “Covering Digital Culture” seminar for journalists at the University of Maryland in College Park, writes about how some companies will pay bloggers to write about them.

Heyboer wrote, “Journalists have long maintained that accepting compensation or gifts to promote a product on news pages is highly unethical. But many bloggers don’t consider themselves journalists. The rules and ethics of good blogging are still emerging.

“Still, if bloggers are writing for cash without disclosing it to their readers, they risk losing the trust of their audience and their viewers may flee, Hallerman said.

“‘There are so many places to go online that if ads are too intrusive, they’ll go bye-bye,’ Hallerman said.”

Read more here.