I long-ago decided it would be disastrous to do two things on the Internet: use a handle other than 'Marc Valdez', and use the blog to get payola of any sort. I've mostly kept to that (the only exception being that I sometimes go by the handle 'perv with a dog' on the Daily Rotten). And there was that free bottle of wine from Sac Bee, but that's not so much payola as a 'we'll scratch your back if you scratch ours' kind of thing.
When you use a handle or moniker on the Internet, you tend to become irresponsible with your opinions. You think no one knows who you are, so you are apt to say stupid, rude, or hateful things. Thus, I prefer not to go that route (on the Daily Rotten, I sometimes submit stories for consideration, but apart from my twisted judgement regarding what is newsworthy, I offer no opinions). And when you take payola, it's a shocking insult to your readers when they find out - and they will eventually find out! I won't do that either.
But I'd like to be offered payola, so I could at least blog about it....:
But increasingly, many bloggers are also secretly feeding on cash from political campaigns, in a form of partisan payola that erases the line between journalism and paid endorsement.
“It’s standard operating procedure” to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that “at least half the bloggers that are out there” on the Republican side “are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales.”
In California, where former eBay executive Meg Whitman beat businessman Steve Poizner in a bitterly fought primary battle in the campaign for governor, it sometimes seemed as if there was a bidding war for bloggers.
One pro-Poizner blogger, Aaron Park, was discovered to be a paid consultant to the Poizner campaign while writing for Red County, a conservative blog about California politics. Red County founder Chip Hanlon threw Park off the site upon discovering his affiliation, which had not been disclosed.
Poizner’s campaign was shocked to learn of the arrangement, apparently coordinated by an off-the-reservation consultant. For Park, though, it was business as usual. In November 2009, for instance, he approached the campaign of another California office-seeker — Chuck DeVore, who was then running for Senate — with an offer to blog for money.
“I can be retained at a quite reasonable rate or for ‘projects,’” Park wrote in an e-mail to campaign officials. In an interview, Park defended himself by claiming, “nobody has any doubt which candidates I’m supporting,” and noting that his blog specifies which candidates he “endorses.”
But while Red County’s Hanlon expressed outrage at Park’s pay-for-blogging scheme, questions arose about his own editorial independence when it emerged that Red County itself had been taking money from the Whitman campaign.
In December of 2009, Red County received $20,000 from the Meg Whitman campaign, which has sent the site $15,000 a month since then.
The money is ostensibly for advertising, yet by conventional measures the numbers don’t add up. According to Quantcast, Red County reaches around 125,000 unique viewers per month. Two new media industry experts confirmed that, given such a readership, Whitman’s ad purchase is “ridiculously” expensive, surpassing the going market rate for such ads by 1,000 percent or more.
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