If you're following the discussion about blogging and journalism, you've probably noticed that one of the things people talk about is credibility. One of the ways mainstream news organizations try to enhance and preserve their credibility is by making it clear to readers and viewers who pays the bills. For my employers, the sale of advertising space in the paper and time on our network pays my salary and the operating costs of our news organization. I'm pretty sure most readers and viewers understand that and are able to factor in the way we make our money when they decide how credible we are.
In fact, journalists themselves 'follow the money' all the time when we try to report on the motives or character of an individual, business, or government group. We do that because we believe that when our readers and viewers know, for example, that a drug company is paying university researchers to assess the safety of their products, readers are better able to assess the independence and credibility of the resulting study when they know who paid the bills for that study.
That's why I think it important that bloggers who wish to challenge mainstream journalism or criticize should make some disclosures of their own in the interests of letting their readers assess the potential for bias or conflict.
So, in that spirit, starting today, I'm walking the walk and talking the talk. You'll notice a new section midway underneath the photos on the right-hand at the bottom on the left-hand side of this blog. It's titled: “Who pays for this blog?” and you should see it there or in another prominent spot on this blog all the time.
I know of no examples or templates for this sort of thing so I just wrote it up trying to explain in plain language how I come to have the resources to publish this blog. If you think there are other things I ought to disclose or if there's something in that disclaimer that's not clear, I'd love to hear about it.
Colin McKay asks about my domain registrar and whether or not there is a tale waiting to be revealed and I'm happy to oblige. There is no tale, so far as I know but here you are.
I have no idea who the domain registrar is for blogware.com but I assume it is Tucows as Tucows is the world's largest wholesaler of domain names.
As for my own domains — I own the rights to davidakin.com, davidakin.ca, and akin.ca — my domain registrar was EasyDNS of Toronto but I am in the process of moving those domains to DomainPeople of Vancouver. Why? Simple. Price. I pay out of my own pocket the costs of registering and maintaining those domains and DomainPeople is cheaper than EasyDNS.
Those sites are hosted by a tiny New Brunswick company called PJMCo and, once again, I pay the full freight, just like another customer of PJMCo's, for the hosting service it provides.
While we're on the topic of plumbing, I'm happy to disclose that I have a high-speed Internet-over-cable service at my home, for which I, like every other customer, pay the full fare.
I've decided against posting these details in my disclosure statement for they seem to me ancillary or only partly related to the production of this blog. By that I mean that I could have no relationships with any domain registrar and still have this blog, as it is up to Tucows to maintain the domain. Similarly, I could maintain this blog from any Internet connection — work, a library, a Wi-Fi hotspot — and, as a result, the fact that I pay for my home connection seems less important so far as the resources needed to publish this blog. Feel free to continue the argument, if you feel otherwise …
“….nor do Tucows executives expect any.”
well I don't know about the rest of the “executives”, but I am still waiting for the glowing front-page profile on my brilliant children that you promised ;-).
seriously, this is a good idea and I will put this in front of a couple folks who should see it.
“In fact, journalists themselves 'follow the money' all the time when we try to report on the motives or character of an individual, business, or government group.”
Well you and your 'journalist' friends aren't doing a very good job.
You've been given the Libertarian Lobotomy by Richard M. Stallman and Eric S. Raymond..
..Or you all would have discovered the logical, economic, and marketing fallacies involved in (cough) “Free” Software Foundation, and the EFF-ing (hack, spit) “Open” Source scams LONG before now.
Or maybe you HAVE discovered these things, but since nobody else is reporting it, better to bury that bone as deep as possible. Like in the World Economy…;-)
You all do ANY reporting on the “interactive tax”, or even ANYTHING WHATSOEVER about the i5…
(Credibility not in your diet, if you don't eat this 'meet'…;-)
Crap, that was supposed to be:
“Like in the World Economy…)-;”
I give up. SHOULD use the preview, and slow down:
The above 2 posts and this 1 by the (cough) artist not-known as “JamesJayTrouble”.
Sheesh, given I'd meant to put that as the first line in the first post…
(looking fer excuses, as I slowly back away from the keyboard…;-)
J. Trouble
So how much does Google pay you and how often?
Not much. In fact, since I started this five or six months ago, I've yet to receive a cheque. They don't send out cheques if you're making less than ten bucks a month or something. And I'm definitely making well under whatever threshold there is.
In fact, I'll probably exit the program as soon as I receive a cheque from Google and use that space for something more useful.
Neither RMS nor ESR are libertarians. RMS is a leftist and ESR is an anarcho-capitalist. Oh well, so much for your post having any facts in it. You did manage to spel both their names corectly.
-russ
Actually, to be exceptionally clear about the give and take regarding this weblog, I'd like to add one small footnote to the disclosure.
David kindly agreed to take a weblog in exchange for feedback as we developed it – along with hundreds of other people. Everyone that signed up during our “beta” period got to keep their weblog for life, gratis, in exchange for the feedback, input, complaints, comments, rants, etc. that they gave us while we built Blogware. I'd like to think that Tucows is as generous as David's disclosure makes us out to be – and perhaps we are – but this isn't such a special case and there are a whole whack of people that got the same deal (me included 😉
Just read through David Weinberger's disclosure statement. It's excellent!