Big online publications like Gawker, The Huffington Post, and Technorati employ writers – no surprise there. But since these sites draw quite a bit of traffic, they also are coveted places for brands to be. Enter the PR pitch.
PR and journalism have had a long standing relationship that occasionally flirts with questionable ethics. The basic and stalwart rule is that pay-to-play arrangements don’t fly. Recently, Hamilton Nolan, a writer at Gawker, got pitched by a company called 43a to insert links into his articles. These links would lead to 43a’s supposed* clients.
Hamilton, out of curiosity, engaged the 43a representative to understand more about how the company operated. He also published all the emails he received from 43a. Here’s the quick and dirty procedure:
1. The writer links to a company’s website in an article.
2. If the editor doesn’t cut the link, 43a pays the writer. In this case, they offered $175 per link.
3. Everybody acts like nothing happened.
This practice is misleading because at no point was disclosure mentioned. At WOMMA, one of our goals is to ensure clear and honest disclosure of brand relationships between bloggers and brands. Read more about our Ethics Code and other ethical resources.
Read more about the 43a story at Gawker
*A late update on the original post had responses from several of the companies named as clients that refuted 43a’s claim, which is why they weren’t named in this write-up.
