THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH #4,123

Bill Pollak, our eagle-eyed CEO, forwards a fascinating post from Poynteronline, a journalism site, once again chronicling the ever-escalating battle over the question of whether or not the process of blogging makes you a journalist, and if so, are you obligated to conform to traditional journalist ethics. Especially on the topics of freebies.

Steve Outing writes about a turf war between Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc., and Nick Denton, of Gawker, who are fighting over whether it was proper to accept a free press junket from Siemens to the CeBIT conference in Germany. Siemens picked up the tab for Gizmodo to attend and get some exclusive access, in exchange for its an agreement that its two bloggers would write a specified number of posts about the event.

Here's my position (again). Don't do it! You can lose your credibility -- your independent reputation -- in the blink of an eye. Accepting anything in exchange for coverage would get me fired in a heartbeat. I simply would never do it.  It's a core value of journalism. And I never, ever accept travel or accommodations from any vendor, not even when I'm invited to keynote or speak at their functions. I have to be little Ms. Switzerland. It's all about credibility.  I would never knowingly do anything that would taint my actual -- and appearance of -- complete neutrality in my reporting.

There's an old radio baby boomer term for it: PAYOLA.

In fact, you have to be very very careful of accepting ANYTHING from a vendor.... and that's easier said than done, because it's not always an easy line. There's a big difference between routine marketing gimmicks or social courtesies. You don't want to freak out and act like a total geek jerk if somebody sends you a can of popcorn in December. We use a $100 rule at ALM, and I'm even stricter with my LTN staff and writers ($50 as a general rule, and 5 cents if it doesn't pass the "smell" test). Here's our LTN ethics guidelines, which I provide to our regular contributors and editorial advisory board members:  (It's a word doc, virus-free to the best of my knowledge, for the paranoids among you.)

Download ethics305.doc

Of course, the heart of this discussion brings us again to the interesting question of, "Are bloggers journalists?" I don't know the answer to that, in all its nuances, (I think the answer may be yes, because the definition of journalism is changing).  But I know, for me, that I'm a journalist, who happens to blog as part of her job. Journalism defines my job, not the particular media I use.