Exclusive: Techbloggers Have Sold Their Souls
On WebProNews, Robert Scoble demonstrates why the leading techblogs are becoming less critical and more susceptible to hype — they're bargaining with PR flacks for exclusives: … One of the reasons mainstream tech magazines like PC Magazine …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is not Scoble's first run-in over how bloggers handle access and disclosure — he published a full-disclosure post in December 2006 after earlier outbursts that rivals like Metaspot dismissed as just another rant in August 2006. What is new here is the target: instead of defending his own practices, he is indicting the leading techblogs for bargaining with PR flacks for exclusives.
The charge lands at an awkward moment for the old guard it implicates by comparison. PC Magazine's editor departed Ziff Davis in August 2007 after two years running the flagship, part of the broader pressure on print tech media — and Scoble's argument undercuts the standard defense that blogs were the more independent alternative. His own credibility cuts both ways: he drew notice for masterful self-promotion around the June 2007 iPhone launch.
First-order effects
- PR shops gain a working playbook: exclusive access becomes tradable currency with high-traffic techblogs, and the blogs that take the deal publish softer coverage of the vendors involved.
- Mainstream outlets like PC Magazine lose a differentiation argument — if blogs now bargain for exclusives the way magazines once did, the independence gap between the two narrows from the blogs' side.
Second-order effects
- Readers and rival bloggers have an incentive to police disclosure norms harder, since the value of any blog's recommendation falls when exclusives look bought rather than earned.
Third-order effects
- If access-for-coverage trading becomes standard practice, tech media consolidates around whoever controls the pipeline between vendor PR and audience — and disclosure policies, not outlet type, become the only meaningful marker of editorial independence.
The trend: Tech coverage is shifting from gatekept magazine review cycles to access-traded blog publishing, with disclosure practices emerging as the battleground for credibility.