You make a very interesting point about paidcontent.org. Traditional media organisations still have traditional revenue streams to maintain their online production. Indeed, in some cases, they have monetised their internet activities. But how do the new online-only operators intend to make enough money to grow?
Your piece is discussed at: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/

"Readers beware: don't ever trust an article about products or services again"

Well that's very even-handed. Wherever will I get expert opinion on products and services I know nothing about?

Aah well, I'll just go buy the one I saw advertised at the train station...

You're joking, right? Sponsorship means we charge a flat monthly fee from advertisers, compared to the CPM/CPC/CPA model. It certainly doesn't mean they influence any of our content.
For conference blog, it is a special section, and it doesn't mean sponsors "influence" or even try to influence our coverage there...it is completely separate.
How is that different from any other advertising on another newspaper or website?
Think or ask before you write...they may have taught you that in journalism as well right.
Rafat Ali
Editor
paidContent.org

Hmmm as a hack for 20 years before becoming a PR I now regularly write pieces for all kinds of publications which go in as straightforward journalism as if written by a staff reporter.
But if a piece stands up on its journalistic merits where is the harm? And as I write my press releases as if they were news stories and they go in word for word where's the harm in that?
I remember turning fistfuls of press releases into stories as I progressed from local bi-weekly to regional evening to regional daily. And on the Sunday redtops I also created nibs from press releases every week.
Working shifts on national dailies from red tops to what Kelvin calls the unpopulars I regularly got bylines on re-written agency or freelance copy or on stories re-written from press releases, especially ones from "official" sources. Then there are all those surveys. Take any publication and a huge percentage of stories will be sourced from PRs. I think Les Hacks are protesting too much perhaps because they are middle men who will mostly just regurgitate what I and my fellows PRs brief them and then charge a publication for that fairly limited service. Is there any proper reporter ie one who had proper training NCTJ, prof test, etc who can claim never to have been handed a press release with the phrase "Knock us three pars out of that."
Off from the high horses ladies and gentlemen

Rafat, thanks for that clarification. I look forward to seeing a statement on your web site to that effect, because from on top of my high horse here it doesn't look good. Some of the posts on your blogs can be quite subjective in nature, and where subjectivity creeps in you can't blame a reader for wondering what lies behind.

Mark, thanks for your post. Like many comments I have received, yours has revealed that things are even worse than I portray them. Congratulations.

Steve, nice plug for your employer's web site. It's a debate worth having, so I won't dwell on the fact that Mr Greenslade has attempted to hijack it. All's fair in the incestuous world of blogging after all.

Mat, yes you might as well go buy the one you saw advertised on the train station. Alternatively, you could source a number of reviews and take the mean from that. And/or take advantage of some of the sites or forums where the consumers review the products. For example, if I wished to buy a digital recorder, I would seek advice from my peers on a journalists' forum.

I can relate to every word Mark says.

But I can understand that when he asks 'where's the harm in that?' there's potentially plenty.

A couple of years ago I used to stand up in a room of potential PR clients and ask them how much of their papers were made up of PR, and give a small prize to who guessed the closest.

I interviewed a spokeswoman from the CIPR and she said the figure that was often quoted was 85 per cent - though she couldn't say where that figure came from.

For me, it comes down to trust and that readers should be able to trust a publication. Simplistic I know.

As a PR I can present clearly identified PR material to objective journalists and hope they will be interested in taking it further - adding their own slant or analysis but I couldn't sleep at night if I presented that same material myself to editors in the form of an objective pitch. My experience as a journalist helps me identify there's a story there but I'm not the one to do it.

Press releases I have worked on are clearly marked as such and do get used word for word.

I pitched a feature last week which has since been filed. I made it clear in the pitch that its subject was my business partner and when it was commissioned I was so paranoid that I was somehow 'crossing a line' by not being impartial, I flagged up our relationship again.

Like Mark's work, the piece I have written stands up as a news feature. If the editor had come back to me and said "It reads like a PR exercise," I think I could have died of shame.

Over recent months several freelance journalists have asked me how to 'place' PR clients in features they can pitch to newspapers.

I've been shocked by this and tell them not to blur the lines. Who's going to trust them if they pitch anything else in the future without declaring their vested interest?

Many of the hacks who received the email offer of work you mention (it was sent to everyone in the nuj freelance directory covering tech) were only too delighted to jump on their own high horses and deluge the sender with outraged replies of the 'how dare you insult my journalistic integrity' variety. It's also been widely debated on email and web discussion forums.

Some loser hack will doubtless take the gig, but really, are they likely to be the kind of person who can generate a great feature in anything anyone would actually read??

Yes, journo standards are important, and I think running advertorial disguised as editorial is a dangerous move, but I think there's also a danger of creating a false perception that this kind of practice is more widespread than it is.

I've probably written for 50 magazines and half a dozen newspapers. I've also edited for a number of publishing companies. And I've never, ever come across this kind of practice. I've also never met a journalist who would be complicit in this kind of thing. Not necessarily because we're all Abe Lincoln, but simply because it only takes one person to find us out, and our professional reputation and earning power would be totally f*cked.

Most of us like to hold on to what little professional regard we have, and aren't about to sell out our reputations and potentially hit our earning power for £500 from some dodgy PR agency.

Oh, and don't mistake the fact of journos not saying anything online with them not noticing what's said - I'm sure most people reading that post made a note of the editor and the magazine and marked the guy's card accordingly...

I was one of the journalists who received the email that both Sally and Les Hacks mention. My impression was that the company who sent it out really thought that this was a legitimate and quite usual way of going about things - I've come across other non-journos who think the same thing, unfortunately. No wonder we have such a bad reputation.

I've since exchanged a couple of emails with the company in question, and I'd like to think they'll now go about approaching freelancers in a more orthodox way, but perhaps I'm being naive.

Why don't you get off your soapbox and realise that all PaidContent and other sites are doing is to try and monetise some very valuable information. This is the future of blog journalism- it's not being paid to write about certain companies, the sponsored links are clearly marked...just as they are in magazines where advertorial appears and it's marked 'advertising feature'. Sometimes you try and pick holes in places where there are no holes to be picked...i will certainly be watching closely to see what sponsorship appears on this site!