Tulip O'My Tulip

NOTE: The spellchecker is not working again..jeez.

It was the first post I saw when I clicked onto Blogher this morning --Liza Sabeter's provocative post Is this blog history in the making? I am 1 of 24 bloggers invited by Holland.com to visit Amsterdam

Here's the deal : the bloggers are being invited to a five day all expense-paid trip to Holland. No blogging about the trip will be required.

"In exchange for the trip each blogger will [a] be interviewed about the trip (the Dutch Tourism Board may be using this for online/offline promotions), [b] give Holland.com one month of premium adspace, and [c] put the "Bloggers in Amsterdam" logo in their nav bar for one year, linking it to this blog post to disclose the nature of the trip. The mantra here is transparency. "

Here is my response that posted on Blogher.

Is it transparency, unconscionable, or the changing of the guard?

This junket is both fascinating and a bit horrifying to me because it is forcing me to debate with myself the very core of my blogging ethics.

I think it is absolutely brilliant on the part of the tourism bureau of Holland and their marketing strategists. Money well spent.
Even before people are leaving there is attention on the program...Holland is getting exactly what it wants...media time. Bravo to them. From a marketing perspective , it is fabulous.

On a personal level I would love for someone to invite me to an all expense-paid vacation to Holland. My ego would love it that someone thought my blog was adworthy enough to be included. I would love just going and being on a junket and hanging out with a bunch of bloggers who may or may not be blogging in the spirit of "transparency' about the junket. In many ways, I would finally feel like I was getting paid for my work.

On first read,my inclination was to think I would have to decline the offer. This in no way an indictment against the bloggers invited and who accepted the junket.

It just highlights the spectrum of personal ethics and backgrounds that bloggers have.

For many ,the "transparency" of the entire vacation provides the ethical window to go, imbibe and take in the sites. Maybe you'll blog and maybe you won't. Actually you already have. And that is making some marketing person very happy. They probably have promised that the entire program would deliver X amount of coverage and this post is helping them achieve that goal.

Then there are they recovering journalists like myself --the ones who went to journalism school in an era where we were taught that it was "unethical" to accept anything in exchange for coverage. The goal was to try to be as objective as possible and the ethics said, when you are given a gift you are more likely to write favorable stuff.

But here's where my struggle erupts. Am I so steeped in old-fashioned values that I am not being realistic of the new business model?

Is accepting this junket really so different than a newspaper,TV or radio station that accepts advertising? As bloggers we are both the reporter and the advertising department-- that is if we are trying to make a living at blogging.

Traditional media outlets all exist thanks to advertisers(or grants from foundations which in my mind is advertising)so what's the problem in accepting a junket? A girl has to live and take a vacation once in awhile.

The old mantra was "don't mix advertising and 'the news'." Advertisers supposedly couldn't pressure the newsroom and say cover this story( that of course is debatable)

If, as a blogger, I would accept advertisers to my blog ( and they are very welcome) then what is my ethical problem with the junket? If an adveriser were really paying me, wouldn't I self-censor myself just as I self-censor myself about sharing stories about current business clients?

If I will accept compensation via advertising, isn't the junket just another form of compensation- a lovely one at that.

The journalist blogger in me is fascinated by this story just as I am fascinated by product placement advertising in movies and television, and advertisers trying to figure out how to out TiVo, TiVo.

So while I did not get a dance card on this one, I hope to 'cover' this story on several levels. I want to understand the ethics of it. I want to understand the personal censorship of it ( If you have a horrible hotel room, will you blog about that and face the possibility that when Saint Bart's offers a junket you may be excluded for bad blogging)and,

I want to understand---- if transparency is the new ethical standard, will truth or truthiness prevail?