The Media Industry's Cash Crunch Makes Pay-to-Play Look Much More Tempting

By Rory O'Connor, RoryOConnor.org. Posted July 14, 2009.

So it's fair to say that the Post's plans, as described, seem to rank highest on the egregiousness scale than any arrangement that's yet surfaced -- with the Atlantic's own long string of corporate-sponsored "salons" perhaps coming in second. But the key point is that, even before this latest occasion for outrage, there was hardly the kind of clear and distinct line between the news and business sections of many major media outlets that the reaction to last week's news would suggest."

Let's face it -- in the fight for media survival, none of us is immune from temptation, and few revenue sources are beyond consideration, if not actual adoption. Things in Media Land are changing at the speed of light - and nowhere faster than online, where product placements have come to  Facebook status updates and " Sponsored Tweets" to Twitter. And if you think bloggers are somehow pure, unsullied and unsponsored, think again. ' Sploggers' and pay-per-post bloggers are everywhere these days - the latter pulling down both money and freebies in exchange for product recommendations and favorable reviews. Marketing companies pay to get their products to these so-called "influencers" with an online audience, so their paid-for opinions can help sway consumers.

Although such paid online sponsorships are still controversial, the horse has long since left the barn: Izea, an online marketing company that created PayPerPost, serves 25,000 advertisers and 265,000 bloggers in its network, paying them an average of $34 a post. As Richard Cleland, an assistant director at the Federal Trade Commission, assured the New York Times, "Consumers have a right to know when they're being pitched a product," -- so much so that the FTC is now considering mandatory disclosure of such blogger activities under truth-in-advertising guidelines.

One final thought: if, like so many others, you are currently 'consuming' most of your media diet at low-or-no cost, while operating under the notorious Internet dictum that "Information wants to be free," should you really be quick to criticize the beleagured poor publisher of The Washington Post for sponsoring salons in hopes of keeping the doors open and the news flowing? Where do we -- and where should we - now draw the line? What do you think? Write in and tell me your thoughts on the ethics of pay-to-play journalism in a time of collapsing capitalism, fierce technological change and a "lost revenue model."

See more stories tagged with: media, journalism, corruption, pay to play, washington post, salons

Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor is the author of "Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio" (AlterNet Books, 2008). O'Connor also writes the Media Is A Plural blog.

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