It’s true that others made their own judgments after reading your post. However, after reading several of the comments, it begins to look more like a huge “me too” train with the criticism (and not only on your blog).

So could people simply make their own judgments, because you “put it out there?” Yes. But in a sense, that’s precisely what Debbie did… she introduced a blog to people she thought might have an interest in corporate blogging, and left it up to them to make their own judgment call on whether to comment or not, and whether to disclose how they came across the blog or not. I don’t like that little line in her email more than anyone else, but a huge ethical breach in the world of blog marketing it’s not.

Most bloggers, corporate or not, have a profit-driven motive for seeing it take off. Actually, I’m not sure what the motive has to do with anything. You want your blog to take off no matter the motive: corporate profits, advertising revenue, exposure, etc. Email marketing is no less legitimate a promotional tactic than going around commenting on all of your colleague’s blogs with a link back, knowing that those “in your corner” are likely to stop by and initiate some discussion. When your colleagues are also your competition (like with GSK), and not necessarily on board with blogging yet, a basic option like that really isn’t even available.

I’d say we’d be hard-pressed to find anyone “pure” in the Internet game these days, whether it be email marketing to social media. As for posting an email being “worth it”, I really don’t have any general objection to posting an email online if it brings an important issue or discussion to light. My point was simply that it’s rather hypocritical to do something that could very easily be conceived as being “unethical” while you’re essentially questioning the ethics of someone else in the process (and whether it was blatantly stated in that way or not, we do know the implication was there, or it wouldn’t have sparked so much discussion in the first place). 😉

So is it good that people are discussing the issue? Yes. At this point I’d say most in PR need to start educating themselves on the basics though before they start setting up an ethical scale.

“Ethically pure journalistic self” was a joke, and if it made you laugh, that was the intention. In fact, my whole post was careful not to overreach, not to make a mountain out of a molehill. I simply posted Debbie’s solicitation–which was a group e-mail that I considered a targeted marketing campaign and not a “personal” e-mail–and asked my readers if I was being a “prig” for the fact that the e-mail “got on my nerves.”

Didn’t accuse her of a hideous ethics breach, or a violation of the Cluetrain Transparency Doctrine, or any such. Just put it out there. Others made their judgments.

Debbie has told me publicly and privately that I might have just written her back and registered my objection privately. Yes, I might have, but then we wouldn’t have had this conversation. I am glad we had this conversation, even though it got overheated.

Aren’t you?

Finally, though I don’t seriously claim to be ethically (or in any other way) “pure,” I am a journalist and not Debbie’s “colleague.” I think she assumed I was her colleague when she included me on her solicitation for comments on the drug company’s blog.

Debbie is a corporate blogging proponent with a profit-motive in seeing it take off. My job is to watch corporate blogging and see how it develops–and where and why it does or does not catch on.

While neither of us is “pure,” we do have different roles in the process here. If posting her e-mail was rude on my part, I think it was worth it because it got lots of us–more than I ever expected, I must say–talking and thinking in a concrete way about blogging ethics and mores and taste.

Don’t you agree?

David

While I agree that in this case, mistakes were made, I’d be hard-pressed to rely on research from ’99 when Internet communication has so radically changed over those last 7-8 years. What really rubs me the wrong way is the general ignorance in the PR industry regarding online communication as a whole (not directed to your own comment in any way). It baffles me that those of us in a communication field can’t grasp what any 18-year old with a computer and a website has figured out years ago.

On a similar note, I’d really like to see some more of the younger PR professionals out there stepping up into these discussions, because frankly, they have the likelihood of being the most in tune with the changes as they happen. Yet they’re amazingly quiet so far….

There is another side to all this. It is a matter of understanding the nature of online communication which can be summed up in five tenets; Richness, Reach, Transparency, Porosity and Agency. If practitioners understand these then they will be less likely to make mistakes. They are described in The NewPR Wiki here: https://tinyurl.com/2vh9tz. They were developed from research by the PR Internet commission in 1999, were published in 2000 for the PR industry.

So, to add to your rant, mine is that the PR industry could do worse than follow the findings of its academic research base.