Sorry CNET, You've Mistaken Me For Someone Who Gives A Damn
The blogosphere (but not CNET) seems to have moved on from this weekend's diversionary game of whack-a-blogger. Valleywag started the mud slinging by suggesting that a bunch of FM authors, including me, were taking payoffs to write advertising content.
Context & Ripple Effects
Valleywag opened the weekend by alleging that a group of Federated Media authors — this post's author among them — were taking payoffs to write advertising content. The allegation itself is documented; the underlying payoffs are not: the author flatly denies them here, in a post whose title signals contempt for the accusers and, notably, for CNET.
What makes the dust-up worth tracking is who refused to let it die. Per the author, the blogosphere moved on while CNET kept covering the story, publishing its own piece urging the blogosphere to 'get real about church and state.' Scripting News also weighed in ('Between Mike and Charles'), so the story traveled beyond a two-party feud — reframing it from guilt or innocence into a blogger-versus-mainstream-press argument over editorial standards.
First-order effects
- The author's public denial puts his own credibility and the advertising practices of FM authors under direct scrutiny, with Valleywag's allegation and his rebuttal now the record readers see.
- CNET's decision to keep covering the payola claims converts the outlet from observer into participant — the author's criticism targets CNET's persistence, not just Valleywag's original charge.
Second-order effects
- The dispute forces a church-and-state debate between legacy tech press and ad-supported bloggers, with CNET arguing for stricter editorial/advertising separation and bloggers defending their independence from exactly the kind of scrutiny CNET applies.
- Valleywag gains attention from the fight regardless of outcome — attack-driven reporting sets the agenda even when the target denies it, pressuring other FM authors to respond or stay silent.
Third-order effects
- If ad-supported blogging keeps growing on personal relationships with startups, expect mounting pressure for formal disclosure norms separating editorial voice from advertising — the exact church-and-state question CNET's coverage raises.
- A pattern of unresolved pay-for-coverage accusations risks degrading reader trust across the tech blog ecosystem as a whole, independent of any individual author's guilt.
The trend: Ad-supported tech blogging in 2007 is colliding with legacy journalism's separation-of-church-and-state norms, with payola allegations as the recurring flashpoint.