There is a BIG thing going on over at “Blogging, Journalism & Credibility“, as I understand the discussion it’s overall about blogethics. But between the lines - you ladies and gentlemen who already have been busy commenting - I think there is a BIG lack of politeness. I think it’s a shame and not for the good and not promoting the course of Blogethics.
Maybe I’m a sort of handicapped because of my pure English skills
6 Comments
Actually, this is not a comment on this particular post but a comment on your site as a whole.
I enjoy reading your site and I’m subscribing to your RSS feed. But as you only supply an excerpt in the feed, I almost always find myself reading your blog through a webbrowser instead of my RSS reader which is pretty cumbersome - I read all my other subscriptions in my reader.
Would it be possible for you to provide the complete posts in the feed?
Keep up the good work!
Juri
What a depressing discussion. As I have written on my own blog, I think that blogging ethics… actually, really, publishing ethics, are pretty straightforward:
Don’t sell your words or silence. But, if you have, make sure that’s known.
Credit your sources.
If you get the facts wrong, and you are called on it, say so. Admit it. If that makes your whole story fall to the ground, say so.
What is pointless about the whole debate that you refer to is that it is all about medium. No one debates “telephone ethics”… it’s absurd. Same with “blogging”.
Allan
No, Yvonne, blogging is NOT a profession, and it never will be. Any more than faxing is a profession, or emailing is a profession, or punching the “send” button on a VNR is a profession. Yes, some people are compensated for sending faxes, but it’s not a profession.
Most people who have blogs as part of their professional life have one as an extension of what they were already doing before blogs came along. So we don’t need “new” codes of ethics: I am already enjoined from unethical PR by IABC and PRSA, no matter what some “bloggers association” might come up with.
Finally, you misread my “don’t sell your words or your silence”. It’s clear from the original context that I mean “don’t let yourself be bought into writing stuff on your blog that you don’t really believe — and don’t let your silence be bought”. Yes, I sell my words every day, quite lucratively, thank you, but not on my blog.
I agree with Allan, actually, that ethics does boil down to just that. However, just because it does, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ethics commissioners, ethics boards and dozens of such classes in universities.
That said, Allan compares blogging to “phoning” and “faxing”. While that may be true one day, it simply isn’t right now. When was the last time a company lied and setup a fake fax number? How often do phones get inundated with thousands of telemarketing calls a day to the point where they are unusable? When was the last time you had to pick your “email standard”.
Currently, the equivalents are all happening in blogging. Eventually, I’d anticipate blogging will become “just another tool”. However, until it does people will have questions. And when people will have questions, there will always be professionals to answer them.
The argument defining what a “professional” is is an old one. My opinion is that it boils down, quite simply, to: someone who makes a full living from a task.
So, yes, there are professional “mailers” and “faxers” and “phone users” in that sense. But mainly from a consultation (email marketing, mass distribution, tracking, etc), services (scalability, features, etc) and production (making the calls, sending out the letters and faxes, etc).
I wouldn’t be surprised to see that long term there are blog consultants and professionals that fill the glamorous (consultant) roles, as well as the unglamorous (production roles).
And, I wouldn’t be surprised for the consultants to largely become functions of PR and Marketing. It’s logical.
But, then, sometimes some things aren’t logical.
The vast majority of high end sites are produced by high end design and development companies. Not PR and Marketing ones. Which is a flipside argument, because the producers are both the producers and the consultants - and they make decent money doing so.
But, I’m rambling. This is all conjecture. The reality is that there are, like it or not, blogging professionals right now. And since there are professionals, having a networking and resourcing organization makes sense.
When there are no longer such professionals, it won’t.
Jeremy - its like in the early days - everyone are fighting and struggling to get to the sweet spot - it will take 2 or 3 years. After that an odd thing will happen. Everyone who joined the fight will reject their ever attended the fight - They will move back to their origin .it happened before :-)
All the best
HH
Incoming Links
Leave a Reply