Congrats to Jason Calacanis —- our winner of the week. One of his blogs, autoblog …
… turned down the opportunity to run VW’s suicide bomber ad.
Increasingly I believe that the big blog networks – Corante, Nick Denton’s Gawker Media and Calacanis‘ company – will begin to distance themselves from other bloggers. They will operate more like mainstream media outlets with profits (yes, that’s right – profits) and reader/advertising franchises that they will do anything to protect.
This will also mean they will take fewer big risks – both with their editorial and their advertising – at least until the laws give them the same protections that the mainstream press have had for years.
Go to AutoBlog.
Reader Comments
Posted by Paul Mooney:
These “big blog networks” resemble “old media” more then they do blogs and they are starting to believe their own hype.
I think we are going to have a click-bot scandal around the time of the first blog IPO.
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Posted by Dave Thomas:
Steve,
Thanks for the mention. As the person that wrote the Autoblog post I don’t think there’s anything wrong with injecting a bit of ethics, decorum and taste into blogging. It had nothing to do with profits, we would’ve gained a larger audience by running an image and link to the clip, it had to do with keeping the voice of Autoblog intact. This was a questionable ad. Some are questioning even if it was an ad, hoax, stunt etc. We didn’t run it originally because of the insulting and tasteless content, but now I’m glad we didn’t run it also because of the unknown origins and intent.
And to say that we resemble old time media by using judgment seems ridiculous. Freedom of speech still doesn’t protect people from yelling fire in a crowded movie theater and it doesn’t protect bloggers from liable etc. Not that this post would’ve brought that on Autoblog anyway.
Also as someone with a journalism background I think if you inject the ethics taught in J-school into blogging you may have a more ethical media in blogging then you do in large, mainstream corporate media that uses many, many more filters on what you see and hear.
Take care,
Dave
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
