Comment

Sponsorship, unbiased reviews, and advertising - oh, and press releases, too...

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 07 March 2007

This site carries commercial messages. They are clearly indicated. This seemed pretty obvious to the Editor and publishers, but apparently, the world of our readers includes people who are quite confused. Just to avoid confusion, we are not for sale through Review-Me.

Paid-for advertising is available on NewsWireless. That's a fact. What is not available, is an editorial plug, written by the advertiser, disguised as a NewsWireless impartial review.

It turns out some sites don't make this distinction. For example, DevLounge recently told its readers that it was running a review of a book on "Ruby On Rails." Quote:

I had no intent to learn RoR simply because I didn’t have time. Then came the opportunity for me to review the book for Sitepoint thanks to Reviewme, and I finally decided to take a look at the book and see what I could learn. For this review I’ll be using the first four chapters of the book, which are currently available as a free trial so you can get a taste of the book before you purchase. I’ll be breaking down the key points of each of the four chapters, with a final wrap-up at the end of the review.

The editor was happy enough to run this review as "all my own work" and at the end of the review, told readers: "The preceding was a paid review."

Clearly, this has not offended some of his readers, as you can see from reading the posted comments. As far as they are concerned, he's mentioned the involvement of Review Me, and admitted he was paid for the review - so it's open and above-board.

And at least one reader supported the policy:

Why are people upset that you got paid? Yikes, I am happy that you made money. Good for you and while I did not read the etire [sic] review, the first half was really good. I now know what ROR is and will consider learning.

For the record, that's not how NewsWireless works. If you want to "get your message across" to our readers, by all means do so, but we do try very hard to make it clear, up front, whether the readers are seeing adverts, or reading the considered judgement of Editorial staff.

Here are the options:

You sponsor NewsWireless. You pay our standard monthly fee, and we run your bulletins. They are clearly marked "Sponsor" at the top, and the byline will show who wrote them - someone who works for the sponsoring company, or an agency. Rates on application - but around five hundred pounds a month will buy you a bulletin a week.

You submit a press release. If the Editor doesn't find it interesting himself, it can still make it into the releases published section if someone covers the costs of publication (small). If it's of interest to our readers, it runs as a press release. Often, there will be an editorial story in "news" or "features" linking to the press release. Either way, the story will be clearly marked "PR Releases" at the top.

You write an advert, and pay the publisher for the real estate. There's no ambiguity; it looks like an advert, and it doesn't look like an unbiased review.

That's it.

Hopefully, you can see the difference between this and true sainthood.

If you like, you can always ring up, and invite the Editor or one of the contributors out to lunch. We've even been known to accept travel expenses payments from marketing people who wanted our attention for an hour. Heck, it's not unheard of for people to buy us air tickets to visit their head office. But - sadly - it turns out that this doesn't buy column inches on NewsWireless. It just gets our attention. And yes, it works, quite often.

But what you eventually see on NewsWireless is what it looks like. If it says "by Guy Kewney" or "By John Leyden" it's because Guy Kewney wrote it, or John Leyden wrote it - because they thought it was interesting. No other warranty, express or implied. And any error of judgement is down to human fallibility, and simple ignorance...